{"id":26889,"date":"2025-10-28T11:50:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T11:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/26889\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T11:50:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T11:50:23","slug":"celebrity-hippie-who-made-fortune-with-counterculture-magazine-lists-stunning-bay-area-tugboat-home-for-seven-figure-sum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/26889\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrity hippie who made fortune with counterculture magazine lists stunning Bay Area TUGBOAT home for seven-figure sum"},"content":{"rendered":"

A celebrity hippie\u00a0is selling the Bay Area houseboat he spent decades living in for an eye-watering $1.8 million.<\/p>\n

Stewart Brand, 87, lived aboard the stunning tugboat, named Mirene, for more than four decades with his wife before making the decision to sell.<\/p>\n

Brand co-founded the Whole Earth Catalog, an American counterculture magazine and catalog that featured product reviews, ‘ideas and inspiration that Steve Jobs later called “a sort of Google<\/a> in paperback form, before Google came along,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brand and his wife fondly looked back on their time living in one-bedroom, one-bathroom boat docked in Sausalito, likening it to an ‘exquisitely crafted musical instrument.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Driving her, the fly-bridge feels like the top of the world,’ Brand said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘It’s wonderful to live in a cozy home that at any moment can set out for adventure, and through the familiar kitchen windows you see wooded islands flowing by.’<\/p>\n

The grand 64-foot tugboat was originally built in 1912 and used as a cannery tender in Alaska and then a tugboat along the Columbia River before it came in dire need of repairs, according to a press release<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Stewart <\/p>\n

Stewart Brand, 87, lived aboard his stunning houseboat, Mirene, for more than four decades with his wife before deciding to sell<\/p>\n

\"Mirene <\/p>\n

Mirene was fitted with a warm varnished wood interior as well as a library or salon<\/p>\n

The couple bought the vessel in 1982 and moored it in the South 40 Dock before spending years ‘lovingly’ and ‘extensively’ restoring and reimagining it.<\/p>\n

Mirene was fitted with a warm varnished wood interior and a gourmet kitchen, large enough to entertain, as well as a library or salon, the listing <\/a>stated.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Snug in her berth in the neighborly houseboat community or steaming out to cruise San Francisco\u2019s waterfront and the Golden Gate Bridge, Mirene revels in the glamour of a working tugboat,’ Brand added.<\/p>\n

‘This home is a unique mix of modesty and majesty. It is located in a prime berth in the Sausalito Houseboat Community and yet has the ability, like no other houseboat, to disconnect from the berth and adventure around the Bay, along with the San Francisco Waterfront and further afield,’ listing agent Steve Sekhon of Compass said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A close friend of Brand and founder of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, said that the word tugboat ‘does not do this marvel of design any justice.’<\/p>\n

‘It’s a gorgeous home optimized for living on water that also happens to be a reliable operating vessel,’ Kelly said. ‘It has been well loved and well-maintained. New owners will inherit half a century of obsessive attention to details that matter.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

The thrill of the Mirene has reached its end for Brand and his wife, Ryan Phelan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brand admitted that while the boat is ‘as fit as she ever was,’ he is not and it is ‘time for younger owners.’<\/p>\n

\"Brand <\/p>\n

Brand and his wife fondly looked back on their time living on the Mirene, likening the boat to an ‘exquisitely crafted musical instrument’<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The bedroom aboard the restored Mirene tugboat<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The grand 64-foot tugboat was originally built in 1912 and used as a cannery tender in Alaska and then a tugboat along the Columbia River<\/p>\n

\"Brand, <\/p>\n

Brand, author of The Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools, answers questions regarding the National Book Award in 1972, which he received, at a news conference in New York<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A close friend of Brand and founder of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly, said that the word tugboat ‘does not do this marvel of design any justice’<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The boat features sittings rooms bathed in sunlight, fit with a wood stove\u00a0<\/p>\n

The counterculture icon was made famous not only for his work creating the Whole Earth Catalog, but also for his convincing the government to release a photograph of planet Earth from space for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Upon the first publication of the catalog in 1968, that very image of planet Earth was plastered on the front cover.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The catalog consisted of essays, product reviews and how-to guides intended to promote self-sufficiency, ecology and education for a more independent and sustainable living.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brand said that ‘the idea’ of the catalog in the 1970s was to ‘confer agency,’ Wired reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘So you went from being passively disinterested to becoming actively interested in a lot of things,’ he continued. ‘Every one of those reviews was like a half-open door of something you might well do with your young life. A lot of people went through those doors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the influence of the catalog, it has remained largely inaccessible for decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brand told Wired <\/a>that, after the publication crumbled under debt in 2002, an offer to digitize the catalog was taken up but the project never completed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Brand <\/p>\n

Brand admits that while the Mirene is ‘as fit as she ever was,’ he is not and it was ‘time for younger owners’<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Mirene was fitted with a ‘gourmet kitchen’ with a large enough dining space to entertain guests<\/p>\n

\"Brand <\/p>\n

Brand and his wife, Ryan Phelan, are selling the houseboat for $1.8million<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The couple bought the vessel in 1982 and moored it in Sausalito before spending years ‘lovingly’ and ‘extensively’ restoring and reimagining it<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The counterculture icon was made famous not only for his work creating the Whole Earth Catalog, but also for his convincing the government to release a photograph of planet Earth from space for the first time<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The first issue of the Whole Earth Catalog featured the first released picture of Earth from space, which Brand convinced the government to release<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The fall 1969 issue of the Whole Earth Catalog<\/p>\n

For the catalog’s 50th anniversary, the executive director of the San Francisco art collective Gray Area pitched the idea that its collections of work be made available through digitizing once again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I wish we could have done it years ago,’ Brand said. ‘So when the option seemed to appear to put certain things online and not ask anybody’s permission other than us, who wanted it to be free out there all along, we all said to each other, “Yeah, go for it.”<\/p>\n

‘And then they made it happen. It\u2019s a huge body of work to finally have out there. We\u2019re just delighted.’<\/p>\n

The collection was hosted by the Internet Archive and accessible through wholeearth.info<\/a>, where readers can download and read through each issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brand has since become involved in other projects, including the push for use of nuclear energy, helping to create a 10,000 year clock and working with researchers to restore extinct species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A celebrity hippie\u00a0is selling the Bay Area houseboat he spent decades living in for an eye-watering $1.8 million.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[4162,226,14624,100,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-26889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-alaska","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-google","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}