Here’s one way to take matters into your own hands when the federal government is shut down, as one frequent swimmer at SF’s China Beach saw the beach was closed for the shutdown, so he simply GoFundMe’d up the money to reopen it.

With the federal government currently shut down (now for 38 days and counting), there are many National Park facilities that are closed during the shutdown. One of those is China Beach in San Francisco’s Sea Cliff neighborhood, as it is part of the national park known as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  

Or rather, China Beach was closed. It’s not anymore, as KTVU reports that a group of swimmers who frequent the area decided to start a GoFundMe to reopen the beach, and sure enough, they raised enough money and China Beach is now reopened.

"If the federal government can't figure it out, then the local community will," the GoFundMe’s organizer David Yacubian told SFGate.

As seen above, it did not take all that much money to reopen the beach. Yacubian asked Golden Gate National Recreation Area officials how much it would cost to reopen the park, and they told him it would be just $130 a day in maintenance costs. So once the GoFundMe hit enough for two weeks of that per diem cost, he had the park reopened.  

“China Beach opened Nov 5 with crowd sourced funding through Nov 19th!,” Yacubian posted in a GoFundMe update this week. “We are going to keep the fundraiser open to try and fund for 2 more weeks if the shutdown persists. Any funds left over will be donated to the San Francisco- Marin Foodbank.”

The GoFundMe page continues to actively accept (and receive) donations, in case the shutdown goes past November 19.

Related: FAA Swears They’ll Cut US Air Flights by 10% This Week Because of the Government Shutdown [SFist]

Image: TCabrera via Wikimedia Commons