Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 21, 2013
Berkeley. Ca

THE DOG CELEBS OF BERKELEY’S TELEGRAPH AVE.

Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Spuds Mackenzie–celebrity dogs from movies and advertising.

Red-Dog, Dude, Flash–celebrity dogs from Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, awaiting their big scenes, but famous to those who love them and sometimes abuse them. As the rest of us stumble over them.

U.C. Berkeley students call South Side’s student ghetto, “Bear [Cal’s emblem] territory.”
The territory should be known as dog territory.

Street kids know each other’s dogs as the affluent know the names of their dogs’ frisk-pals from well-groomed suburban dog parks.

Red-Dog. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Dog Day Afternoons” »

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 10, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

EXCLUSIVE: HIPPY BUSINESS TO OPEN NEAR TELEGRAPH

Calling his new Durant St. store, “a Disneyland,” the dashing young hippy-businessman described a business, which “could open around Thanksgiving.”

This is all top-secret. Neighboring businessmen have “all been around asking questions” but the hippy is hush-hush.

Fantasy wood carvings from the Pacific Rim stare out from the lobby of this Durant “Disneyland,” the (once) Tower Records, a store with a garish curved mirror ceiling.

The hippy described a store out of Poe or Burroughs–a mind-blowing phantasmagoria.

As I left him, I said: “everyone in Berkeley wanted to blow my mind in the seventies; they were phonies, but you have blown my mind [with his business plans ].

'Durant Disneyland' Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Mind-Blowing Berkeley Business” »

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 4, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

BOMBED IN BERKELEY

My best photo tipster tipped me to a Berkeley bomb-threat.

“Cops have closed off several blocks; you might get a shot of the bomb.”

Berkeleyans like to feel different. Even our bomb-threats are berzerkeley.

I dropped everything I was doing, all of it illicit, and headed for the bomb.

Scene of Bomb-threat near campus, last week. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Bomb-Threat Berkeley-Style” »

by Steed Dropout
Nov. 2, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

WHO WAS THAT ROBED MAN?

At Elmwood-Halloween, I saw a costumed Jesus wearing a rag-mop.

Earlier, I had seen a more credible Jesus outside the Caffe Mediterraneum. It was Halloween. Then he was gone, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

I asked Julia Vinograd, Berkeley’s poet laureate, about my Jesus sighting.

She shrugged her shoulders saying, so what? “I’ve seen a lot of them,” she said.

I wondered if she weren’t referencing your typical 60s hippy.

Street kids told me Jesus was in the (People’s) park. One said, “the quest for Jesus is eternal.”

“He’ll miss the free meal,” I blundered. I added that Jesus didn’t need a free meal because he could make his own, but I was bluffing.

I found Jesus in the Food-Not-Bombs food line.

I found Jesus. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Jesus in Berkeley” »