Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Jan. 12, 2015

BERKELEY REPORTER APPEALS TO READERS

Do you know this man? Sketch by Martin Schwartz. Photo by Ted Friedman.

If you recognize this man, who opened a short-lived cafe at what is now Amoeba, in 1992–please let us know.

Berkeley Reporter’s previous piece reported an attack on Berkeley’s Peoples Park iconic mural on Amoeba’s North wall, at Haste and Telegraph. Now we seek more info on an attack on the mural in 1992.

Tentative info from knowledgeable sources has provided this much background:

In 1992, a quarrelsome South side character (Saladin?) opened a restaurant (Marrakech?) in what is now Amoeba, an independent music and video emporium. The would-be restaurateur was known as a South side trouble-maker even before he donned his chef’s outfit.
Continue reading “Do You Know Berkeley Cafe Owner Who Mugged Teley Mural in ’92?” »

by Steed Dropout
Jan. 5, 2015

SPRAY-PAINT VANDALS VICTIMIZE THE PEOPLES

After the attack. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

It stood for forty years on the North wall of Berkeley’s Amoeba Music, Telegraph and Haste. It was as reliable as grandfather’s clock–a tribute to the founding of Berkeley’s Peoples Park, 1969, and those who founded it, blisters and all.

The “Peoples” in People’s Park became an intentional editors’ nightmare when park founder’s left out the possessive in Peoples, “because no one owns it,” I was told. The mural depicting all that had seemed an aging sacred cow of Berkeley.
Continue reading “Peoples Park Mural Mugged” »

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 28, 2014

Telegraph Ave. Thanksgiving.Photo by Ted Friedman.

Thanksgiving Berkeley-style basked in balmy unseasonable weather, the warmest Thanksgiving in years, according to temperature averages. Although Riots ran rampant next-door in Oakland, rioters failed to march their well-trod route up Telegraph to Berkeley.

Some disappointed Berkeleyans mused that perhaps Berkeley was slipping as second Demo City in the USA, but the slippage was probably the absence of student demonstrators–who were gone for Thanksgiving.

In search of award-winning Thanksgiving Berkeley photos, this photographer promised an editor “something dramatically different.”
Continue reading “Berkeley Cools, then Heats Up–Thankfully” »

Berkeley Peoples Park Protest Scores Win Against U.C. Berkeley

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 22, 2014

HATE MAN RETURNS TO THE MOVEMENT

Hate Hits the Streets protesting. Photo by Ted Friedman.

As major media covers a continuing sit-in by Cal Berkeley students protesting inevitable fee hikes (the hikes have already been adopted), a small band of Peoples Park residents–protesting a recent Peoples Park ban on cardboard and tarpaulins–has won its demands, Berkeley Reporter learned Friday afternoon.

“We, were all set-up here,” said the protest organizer, Hate Man, 77, sounding almost disappointed to be breaking up his encampment on a walkway alongside University Police Headquarters in Sproul Hall.

“We just got set-up here,” Hate complained.
Continue reading “Berkeley Peoples Park Protest Scores Win Against U.C. Berkeley” »

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” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 21, 2014

“Police are investigating a sexual assault that occurred in Berkeley Monday morning, according to the University of California Police Department. [from Berkeley Patch]

The female victim contacted police saying that she woke up to a man sexually assaulting her while she was asleep at People’s Park near the University of California at Berkeley campus.

The victim began screaming and the suspect, who is known by the victim as a person who frequents the park, fled the area.”

UPDATE:

According to a reliable People’s Park source, the alleged victim was “Heather, who had been dancing topless in the park all day, giving a green light; she’d been drinking all day and passed out with some guy next to her. She woke up screaming and yelling rape and how she was pregnant.”
Continue reading “Blaming the Victim in Latest People’s Park Rape Charge” »

by Steed Dropout
July 28, 2014

Ankle-high Peoples Park Grass. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Crackdowns in People’s Park are part of its rhythm as well as its legacy.

The ankle-high grass of Berkeley’s People’s Park was recently mowed-down by university groundskeepers along with a bunch of people-park-people who got stay-away orders from university police. Park drug busts have burgeoned.

At Camp Hate, in People’s Park, Hate Man and some of his fellow campers got seven-day stay-aways. Ecclesiastes tells us: “…a time to keep and a time to throw away.” For the university it was time to throw away people’s belongings in and around Camp Hate, which over-flows to Hillegass/Dwight Way, across from two of Berkeley’s oldest churches. The churches turn its other cheeks to the campers.

Such are the seasons in People’s Park where there is a time for everything. A time for busted pot deals, a time to grow campsites, and a time for the university to throw them away.

Continue reading “Who’s Cracking Down on Peoples in People’s Park” »

by Steed Dropout
July 8, 2014

Independence Day in Berkeley, as the contrarians of Berkeley conceive it, is one of largess, personal freedom, and L ‘chaim.

L ‘chaim? What does L’chaim, even with wine, have to do with the 4th of July? Baruch and Bud makes some sense.

Largess led off Berkeley’s July 4th in People’s Park, as Irven Goodwin, founder of a San Jose veteran’s outreach program, presented some good-looking barbecue. People are always feeding people in People’s Park, but this feed is personal.

Goodwin told me he was homeless in People’s Park in 1992 and this was his “give-back” to the park for being there for him.

Grateful Goodwin. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “South Side, North Side, on Berkeley’s Independence Day” »

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” »