Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 23, 2015

BERKELEY REPORTER IN RESTROOM BEEF WITH POLICE AT CAFFE MEDITERRANEUM

Photo of good cop investigating me for illegal photography, Cafe Med.
Photo by Ted Friedman.

Those cops coming through the doors of the Caffe Mediterraneum, as they do hella lot–those cops were coming for me.

Minutes earlier, I had been photographing upstairs at the Med. I have been publishing my photos–in several Berkeley publications–of inside the Med,since 2011; my eye caught a strange scene at the restroom upstairs. Med owner Craig Becker was seemingly about to enter an occupied restroom with his master key. He didn’t knock.
Continue reading “Berkeley’s Good/Bad Cops and Me” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 19, 2015

BIG BERKELEY-INN STORY WAS KNOWN FOR MONTHS

Hippy Graveyard. Photo by Ted Friedman.

A recent news story that the Berkeley Inn site, an eyesore since it burned thirty years ago–was about to be developed–long after Heaven and Earth had tried…that story was born on Telegraph Avenue and almost stayed on the avenue.

When a diligent local reporter [not me] broke the story, the gossip-mill was shocked. Shocked to think all those rumors were true.

Development of the eye-sore site into student apartments will, reportedly, trickle-down from U.C. Berkeley builders.

Rumors of U.C. Berkeley eating the town are handed out on the South side like salted peanuts. Cal is now poised to dine on the Berkeley-Inn site. The myth is winning, as Cal, reportedly, will build student apartments on the site of a beatnik hotel that was destroyed by fire thirty years ago.
Continue reading “Hippy Graveyard Too Big To Hide” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 16, 2015

BERKELEY SOUTH SIDE BEAT IS SMALLER THAN LIFE

Who hung this--a 40 year first--on my Berkeley Telegraph Ave. beat?
Photo by Ted Friedman.

At fifteen square feet, this newspaper beat could be the smallest in the world.

To worsen matters, there’s not much really happening here at Telegraph/Haste, the host of Telegraph Avenue. Two TeleHaste construction projects–vital to the survival of lower Telegraph–are clanging and buzzing forward.
Continue reading “Just a Postage Stamp Beat” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 8, 2015

Gassed in Berkeley. Photo by Ted Friedman.

How not to get gassed in Berkeley? Stay home or bring a gas mask, or neckerchief-mask soaked in vinegar, vaseline, milk or lemon juice. Try to disguise your gas protection so you are not singled out for your Mick Jagger’s “fair share of abuse.”

Berkeleyans and Cal students, who were gassed and clubbed recently at the height of the Ferguson, Mo. protests on Telegraph Avenue, may have wandered distractedly into the vortex of the protest–where they were dosed.

Continue reading “How Not to Get Gassed in Berkeley” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 4, 2015

Take-down on Telegraph. Photo by Ted Friedman.

The other Peoples Park Mural; you’ve passed it every time you visit Telegraph Avenue. the mural is the work of Edithe (“Edy”) Boone, 77, who installed it, overlooking the burned-down Berkeley Inn site at Telegraph/Haste, early in the 1990s.

The Berkeley Inn, destroyed by fires in 1986, was a bohemian be-hive on Telegraph Ave.
Continue reading “Beloved Mural Packs It In” »

by Steed Dropout
Jan. 12, 2015

BERKELEY REPORTER APPEALS TO READERS

Do you know this man? Sketch by Martin Schwartz. Photo by Ted Friedman.

If you recognize this man, who opened a short-lived cafe at what is now Amoeba, in 1992–please let us know.

Berkeley Reporter’s previous piece reported an attack on Berkeley’s Peoples Park iconic mural on Amoeba’s North wall, at Haste and Telegraph. Now we seek more info on an attack on the mural in 1992.

Tentative info from knowledgeable sources has provided this much background:

In 1992, a quarrelsome South side character (Saladin?) opened a restaurant (Marrakech?) in what is now Amoeba, an independent music and video emporium. The would-be restaurateur was known as a South side trouble-maker even before he donned his chef’s outfit.
Continue reading “Do You Know Berkeley Cafe Owner Who Mugged Teley Mural in ’92?” »

by Steed Dropout
Dec. 23, 2014

ONE WEEK, RIOTS–THEN TELEGRAPH RETURNS TO “NORMAL”

Doris Moskowitz cleans up Moe's after recent protests. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Tienda Ho, formerly a few doors from Berkeley’s oldest espresso, was a classy womens’ clothes shop with a branch in Santa Barbara. “Our Berkeley customers were intimidated by the neighborhood,” a Ho owner told espresso, explaining Ho’s decision to close its Berkeley location on a block of Telegraph Ave. swollen with transients.

The Ho Location recently opened as an artsy tea purveyor. Trouble followed, last week, when an unstable Telegraph habitué harassed a tea-shop customer and followed her to the Caffe Mediterraneum.
Continue reading “Berkeley’s Avenue of Thrills” »

by Steed Dropout
Dec. 9, 2014

2 NIGHTS OF VIOLENCE REDRESSED BY CAL

Photo by Ted Friedman.

“The whole system is corrupt; shut it down”–a popular protest chant

Moni Law, a Berkeley activist/attorney, spoke at the start of the first night of a three-night [Update: four night] protest against questionable police tactics exonerated by grand juries.
Continue reading “3rd Time Was The Best Time: Berkeley 4-Days of Protest” »

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 28, 2014

Telegraph Ave. Thanksgiving.Photo by Ted Friedman.

Thanksgiving Berkeley-style basked in balmy unseasonable weather, the warmest Thanksgiving in years, according to temperature averages. Although Riots ran rampant next-door in Oakland, rioters failed to march their well-trod route up Telegraph to Berkeley.

Some disappointed Berkeleyans mused that perhaps Berkeley was slipping as second Demo City in the USA, but the slippage was probably the absence of student demonstrators–who were gone for Thanksgiving.

In search of award-winning Thanksgiving Berkeley photos, this photographer promised an editor “something dramatically different.”
Continue reading “Berkeley Cools, then Heats Up–Thankfully” »

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 8, 2014

The co-leaders of what was billed as a Berkeley Path Wanderers event: “Telegraph then and now,” met at the mosaic bench beside the tennis courts at Willard Park, Sunday. Co-leaders arrived early to greet time-zone-change bunglers.

Homeless man, foreground, told me he prefers Willard to Telegraph.
Photo by Ted Friedman.

The co-leaders said that they were both over-prepared; it was difficult to convey a sense of what Telegraph Avenue was. One of the leaders read aloud from the opening of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, a masterpiece of detail.

The tour never reached that level of detail, but it came close.
Continue reading “Telegraph Ave. Makes History Again” »