Boats by any other name
In the houseboat culture of the Bay Area, the two most famous landmarks include one boat dressed up like the Taj Mahal and the other like a small Gilligan’s Island. Both were made in a Sausalito dockyard by an eccentric millionaire named Forbes Thor Kiddoo. He was a carpenter from Brooklyn who became a wharf rat in Marin, where he started a wildly successful company that turned out homes built on barges. Houseboats were all the rage in Sausalito in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Kiddoo developed new building techniques and designs. His company built more than 100 houseboats before it was forced to close in 1986 due to local restrictions.
It took five years and about a million dollars to build his 50 by 100-foot, 700-ton “island,” which was launched in 1980. The original design included three staterooms, all with private baths, and a waterfall that flowed into a hot tub. It had finely crafted doors made without nails and portholes taken from famous ships, as well as tons of rock and sand and enough topsoil to grow towering palm trees—all surrounded by a white picket fence. But the piece de resistance was a 40-foot-tall lighthouse. The self-propelled floating estate was featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and appeared around the bay until 1990, when Kiddoo transformed it into a restaurant that is now moored at Pier 39 along the Embarcadero.
Info
Address Taj Mahal, Pier at Johnson Street, Sausalito, CA, 94965; Forbes Island, between Piers 39 & 41, San Francisco, CA, 94133, www.forbesisland.com/home.html, +1 415.951.4900 | Public Transport Taj Mahal—From the San Francisco Ferry Building take the Sausalito Ferry to Sausalito, walk a few blocks north to the last pier at Johnson Street. Forbes Island—Streetcar: F-Line (Embarcadero & Stockton St stop) | Hours Forbes Island, daily 5pm–9pm; Taj Mahal, not open to the public, viewable from the pier only| Tip In Sausalito, you can enjoy a nice walk around Schoonmaker Point and a delicious lunch at the French restaurant Le Garage.
His other creation, the Taj Mahal, lives in Richardson Bay, and was roughly inspired by the original building after which it was named. Altogether, it’s a waterfront folly of arabesques, ogee arches, cupolas, colonnades, and fiberglass domes. It was completed in the 1970s as a three-level, 4,500-square-foot home with such accouterments as a sauna, spa, and heated tile floor. Whatever else it is, it remains “very Sausalito.”
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