Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Sept. 8, 2016

Photo by Ted Friedman

Cal’s historic Ludwig Fountain, named after a 60s era dog, sustained a soaping Sunday, to the delight of Sproul strollers, who flocked to the foam for fun and frolic.

Sour-pusses like Andrew Clardy, a Berkeley-based music producer for Yoshi’s Jazz Club, called it “unoriginal,” and the history of this sudsy prank supports him.

Wiki has not yet posted the complete soapy history of this prank, but online sources trace the sudsing of Cal’s Ludwig Fountain, adjacent to Sproul Hall, to 1963. Subsequent sudsings were sighted, reportedly, in 1965, and (recently) in 2013.
Continue reading “Cal’s Ludwig Fountain Foaming at the Mouth” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 31, 2016

Request to burn these cuttings in the meeting room was denied.
Photo by Ted Friedman

“No…no…Jack, don’t do it,” the audience at Redwood Gardens (seniors) community room shouted, Sunday, after TreeSpirit founder, Jack Gesheidt tried to drink Monsanto ‘poison.’

Geschiedt also tried to set a fire, but he couldn’t get away with that either.

Geschiedt, famous for nude tree-saving media events throughout Northern California, is also an award-winning photographer.

Gesheidt’s Monsanto poison stunt followed a Monsanto TV ad claiming to save the planet from nature. “Hey, if it’s [Monsanto products] so good for us, maybe we should be drinking it,” Gesheidt mocked.
Continue reading “Trees-saver Fires Up Seniors Audience, Tries to Drink Monsanto ‘Poison’” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 16, 2016

You are perhaps more likely to be mugged or murdered on the Berkeley Southside street where I live than in Berkeley’s serene Elmwood District, which is a mere hop-skip-and-a-jump away.

In the Elmwood, neighbors posting on a neighborhood website tout, “enjoy the Berkeley lifestyle.” This might include a stint cat-sitting in a mansion, being a nanny, household cook, computer coach, or Koi-pond-tender.

You might score a free photo album, bird house, baby bath-tub,storage closet, law books, keyboards, moving boxes, guinea-pig cage, or a Blue-Nose Pit Bull.

In my neighborhood, we sift through detritus dumped on our neighborhood streets, and if we find a bauble or two, we proclaim it street-score.
Continue reading “Mugged, Murdered, a Mere Hop-Skip-Jump from Serenity” »

by Hal E. Mooney
Aug. 8, 2016

You can’t say you didn’t see it coming.

First he picked a squawk with the pope.

Then he was having a bad week over his beef with the Muslim family who denounced him at the Democratic convention. Critics called him nuts. His problems continued.

Then he did the unthinkable, he called Jesus Christ “a loser,” adding, “I don’t want my religious figures to fail at life.”
Continue reading “Trump Calls Christ a Loser” »

by Steed Dropout
July 10, 2016

Rare, right, testing new name. Photo by Ted Friedman

‘Rare,’ a Telegraph, Ave. legend told me, yesterday, that he’s changing his street name from ‘Rare’ to “Hell Yeah.”

The news comes, as Rare’s 40-year persona—RARE—has fallen on hard times.

The former Rare has told me he’s a self-described “fat slob” now. Once a gymnastic dare-devil who could chin himself on street poles, Rare has struggled even to roar out his name, which lately has gone from roar to rasp.
Continue reading “Berkeley Eccentric, Rare’s Last Roar” »

by Steed Dropout
Jul 10, 2016

Photo by Ted Friedman

Solutions to Bay Area homelessness rolled off the presses like EXTRAS, recently, as major media ganged up on homelessness.

Even as demands for homeless services explode, San Francisco, reportedly, was giving its all to take a bite out of the crisis.

Huddled between Oakland and Albany, tiny-land-mass Berkeley, with its frazzled homeless communities on the Southside and near the freeway, seems to have accepted homelessness as a life-style—for someone else.

Continue reading “Berkeley: The Homeless Mind” »

by Steed Dropout
June 28, 2016

A TALE OF A BERKELEY BUSINESS EMPIRE

Ed Monroe’s Blondies. Photo by Ted Friedman

Telegraph Avenue street artist Ed Monroe’s hand-to-mouth life-style took a paste to the mouth recently when he lost free pizza for life at Berkeley’s Blondie’s Pizza.

Blondie’s was sold recently to a longtime employee.

Blondie’s was the 1960s (“Make Pizza Not War!”) love-child of the nine store Rasputin music chain and other enterprises of Berkeley’s titan of Telegraph trade—Ken Sarachan.
Continue reading “Free Pizza Ain’t What It Used to Be” »

by Steed Dropout
May 27, 2016

Photo by Ted Friedman

A lot of bedrolls have been unfurled since “Is Berkeley a Hilton to the Homeless?” appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet five years ago.

That piece, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, suggested that Berkeley was an oasis of homeless services and compassion.
Continue reading “Is Berkeley A Hilton to the Homeless? Part 2” »

by Steed Dropout
May 16, 2016

Mario Savio, a founder of Free Speech Movement, back at Sproul; his spirit trickle’s down to a new generation of Berkeley protesters. Photo by Ted Friedman.

YAKETY-YAK, WE TALK BACK

We’re sick of all your flak.
Push us, we push back
Yakety yak we talk back

While Berkeley’s hotel industry-sponsored visitor’s bureau touts: “come for the culture, stay for the food,” it might more realistically suggest, ‘come for the food, stay for the demo!’

Or, ‘Come for the political action, and bite it.’
Continue reading “Berkeley’s Protest Lifestyle” »

by Steed Dropout
May 13, 2016

Photo by Ted Friedman.

Ray showed me the tree-trunk fissure that spontaneously appeared in everyone’s favorite Peoples Park tree, leaving the gnarly appendage with its seam hanging out.

The fissure, reportedly, occurred (miraculously) overnight. It was two days before anyone noticed the miracle of the spontaneous branch-split.

Maybe this fissure in the park was a sign.

Ray Gibson, an adept park philosopher and a root of wisdom, was lounging on the fissured limb. I joined him—out on the limb.

Gibson had recently witnessed a number of violent Southside attacks.
Continue reading “Why We Punks Do It” »