At Guerneville’s new swim club and camping resort The River Electric, summer feels like the best version of itself — the platonic ideal that you’re not sure is a lived memory or something you gleaned from Instagram.
Set just off Main Street in Guerneville in Sonoma County, the resort is centered around a circular pool, surrounded by a sprawling, patchy green lawn (the sprinklers have been on the fritz) — the foreground to a grove of redwoods. The Russian River snakes lazily under the bridge that leads you to the five-minute walk into town.
On a recent Tuesday, when locals can get a day pass for $5 ($35 for everyone else), a pack of boys in goggles played a rambunctious game of Marco Polo. Girls showed off their handstands and toe points. Zigzagging yellowjackets surveyed the scene like playground bullies. And though there was a rogue dad here and there, the lounge chairs with umbrellas were taken up mostly by moms: gabbing, rocking strollers, and shuttling grilled-cheese sandwiches to their kids. There are well-made cocktails, which you’ll find parents happily swigging.
In the best kind of way, The River Electric feels like a flickering, sepia-toned video out of the seatbelt-less ’70s, long before attachment parenting. It’s almost jarring to see that the dusty parking lot is lined with 2025 Subarus and Teslas. Surely, if they could have, the husband-and-wife team behind the resort would have planted FJ40 Toyota Land Cruisers and wood-paneled station wagons.
This is the first “brick-and-mortar” project from Mike and Kelsey Sheofsky, who were Potrero Hill residents before they had kids. Five years ago, when they started scheming to open the resort, they moved their family permanently to Sebastopol, but they’ve had a second home in Monte Rio, a few miles south of Guerneville, for 10 years.
The reason “brick and mortar” is in quotes is that the 40 canvas bed-and-all glamping tents, located along green, weedy, wooded paths just beyond the swimming area, are designed to be packed up and put away for the winter. There is no choice. Though only a block from Main Street, the resort’s 12 acres are smack in the middle of a plain that regularly gets flooded in the winter when the Russian River overflows.
For the Sheofskys, this nomadic, pack-in, pack-out lifestyle has become a thriving business model. Since 2011, they’ve been running a luxury outdoor event production company called Shelter Co. It has done everything from build suites and lounges at Outside Lands and BottleRock to setting up fancy camps for solar eclipse viewings in Idaho for the astronauts at Virgin Galactic.
During the pandemic, business slowed down, so the Sheofskys started another company, The Get Out, which sells stylish, retro camping gear, including cute “River Rat” sweatshirts, canteens, and avocado and orange enamelware — all of which are displayed at The River Electric’s check-in desk.
Despite the summer-camp nostalgia, the resort has contemporary cultural markers everywhere. It is, to quote Gen Z, “aesthetic.” The bathrooms have pretty, Heath-esque tiles, as well as cedar-bergamot hand soap, made in Oakland. Vegan oat chocolate soft serve is on offer. One cocktail features San Francisco’s own Brucato Chaparral amaro. Of course, you can get orange wine and Scribe rosé.
Seated at a picnic table in a redwood grove, Mike Sheofsky fit the look himself — kind of a human version of the menu’s “Hi-Low Dog,” a $40 Hebrew National with creme fraiche and caviar. A sleeve of tattoos peaked out of a Hawaiian shirt. His cap said “River.” He was sporting the gold, double-bridged, wire-framed aviators of the moment and a Rolex.
He and Kelsey bought the property in 2018. “We were up here for a friend’s 40th birthday, and we were at the resort across the street. And we just loved it. So when this property, which had been J’s Amusement Park for about 20 years, became available, we snapped it up. It took us a little while to get everything else dialed in.”
The design of The River Electric — handled in large part by Kelsey, along with Maggie Wilson, their creative director (with the support of Jessie Galloway Designs and Boundary Works) — is as much a part of the experience as the fire pit, the ping-pong tables, and the sound system, which might be playing Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer.” There is also a smaller, adults-only pool with poolside service for those who want to pretend they are at the Ritz.
There are accents of sage and sky blue. Thick slabs of redwood are used for the counters. A circular motif (the skylights, the main pool, the communal dining table) is everywhere. The open-air buildings, from the check-in desk to the eating area to the communal bathrooms (where, yes, you will have to brush your teeth next to a stranger) are made of concrete, which allow them to withstand the inevitable floods but also lend a brutalist flair.
The tents, outfitted with squishy, soft beds and tasteful striped headboards, are tightly packed together, which means that The River Electric has drawn more families than lovers. (Although it has hosted many weddings in the beautiful redwood grove.) It would also be a fun weekend destination for a bunch of friends — friends of some means, as tents start at around $300 on weekends.
The better bet is to come on a weekday, when it’s not as crowded and tents start at $225. And there’s something delightful about Tuesdays, which takes The River Electric away from its Ace Hotel vibes and transforms it into a true, old-school swim club. One meant more for the people of Guerneville, less sun-starved interlopers from San Francisco.
The River Electric, 16101 Neeley Rd., Guerneville