Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
January 29, 2012

This is dedicated to Kim Nemirow, just another dedicated Berkeley activist, who was recently kicked off the Berkeley Homeless Commission, which was her spiritual home. Don’t quote me on this, but Kim’s own disability may have led to her ousting, a possible violation of the American With Disabilities Act.

Kim is still (four years service) a commissioner on Berkeley’s Mental Health Commission.

I won’t say Kim is stalking me, but I run into her all over town, where she hounds me to do a piece on “Mental Health in Berkeley.”

So here goes — Kim.

Dear reader, how is your Berkeley mental health? Let me poll you on this.

1) Do you go off on people?
2) Have you stalked anyone lately?
3) Talked on a nonexistent cell phone?
4) Subscribe to the intra-net. Don’t subscribe, but receive it anyway.
5) Sense strange smells. Worry that it is you?
6) Have a pile of documents proving that you are under investigation by multi-agencies?
7) Are you investigating the investigators?
8) Enjoying yourself too much? Too little?
9) Ever been called crazy? Do you agree? Disagree?

We won’t give the answers, because the questions answer themselves. One tip, though, on number 9. Any way you answer this, you’re crazy.

Such are the exigencies of mental health in Berzerkeley, known world-wide for its wacky ways.

Street People, Telegraph Avenue, all presumed mentally disabled. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Mental Health in Berkeley: Yours, Mine, and Theirs” »

by Steed Dropout
January 23, 2012

Adventure #1: Med Beauty Queen of the Month.

My publisher and I here at the Berkeley Reporter, an on-line rag (berkeleyreporter.com), were convened at our spacious offices, here at the famous Caffe Mediterraneum, on Telegraph Avenue, a hop-skip-and-a-jump from People’s Park. Whew!

We were reviewing shots I had just snapped of a young femme fatale, whose shots I had botched previously.

I had serendipitously stumbled onto the femme, who was on the mezzanine with a male friend, and requested to shoot her again — with a different camera. But that was after we did a little coffee house conversation, in which I offered to tell the duo the story of how I had to suck the president’s dick, before being initiated into my college fraternity.

Contestant #1, Nicole, at the Med, inspired Berkeley Reporter's beauty queen contest. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “The Adventures of Aged Men, and Other Tales From Berkeley’s Link With Its Freaky Past — the Whacky Caffe Mediterraneum” »

by Steed Dropout
January 20, 2012

Ray Gibson, a homeless man, who lives like a dumpster-diving king, dubbed by me in several stories as “the Mayor of Telegraph Avenue,” gave me the following “news story,” and I bought him a bagel.

Gibson: “I was approached by two Berkeley cops as I climbed the stairs to the old Wooly House [just off Telegraph]. They had no warrants, and questioned me aggressively about what I was doing there, and would not believe that I had permission — I’m managing the property for the owner.

The mayor at the Med. No photos, please. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Squatters Don’t Got Rights For Squat” »

by Steed Dropout
January 12, 2012

Running Wolf, organizer of a tree-sit on Cal Berkeley property, the longest urban tree-sit in North America (3 years), was chowing down on a burrito I bought him at the Med — out of guilt because I wouldn’t let him crash at my pad.

“Blood brother,” he scoffed, “and you won’t let me crash.” He was right, I’m a hypocrite, or worse.

I was pushing this blog site, and he was pushing resentment? Resentment is RW’s reason to live. He resents the U.S., which he says stole the country from his ancestors; he resents automobiles, and anyone who drives them, and he resents the University of California for destroying the flora of People’s Park.

Streets bother him, and from time to time he will rip asphalt from the street with a screwdriver, and burn a U.S. flag or two on Telegraph Ave., especially on the Fourth of July, when he went on a flag-burning frenzy.

I have written countless stories about him. We have considered becoming blood brothers, but suspect each other’s blood, and how blood-brother is that?

I sometimes refer to him as RW, because I see him as more of a mogul than a thoughtful radical. Thoughtless or not, he is good at what he does — shit-disturbing.

Up a tree with Running Wolf at Occupy Oakland. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Running Wolf, Hunter S. Thompson and Me” »

by Steed Dropout
December 10, 2012

In an earlier article, here, I promised a piece on the hometown paper that awakened me from Rip-Van-Winkleism, my metaphor for a 35-year drop-out period in my Berkeley life.

Now here’s a promise, I gladly hope to fulfill.

For me this is timely, because I have had to change this site’s name from berkeleydailyplanetreporter.com to just plain old BerkeleyReporter.com. No big deal?

My highly-polished Web Designer, Michael M, (MRM Web Design), likes Berkeley Reporter better than its sesquipedalianistic predecessor. But giving up that name sent me into one of my Steed-like downward trajectories.

You see, I love the Planet, as you would love the mechanism which breathed life into you.

Friends, who are not on-line, blame the Planet for not being available in print, or failing to grow new readers, failing to promote itself, or sometimes reading like the Congressional Record.

Feel the love. I met the master of the manor at the Med, where we discussed our cop problems. Busman was visited by Berkeley's finest, and we both were reduced to laughter. Cops can be funnier than us. View from Southwest quadrant of People's Park. Background, historic Maybeck designed Christian Science church across from Camp Hate. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Berkeley, Ca. Daily Planet Reporter Seeks An Identity” »

by Steed Dropout
January 7, 2012

It was just another down-day in the hood.

This time drugs, and booze were not involved. It was just another bad mood day, after a week of bad SF Bay Area “bad air days,” and my usual winter depression.

I lay in bed for hours unable to move. Should I get groceries, go to the gym, the Caffe Med, or just go crazy. Drink or drugs were not an option.

Falling back on my goal setting psychotherapy, a type of behavioral therapy, I set a simple goal. Get out of my apartment, one-half block from notorious People’s Park, and skirt the park on my way to Telegraph.

If I could make the Ave., I might make a day, I thought.

That’s when I saw the tent in People’s Park. You rarely see tents in the park. They’re prohibited.

The tent, a good-looking rig of colorful fabric, and low-tech steel rods, was going up no more than 10 feet from a park rules sign — banning tents.

Illegal tent in People's Park when 'fur flew.' I am about to investigate story I already knew. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Fur Flies in Berkeley’s People’s Parks, Sans Drugs” »

by Steed Dropout
December 31, 2011

The walls of the 1916 apartment building, its floors, refrigerators, student computers, and the bones of four animals, including Tango, a hamster, are headed for a cement-lined dump in Nevada.

The lead-poisoned remains moldered in a heap on Telegraph Ave. for three weeks as Berkeley officials ran tests, but they will be gone in two weeks, and construction can begin to restore two Teley hot-spots.

I could tell you that hot-spots, used here to describe a cafe and a pub, which burned to the ground, are not puns, but that would be the kinda crap you use in polite society, where puns are disparaged.

Poisoned debris from big fire on Telegraph. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Toxic Rubble on Telegraph; Trouble in People’s Park” »