Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
June 26, 2014

MED IS DEAD!

Preceded in death by many of its most illustrious Med Heads, Berkeley’s oldest South Side business is for sale. Its ghosts, said to be ghosting behind the Med mural, are not for sale. It’s history is in the books.

Gone with the Wind. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Berkeley’s Oldest Cafe Could Become Starbucks” »

by Steed Dropout
June 23, 2014

GETTING A FOOT-HOLD IN BERKELEY

Sometimes, even a week’s absence from Berkeley can change your scene. Berkeley Reporter is still struggling to get a foot hold back in Berkeley after a week in Portland

We had read in the SF Chronicle that Berkeleyans live longer than residents elsewhere in the Bay Area. The Chron speculated that hiking in the Berkeley hills was prolonging lives.

What better way to get a foot-hold in Berkeley than to join up with hikers “over 50” for what was described as an “easy walk” on the far North Side last week. Advance publicity promised that Indian And Crator Rocks would be explored.

Easy. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Berkeley Scene Anew” »

by Steed Dropout
June 13, 2014

DYSPHORIA FOR THE REST OF US

Dysphoria. Photo by Ted Friedman.

When Maureen Dowd, a star New York Times reporter, screwed up with a pot-club marijuana edible in Colorado, recently, she faced a reporter’s dilemma. Should she write a tell-all or wait to be scooped on her own life?

Her tell-all was a public service spot, with Dowd telling us, essentially, “kids, don’t try this at home,” while filling us in on how to use edible THC.

Her editors must have been weak-kneed with delight. There’s just something sort of pro-pot about the Times but I can’t prove it. I suspected this when the Times ran a news obit a few years ago on Berkeley’s most famous pot Doc., Psychiatrist, Tod H. Mikuriya.

Mikuriya was a pioneer advocate (and user of) medical marijuana. You could feel between the lines the Times dug his message.

Continue reading “Dowd’s Downer” »

by Steed Dropout
June 10, 2014

DEAD WEEK DEADENS BERKELEY

Cal Berkeley students shove you off the walks; their backpacks–land-mining coffee house floors–may topple you. Their perfumes bring tears to your eyes. Their ebullient outbursts deafen you.

As a townie, you may wish to be rid of your gownies and be done with these flash-in-the-pan undergrads. Until they leave you for surf-and-sand southland summers; leave you cold.

Only yesterday, they wowed you with graduation street-theater. One group, “a family,” they told me, marched up Teley, 25-throng, accompanied by a spirited mariachi-band, complete with tubas.

Family grads. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Student Loss: A Love Story” »

by Steed Dropout
June, 4, 2014

STUFF HAPPENS

Some People’s Park regulars (i.e. drunks and users) have moved into Willard Park [a block South of People’s Park], bringing their clutter of belongings.

Willard Park–Ho Chi Minh Park in the ’70s–is surveilled by nervous-NIMBY park neighbors, who report to Berkeley Police. As the clutter and Willard’s new tenants grew, when would cops bring on the heat? They did, Monday, but where’s the story? Cops clear 70s anti-war park of sloppy squatters?

Evidence is mounting that Telegraph Avenue Sniper will walk but where’s the story? Sniper shoots up Teley vendors, escapes charges. He’s trying to get his guns back from police, a source says.

The noise from rebuilding the Sequoia Apartments and its popular restaurants at TeleHaste can be heard two blocks away and this is in the first week. Traffic congestion, noise, toxic fumes, broken water mains and possible business profit-losses have been predicted by some.

Snack Before Work. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Between Berkeley Stories” »