Wild and Bumpy Berkeley Week
by Steed Dropout
July 4, 2013
Berkeley, Ca
TELEGRAPH AVE. REGAINS ITS MOJO; STRUGGLING STREET FAIR ON A ROLE; RECORD RAINS FOLLOWED BY RECORD HEAT AND A LANDMARK STUDENT BUILDING REDUCED TO RUBBLE
It was a wild and bumpy Berkeley Week. Even Bette Davis would be impressed.
First Berkeley watched forlorn Telegraph Avenue fight for its life, then came the rains to wash away all hopes. Bad weather haunted the first three Sunday Fests, but that bad weather was typical Bay Area summer chill and fog. Weather so good we didn’t know it until we lost it.
Then two days of rain broke rainfall records. Then came the heat. Highs were no more than 5-10 degrees above normal, but the duration of the heat wave set longevity records.
Fourth of July (ninth day of hear-wave) just short of 80, as predicted.
Several Bay Area cities opened cooling shelters; health warnings — issued.
Through this Job-like-plagues period Berkeley entreated its various gods (eg. Karl Marx).
Upward Teley Trend. Photo by Ted Friedman.
Then members of the Cal Marching band became the symbol of an upward Telegraph trend in a photo by Ted Friedman that was media-published twice — Saxophones raised to the heavens.
And that upward symbol did portend better times the next week as students and vendors trickled ack to the Ave.
Part of Upward Trend. Photo by Ted Friedman.Despite a spate of gloom-and-doom major media pieces counting Telegraph out, Telegraph Ave.still has cachet. MTV has been filming at Moe’s books, reminding old Berkeleyans of the famous Dustin Hoffman shoot at the Caffe Mediterraneum (the Graduate, 1967).
Photo-Op, Week 1. Photo by Ted Friedman.A long line of Kentucky bibliophiles filed into Moe’s this week. They come every year to the world-famous store, according to a Moe’s staffer.
Doomed Fair, Week 1. Photo by Ted Friedman.A tourist bus pulled up on the avenue last week with twenty-five Diablo Valley College students.
An Asian tour group toured the avenue on the 4th.
Usual Suspects, People's Park, USA. Photo by Ted Friedman.Except for intolerably bad weather (maybe despite it), Telegraph was finding what one pundit called it’s [lost] mojo.
Peoples' Park Mojo. Photo by Ted Friedman.A few melted ice-creams and sweaty brows did not reduce a growing flow of pedestrians, more than in the previous four weeks combined. Some of these people are from Southern California, part of a state-wide heat wave, (Death Valley: 127 degrees). Some like it hot.
What next, frying an egg on a walk? Photo by Ted Friedman.ICE CREAM WAR MAKES GOOD COPY FOR BERKELEY REPORTER
Our provocative, Poop Scoop satire will probably get us sued. When we distribute copies, outside the store, to the patrons of the store we spoofed, we knew we’ll be hassled by the store’s owners.
Bring it on.
The poop-scope owners sued at city council to enjoin a record store across the street from selling ice-cream with a similar sounding name. At council “Poop-Scoop” got the record store’s proposed ice-cream window service window banned, but the business proposal passed.
“You can’t win them all,” the record store owner grinned.
An Ice Cream War — like a snowball fight — makes you want to jump in and loft a few.
MEANWHILE A U.C. BERKELEY LANDMARK IS PICKED TO DEATH — BECOMES RUBBLE
To photographers who daily shot the picky deconstruction of the student senate and Daily Californian offices (photographers like award-winning Oakland Tribune photographer David Yee, who shot for the Daily Cal in the 80s) the shoot was reminiscent of the Sequoia Apartment Bldg. fire almost two years ago.
The plot was the same. Venerable buildings felled by natural disasters (fire [Sequoia] and residual earthquake effects). Watching these tear-downs is like a movie where you know the ending but can’t turn away.
There goes the neighborhood. Photo by Ted Friedman.The deconstructed buildings did not crash, but were methodically picked to rubble by a cherry-picking jaw of death.
Fiddling While Eshelman Hall Dies. Photo by Ted Friedman.Great fun for the adolescent mentality, a basic trait of photographers– — and voyeurs, too.
One-third of Eshelman left. Photo by Ted Friedman.Some of my adolescent recent photography accompanies this wild and bumpy piece. The buck stops here.
Steed Dropout is Ted Friedman’s agent/publicist/press agent/producer. Read his latest from the Berkeley Daily Planet
