Kurt Mayer

Kurt Mayer started delivering newspapers in Monterey County 46 years ago as a 16-year-old sub tossing papers from his car onto Peninsula driveways. But that wasn’t his first foray in the world of newspaper delivery. Three years earlier, he’d subbed for a friend slinging papers from his bike in Campbell.

Back then “everybody read the paper,” Mayer says. Before there was 24-hour news access, there were two newspaper editions, morning and afternoon. Mayer spent years getting up at 2am to get papers out on the streets before the rest of the world was awake.

His delivery territory grew to include Big Sur in 1986, and in 2003 he bought the Big Sur Deli, then the Big Sur Tavern next door eight years later. His two sons help manage those businesses. When storms struck last winter and Big Sur was beset by landslides and the failure of Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge on Highway 1, Mayer was still getting newspapers to Big Sur “island” – by carrying them on his back. Since March, he’s packed in copies of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other papers up to four days a week along the one-mile bypass trail. (One of three employees packs in papers the other days.)

He uses two types of packs, an extra large backpack and his own configuration: a back carrier designed for hunting kills, stacked with two 20-gallon plastic containers atop one another affixed with bungee cords (pictured at right).

At least once a week, he makes a seven-hour trip picking up and bringing in supplies in his dusty gray Toyota Tundra pickup truck via Nacimiento-Fergusson Road.

As hard as it’s been – and despite losing money keeping his Big Sur businesses open – Mayer says he’s enjoyed time with neighbors out on the trail, waving and laughing with each other along the way.

He says of Big Sur: “It’s a tough place. It’ll chew you up and spit you out if you’re not up to the challenge.”

The Weekly caught up with Mayer, 62, to find out how he handles the challenge.

Weekly: You are hiking in newspapers to Big Sur on your back over the bypass trail?

Mayer: If you’ve ever delivered newspapers you know there’s one thing that’s true: There’s no excuses. I don’t care what happens, people expect their paper in the same spot at the same time every day, and if you can do that, then you can survive in the business.

To me if you ask any newspaper guy who’s been doing it a long time, they don’t think it’s any big deal.

You figure it out. You always figure it out.

Before Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge was shut down to pedestrians, you were rolling supplies across while it was slowly crumbling. Did that make you nervous?

No. I did it years earlier [when Highway 1 collapsed] between Rocky Creek and Bixby Bridge… I started the wheelbarrow band – a couple of us with wheelbarrows. I would have a wheelbarrow, and I would have a guy who worked for me, he would be parked on the other side of Bixby Bridge. He would roll an empty wheelbarrow down midway, I would roll the full wheelbarrow to him, and we’d swap. I’d take the empty one down to my truck and fill it back up.

When [Pfeiffer Canyon] happened, I knew exactly what to do.

You’ve also been able to truck in supplies. What’s that been like?

When they opened it up at Paul’s Slide, I think I was the first one through [in a truck]. They let us through for about four hours. I called Nepenthe [co-owner] Kirk Gafill and we talked about it. We didn’t know if we could actually come through because the highway was thrashed.

It was horrible trying to get up and over with a full truck of stuff. Since then I’ve gotten US Foods to come in [to deliver restaurant supplies]. Others followed.

So the more I got to come back, the less I have to do. It’s getting closer and closer to normal.

What did your neighbors think about you staying open when other businesses were forced to shut down?

One the big things is that the locals named that bypass trail the Taphouse Trail, because I was keeping the business open for them. To me, that was a big honor. It just showed that they were really happy I stayed open. I didn’t think anyone was paying attention to that.