Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 29, 2012

Berkeley, Ca.

Berkeley, ca. 'Why not? Pimping. Hella.'

BLOGSTIPATED

When you blog, and your turd won’t come out, according to my submitted definition at Urban Dictionary.

Urban Dictionary, a compendium of filth and hilarity aimed at teenagers (over thirteen, UD admonishes), who are the same age as my grandkids. The kids helped me submit to UD last, year pinching their noses and making the sound — “youuuu”. Why are you doing urban dictionary?

It makes me feel twelve.

In Roseburg, Oregon last year, I was carrying my mountain bike up some motel stairs as a teenage boy was on his way up to join his parents. “What do you think of my bike?” I asked.

“Sick,” he shot back. I had recently signed up for the daily feed from Urban Dictionary. When I signed up, they responded — “sick.”

“Urban Dictionary?” I asked. The boy nodded. “Don’t encourage him, the mother,” pleaded, her eyes rolling.
Continue reading “Urban Dictionary Meets Steed Dropout, Pillover, Stereo Ego, and the New American Dream” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 23, 2012

Berkeley, Ca

TELEGRAPH RAW

Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon’s novel. I haven’t read it. I’ve lived it.

Almost daily, I walk from Dwight to Bancroft, and back again. Often several times. I’ve been doing this for 35 years. Factor in that I’ve lived two and a half small city blocks from Telegraph.

Telegraph is my playground.

When I began calling Telegraph, Teley in the Berkeley Daily Planet, five years ago, I put my stamp on Teley. Readers bristled at the spelling, especially Mango Bob, who argued with me for weeks, and then one day said, “you say Telegraph is Teley, not Telly, because Teley is closer to Telegraph.”

You don’t get much closer than we are to Teley. But the name is really not mine. I just revived it from hearing old-timers from the fifties use the word.

On Teley. But where is Chabon?.

Continue reading “Telegraph Avenue, the Novel” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 15, 2012

Berkeley, Emeryville ca

LOSING IT! IN BERKELEY AND EMERYVILLE

Contents Advisory.

This yarn contains self-reference in its basest form, the self-promotional, vulgar
narcissistic type.

Also, the piece assumes you have even the remotest interest.

Here at Berkeley Reporter, we always conclude that soft news about our founder is of some value, but that is about as far as we will go in our endorsement.

Here’s the case for the piece. It humanizes Steed Dropout, BR founder. Humanizing is the first rule of feature writing. Here, at BR, we’re all about the feature. And of course, humans.

Now for the yarn.

If you really want to know about it, it began when I killed my T.V., by failing to maintain the delicate fix a friend installed. What difference does it make? The machine was robot comatose, like when the bot is popped in numerous sci-fi plots.
Continue reading “A Steed Dropout Blast From His Berkeley Past” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 7, 2012

BAD COLD, BAD MEDICINE, AND OH YES, EATING THE ASHES OF THE DEAD

Berkeley, Ca

Berkeley activist Gina Sasso was leading protests against a controversial city attempt to ban sitting on business-district walks, when she died last May of pneumonia at 49; her friends wondered how a seemingly healthy young woman could die of “a cold.”

A bad cold, to be sure. Or was it bad medicine?

When we reported this story last year, we reported official cause of death from “bacterial infection in her lungs due to an auto-immune disorder that was never diagnosed.”

There was much more medicine in our story, and much more material for the lurid stories behind our lurid stories.

Small demo last year against sitting on Berkeley walks grew throughout the year and peaked at an incendiary public confrontation at City Hall. Gina Sasso, second from left got the ball rolling before she died. Sasso's 'best friend' Kathy is to Sasso's right. Sasso's husband, Mike Delacour, center. Angelina, Sasso's adoptive grandaughter, and Ann Fagin Ginger famous civil liberties attorney.

Continue reading “Who Killed Beloved Berkeley Leader and Ate Her Ashes?” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug 3, 2012

THE DIRTY BIRDS OF BERKELEY

When did the pigeons come to Berkeley’s South side?

Was it the year, some South-sider made with the bread crumbs alongside the copy shop that is now a restored historic building at Dwight and Telegraph?

After the crumbs crumbled, the walk was scoured, and the intersection at Dwight/Teley was reborn, Peet’s, South side — sans pigeons.

During this period, perhaps a full decade ago, residents of my building near People’s Park noticed the arrival on their decks of a steady stream of Columbidae. Pretty pigeons with metallic colors, ugly pigeons in dirty grey. Skittish pigeons, and the stubborn type.

The Kids.

Continue reading “Pigeon-Shit Tale of Shitty Side of Berkeley South Side” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 1, 2012

JONAH LEHER’S NEXT BOOK: HOW OUR BRAINS FUCK UP

Suppose I were Jonah Leher, with a degree from Columbia in neuroscience, and I had just resigned from a staff-writer’s job at the New Yorker, and oh yes, I’m a butt of bloggers, all gunning for me, to link to my viewers.

My fall stemmed from charges I conflated, possibly invented some Dylan quotes in my latest book on the brain.

As Leher, I offer this breakthrough in neuroscience — “Your Brain on Errors: How Our Brains Fuck-Up.”
Continue reading “Jonah Leher Your Brain on Error” »