Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Sept. 29, 2014

A NEW AGE OF CONSENT

Consent at Cal/Berkeley. Photo by Ted Friedman.

The standards for consensual college sex have tightened, according to media accounts of Gov. Jerry Brown’s signing a stricter date-rape law, recently. Under the new regulations, both sex-partners will have to continue to verbalize consent throughout the sex act.

Dorms across the state will ring out with, “I consent. I still consent. (groaning) I’m consenting.”

It remains to be seen whether such scenes of fevered consent can be articulated in an orderly way. A dialogue director might be required to pace the consents so that consenters don’t step on each others’ consents.

“Honey, I consent. I’m Still consenting. Still consenting here.” The two competing blurts could meet in the night, bouncing off each other.

It may only be a matter of time before civil libertarians complain that big government has invaded their bed-rooms.
Continue reading “50 Years After Student Revolt, Cal Students Shift to Consent” »

by Steed Dropout
Sept. 23, 2014

Don’t confuse Berkeley Cop Watchers with Berkeley Crime Watchers. The similarity in these names is confusing.

Unlike Cop Watch, which is a loose international confederation of self-appointed police monitors–Berkeley Crime Watchers are you and me. When we’re out and about Berkeley and happen on police activity, we become crime watchers/police reporters.

Take the other night near Berkeley’s hot-spot, the Caffe Mediterraneum. A familiar face among those hanging nearby gets detained, searched, and busted. A crowd gathers.

The Bust. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Berkeley Crime Watchers” »

by Steed Dropout
Sept. 21, 2014

Titled, halfway between People's Park and pot club. Photo by Ted Friedman.

AMID NATIONAL HOOTS AND SNARK, BERKELEY’S CITY COUNCIL RECENTLY MANDATED MARIJUANA GIVEAWAYS FROM POT CLUBS TO LOW-INCOME BERKELEY POT BUYERS.

I Got Free Berkeley Pot. I may give it back–for someone more needy–but for now I just want to stare at those precious crumbs and what they represent.

The crumbs represent the continuing efforts, for a quarter of a century, to legalize marijuana in Berkeley.
Continue reading “I Got Free Berkeley Pot” »

by Steed Dropout
Sept. 14, 2014

“A bottle of beer half-spills out of a brown paper bag onto a tree’s roots and the tree gets cited for drunkenness”–Berkeley Poet Laureate, and veteran of the People’s Park riots, Julia Vinograd.

FSM, PEOPLE’S PARK STILL FIGHTING

Grizzled activists who were “Berkeley in the Sixties.” were interviewed for a film named after them twenty years after they defied Reagan and the National Guard. They offer surprisingly self-critical assessments of their movement, perhaps the first mass student uprising in U.S. higher education.

Lynne Hollander Savio, Mario Savio's widow (they met in the movement), right, next to filmmaker far right. Photo by Ted Friedman

Continue reading “Berkeley Free Speech Now” »

by Steed Dropout
Sept. 8, 2014

Saving People’s Park in 1969 was easy if you were prepared to die.

Close to half a century after its salvation by townies and students, the park has become a living memorial to its bloody birth.

People's Park Owner's Shack. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Saving Berkeley’s People’s Park” »