The Little Bohemian began, in some ways, long before I found this place.

I’ve always been fascinated by places and by the strange power they have over us. How a room can change your mood. How a garden can make an afternoon stretch longer. How the right gathering place can turn strangers into friends.

I studied architecture and spent much of my career creating homes, workspaces, and hotels for people to come together, but I kept dreaming about making something more personal. A place where every detail could have a reason for being there.

Eventually, that dream led me to Occidental.

Tucked among the redwoods of western Sonoma County, Occidental has always felt a little removed from the rest of the world. It’s a tiny town at the crossroads of forest, farmland, vineyards, and the Sonoma Coast. A place people have been escaping to for generations. And still a pretty good place to hide out.

Sitting just off the main road was an old 1959 vintage motel that had been waiting patiently for its next chapter.

I loved it almost immediately.

There was nothing grand about the former Union Motel, built by the Pannizzera family as a sister property to the Union Hotel restaurant, which still operates in town today. A low-slung building with a row of simple adobe-brick rooms looking out onto a whole lot of trees. A pool deck baking in the sun. Redwoods rising beyond it. But there was something wonderfully Californian about the whole thing: casual, optimistic, a little eccentric, and completely unpretentious.

So rather than reinvent it, we decided to build on what was already here.

We kept the bones of the old motel and imagined what it might become with a little love and a lot of care. The drive-through parking lot became a central garden. The pool deck became a genuine place we’d want to spend an entire afternoon. We added saunas, a hot tub, places to gather around a fire, private terraces for soaking under the trees, and soon, a handful of mirrored houses tucked quietly into the hillside and courtyard.

Inside, we wanted things to feel collected rather than decorated. Vintage pieces mingle with new ones. No two rooms are exactly alike. Color and earthiness are our north star. Imperfection and weirdness are encouraged. And the whole place should feel as though it could have always been here—and wouldn’t quite belong anywhere else.

Because that’s how the places we love tend to be.

The name The Little Bohemian felt right for the same reason. It’s a nod to the Bohemian Highway that winds through Occidental, but also to a certain way of being: curious, creative, independent, and not interested in doing things the conventional way.

More than anything, I wanted to create the kind of place I’m always looking for myself.

Somewhere you can wake up slowly. Drink coffee in a garden. Disappear into the redwoods. Swim in the afternoon sun. Take the long way to the coast. Sit around a fire with people you love. Get lost in thought. Or do absolutely nothing at all.

I think this is what creating a sense of place is really about: creating containers for life. We shape the physical world, and then, almost imperceptibly, those places begin shaping us in return. They hold our conversations, our celebrations, our quiet mornings, our chance encounters, and the memories we carry home with us.

The Little Bohemian is our little container here in the wilds of West County.

I hope you fill it with something good.

— Eli Sokol
Founder, The Little Bohemian