Matthew Gale lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, just north of San Francisco. His 1970s-built structure is situated in of one of the oldest and largest floating home communities in the United States. The community formed in the sixties as a means for people to construct next-to-free housing without property taxes or the trappings of conventional, land-locked living. Now it is a close-knit, middle class community whose eclectic architecture refers back to its counterculture heyday. While everything about the place smacks of some romantic idyll - living on the water, in a boat, with the muted hues of sun beaming through a rainbow of colors in the hand-cut stained glass throughout, Mr. Gale is intent on dispelling the myth.