Sebastopol, California

One of the things we love about Sebastopol and other towns like it in Sonoma County is how diverse the living experiences can be for a city with a population of only 7k or so. Sebastopol has a thriving city center so if you want to live in the downtown area and have a short walk to restaurants/bars, cafes, and galleries then it’s available. If you prefer a suburban experience of homes on denser blocks with lots of families, yards, and parks then Sebastopol has got you covered. Finally, if you want a rural and remote lifestyle, with a beautiful home deep in the hills and forests of the area then it’s here for you. It’s hard to believe but pound for pound it’s hard to beat Sebastopol for its choices for how you choose to live.

Sebastopol is also noted as an arts center and relative to other Sonoma Valley towns (but not by Bay Area standards) you’d call it quirky.

This is a tricky issue that most of the beautiful Sonoma Valley towns face. Wealthy Bay Area residents come up to wine country and fall in love with the bucolic landscapes and slower lifestyles. So, they buy homes up in towns like Sebastopol, which drives prices up, reduces the full-time population, and ultimately prices out families who might otherwise have been able to live and work in town. It’s a well-trodden complaint from locals who have valid issues with how expensive the area has become at the same time their own homes have risen in value. What’s to be done about the fact that the town is so lovely everyone wants to own a piece of it? Development is one path, but of course, that has the downside of increasing the population of an area that would like to preserve its small-town vibe. We simply want to note what long-time locals will see as the biggest issue facing Sebastopol.

Unlike most Sonoma Valley towns, Sebastopol is known as an arts-centric place. Lots of locals are artists themselves or at the very least throw themselves headlong into the culture of counter-culture art so that artsy/hippie vibe is stronger here than in other wine country towns. Sebastopol feels less like a wine country town and perhaps more like a groovy throwback to an earlier era in the Bay Area. There are tons of festivals throughout the year including The Goddess Crafts Faire, the Gravenstein Apple Fair, the Northern California Women’s Herbal Symposium, and more. It’s an interesting place in that you have an intersection of arts, farming, tech, and even some conservative pockets all integrating into a small town with seemingly little strife. If you’re up for anything this could be your place.

Check out what the locals do for fun through the local
calendar of events.

We highly recommend visiting Sebastopol and staying in the community in a VRBO rather than a hotel to get a feel for living among the locals. You can receive discounted fares on travel via our partnership with Expedia as well.

Many locals of course work in the wine industry and enjoy short-ish commutes to work. Many newcomers work from home and so face no commute. If however, you are going to live here and try to commute to one of the tech hubs you will be unhappy. Sonoma is a beautiful town that is built for people who work in the agricultural/wine/hospitality industries or the newly crowned, untethered class of those who don’t need to commute anywhere. That is the work-life culture of Sonoma and much of these bucolic wine country towns.