About three months ago, while researching some random topic on Google, “Marin Lately” popped up in the search results. I clicked. I read. I laughed.
Marin Lately, a satirical online publication, has nailed the essence of this quirky county with its overabundance of wealthy residents. Think The Onion, Marin style.
Don’t take my word for it. Have a gander at some recent headlines:
Ross to Tentatively Welcome First Resident Not Traced Directly to Mayflower
Marin’s Last Blue-Collar Resident Caught, Tagged
Amazing: Marin’s Entire 18-35 Demographic Fits in Small Van They Are Using to Move
Quite amused, I perused the Marin Lately site, looking for the person behind the insightful, hyper-local observations. Zilch. The “About Us” tab taunted me.
“We are controlled by shadowy interests and thus unable to disclose any additional information,” it said.
I signed up for the newsletter. After receiving the first one via email, I crafted a reply chock-full of praise for the writer and asked for an interview. Radio silence. Ditto the next week.
Well, two could play this game. Determined to find the shadowy interests, I went down the interweb rabbit hole, only to discover subterfuge at every turn.
The registered owner of the website? Name redacted for privacy. The address of the private party? In Reykjavik. That’s the capital of Iceland, for all those wondering. (Oh, wait, this is moneyed Marin—most of our residents have surely relaxed in the European country’s geothermal pools.)
My hunt for the elusive entity brought me to Facebook, where I enlisted my 1,000 followers as fellow sleuths. The best clue came from pal Andrey Kamentsky, who discovered that renowned photographer and local resident Ian Bates had posted a trio of photos on social media under the headline, “Marin, lately.”
I badgered Bates with messages but never heard back. Dead end after end. Frustrated, I sought advice from my editor, Daedalus Howell, also a fan. Perhaps it’s written by AI, he posited. And he encouraged me to stop looking.
“They’ll come to us when it’s time,” Howell said.
Hmm. Sounded ominous and omniscient. That’s when I credited—actually more like accused—my eloquent and witty boss of being Marin Lately. He denied it. After a couple more failed attempts at identifying someone clever enough to deliver the weekly wisecracking headlines and articles, I gave it a rest.
During the ensuing two months, I religiously read Marin Lately. My curiosity remained piqued. Occasionally, I considered tracking down Mill Valley’s Dana Carvey or Fairfax’s Anne Lamott to ask whether they’re ribbing Marin.
And then it happened, exactly as my editor predicted—Marin Lately came to me. They appeared on my Facebook post, the one that asked people for tips on who was behind the website.
“Just checking in to see if anyone has gotten to the bottom of this,” Marin Lately commented.
Game on. I asked whether they had received my emails. Nope. They posted an address, and I forwarded my previous messages. Fortunately, they didn’t keep me waiting for a response.
“Thank you for saying such lovely things about Marin Lately. It’s been great for morale around the office, and a boon to staff across the entire organization. We really want to stress the fact that Marin Lately is a vast and faceless corporation, and that our work cannot be attributed to one person. Best, Marin Lately LLC.”
Dispatches flew back and forth as I struggled to keep up with their repartee. Silly me for thinking that a lone erudite person put out such a droll publication—a feat that even AI couldn’t manage, I wrote. They assured me that AI did not and never will augment Marin Lately’s content.
“That’s very important to note. ‘They’ copy us,” Marin Lately said.
Then, just like that, they granted me an exclusive interview with the corporation’s head writer. Darn tootin’. I worked hard for this scoop.
Prior to the phone interview, the powers that be required written questions. I threw out a dozen and received a tome of answers in return.
A private equity company based in Dubai owns the publication, they claimed. None of the staff has written for The Onion. Although my prime suspect, photographer Ian Bates, doesn’t work at Marin Lately, he became an early follower.
Clearly, they toyed with me at times. When I asked who came up with the idea for Marin Lately, they feignedly floundered.
“I guess that would be me—I mean, us—the huge team behind Marin Lately. We all thought of it at exactly the same time” came the reply.
They all observed, at exactly the same time, that conversations and online chatter in the county were limited to pleasantries and complaints.
“It’s either ‘We love living here, any problems we have are manageable and everything is generally going really great!’ or ‘WHAT are we going to DO about all these TEENAGERS on E-BIKES!?’” they said.
Aiming to address the middle ground, they launched Marin Lately, where they described themselves as “neither thankful nor up-in-arms.”
Today, I finally got on the horn with the Head Writer. Little by little, more of this Marin Lately mystery unraveled. Not only does HW possess writing chops; he has solid experience as a humorist for major publications, including The New Yorker, and got his start in local media. Sure, I totally buy that a huge conglomerate backs the website, but I reckon a nationally funny guy with an eye for small county foibles gave birth to Marin Lately.
While headlines like Bizarre Dietary Guidelines Issued by RFK Jr. Not Weird Enough for Fairfax Woman make it seem that nothing is too sacred for HW and his team, he said they do have boundaries.
“Marin Lately is meant to be a back-handed compliment, or a razzing love letter,” HW opined. “Walking that fine line is tricky, of course, but that’s what this art form is all about—staying on the tightrope, where there’s tension.”
Sadly, not everyone in Marin understands. Marin Lately news posted on Reddit and Nextdoor gets flagged and removed, according to HW. Some people fret that they include real names in the farcical articles. Untrue, HW said. Others provide heartfelt “testimonials,” as noted in a recent Marin Lately article:
“It’s not very funny though. I am usually good at getting jokes, but this was over my head.” –PookieCat415, Reddit
“Humble yet declarative, Pookiecat415 grapples valiantly with the material.”
—Marin Lately
A tightrope indeed.
Still, Marin Lately has made a big splash in a little county pond. The website has tens of thousands of “active users,” aka devotees. And for data nerds familiar with email marketing, get a load of this stat—80% of people open Marin Lately’s newsletter the day it arrives in their inbox.
Despite their success, HW and the massive team at Marin Lately don’t dwell on the numbers. The focus remains on finding the funny in the wonderful and ridiculous places throughout bucolic Marin County.
“We used to have more pranksters and a more mischievous culture, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t still have that,” HW said. “Marin Lately is really meant to be a gift, which is why, you know, it doesn’t cost anything.”
