Wanna Bomber Bombs on Berkeley’s South Side
by Steed Dropout
Mar. 25, 2014
Bellicose Berkeley spawned the Unabomber and now it presents the Durant ding-dong demolitionist.
An explosion on Durant, late Saturday drew jolted nearby apartment dwellers to the scene. Here on Berkeley’s explosive South Side, we’re used to explosions. We had two explosions near Bancroft twice recently. We’re used to emergency vehicles and a bull-like bomb-sniffing German Shepard.
The hooligans, who shot off guns, last year near a crowded Telegraph ice-cream stand were never found. The shootists left evidence–eight bullet casings. Police, who investigated the blast, Saturday, reportedly found no comparable physical evidence.
Spring break broke that night. Was this a college prank-farewell or some Unabomber-wish-he-were detonating a blast?
Crime Scene. Photo by Ted Friedman.
Sunday, a Durant Street resident took me aside at the Caffe Mediterraneum on Telegraph to make sure I understood, “It wasn’t firecrackers. My entire building shook,” he emphasized.
A police spokesperson told reporters that police found no damage, no residue, and no perps.
Another South sider, who was on the scene of the explosion shortly after the blast,
speculated that a parked truck owned by the manager of a nearby bar had been targeted by the possibly demented demolitionist.
According to the owner of a restaurant near the blast, his phone had been ringing off the hook for months. The calls were not about the blast. The calls were from a former business-associate with a beef.
A Blast This Big. Photo by Ted Friedman.Did the Durant ding-dong demolitionist, who is phone-stalking the restaurant, bomb Durant, Saturday night?
Who knows? A pre-meditated bomber like Ted Kaczynski, a spurned lover, someone
sore at someone. Such is life near Telegraph.
So many troubled souls squeezed into a few blocks of TNT.
Invisible. Photo by Ted Friedman.Like so many South side Berzerkeley crimes and misdemeanors, this one slipped into the annals of unsolved mysteries, like the fire which leveled old Chicago. The Chicago fire was blamed on Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.
Blame we must.
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