09/03/2026
🎉🔥 WE HAVE FIRE INSURANCE!!! 🔥🎉
After several YEARS without a viable fire insurance option for the Hotel, I just made the down payment on an actual fire insurance policy. I genuinely cannot believe I finally get to say that.
For some perspective:
Last July (2025), the California Un-FAIR Plan quoted me somewhere around $45,000 PER YEAR to insure the hotel.
At one point, the premium had climbed to more than $62,000 A YEAR. 🤯
Today? Just under $13,000.
Now, it isn't apples to apples. Our coverage is lower than it used to be, and our deductible is higher.
But $13,000 versus $45,000–$62,000+? I WILL TAKE IT.
It has been a long, infuriating, sickening roller coaster of insurance cancellations, astronomical premiums, mortgage-placed insurance, and years of trying to understand how any of this can possibly be LEGAL.
But for the first time in several years, the Washington Hotel actually has fire insurance again.
And I absolutely cannot make this announcement without talking about the people who helped us get through it.
When this nightmare first started, you guys showed up for us in a way I will never forget. That first year, when we were suddenly faced with an insurance bill we simply couldn't absorb, people donated. People came together. We held the very first Gather on the Yuba, and our community helped us raise the money to keep going.
And you've kept showing up.
You've listened to me bitch about it. 😂 You've shared our frustration and outrage. You've supported our events, our business and this ridiculously cool old building. You've watched the premiums climb to numbers that were impossible to comprehend and have come along with us for every nauseating twist and turn.
There really aren't words for what that means to us.
Owning a 169-year-old hotel in a tiny mountain town may not be the MOST sensible life choice. 😂 But this ordeal has reinforced what I’ve always known — that the Washington Hotel has never belonged only to us. This place matters to people. And when things got really, really hard, you held us up.
So I'm stoked to finally have fire insurance again. I'm celebrating a premium that, while still expensive, is actually within the realm of reality.
But mostly, I'm feeling incredibly grateful.
To every person who donated, everyone who’s come to any of the Gather on the Yuba concerts, ALL the musicians, everyone who bought a drink (or 10!), ate a meal, stayed in a room, attended an event, liked or shared a post, offered encouragement, listened to me rant, or simply kept walking through our doors:
THANK YOU.
You helped keep this place standing through something I honestly wasn't always sure we would make it through.
Is $13,000 a year for less coverage and a higher deductible something I ever thought I'd be THIS excited about? Absolutely not.
Am I celebrating anyway? YOU BET YOUR ASS I AM. 😂🎉🔥
This one belongs to all of us. ❤️
