Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 27, 2014

She did not awaken and was found unresponsive by a friend bringing her morning coffee. She died overnight in the doorway of a world-famous church, Maybeck designed First Church of Christ Scientist, which attracts hordes of tourists.

Described by her People’s Park friends as an alcoholic, she turned in early last night, reportedly declining plenteous booze. “She was sober when she turned in,” said a friend from Hate Camp.

According to People’s Park friends, the dead woman, Catherine Magee, 63, had been hospitalized five times recently with hypothermia, pneumonia, and asthma. “She was glad she only had asthma,” said a friend. “She felt she had beaten pneumonia,” said the friend.

Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Death in Berkeley’s People’s Park” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 23, 2014

My subjects are poor, deranged, homeless Berkeley Southsiders. And I’m a notorious gossip.

Walter Winchell invented the gossip column a century ago; his columns heaping dirt on the rich, famous, and influential lost their audience forty years ago. Meanwhile I gossip and hearsay along as a columnist here and Berkeley Times.

Wincell’s subjects were rich or well-known enough to draw thousands of publishers.

WINCHELL, WATCH OUT! LATEST SOUTH SIDE DISH

A homeless guy in People’s Park slugged a good samaritan, who was bringing him food.

A well-known park figure waved an unfriendly knife in the face of a homeless father, who had his infant in his arms.

Outside the Caffe Mediterraneum, a guy started a fight by spitting in another guy’s face. A disabled guy outside the Med was dog-napped out of his tea-cup Chihuahua.
Continue reading “Berkeley South Side Gossip” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 21, 2014

JOURNALISTS–OR PAPARAZZI ?–AT UCB MEMORIAL FOR DEAD FOOTBALL HERO

A U.C. Berkeley football team trainer caught me at the steps to the team’s meeting room, where I was lurking, unauthorized, to get a shot of the team emerge for a memorial to a dead comrade. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Don’t target the team,” he cried.

“What a shot he would make,” I thought.

When I resumed my place scrunched between several photographers, I was told by a Cal athletic official, that unless I was press, I couldn’t shoot. I carried no press I.D. I was shooting with a peanut camera. I talked my way out of the official’s constraints. I had, almost accidentally, signed up with the event media co-ordinator.

Respectful distance. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Fallen Football Hero: Behind a Shoot” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 16, 2014

TRIPPED BY RIPPLED SIDEWALKS

Welcome to the peaks and valley’s of rippled south side sidewalks, where you face the danger of your own feet, as they embed in tortured concrete from our last big quake twenty-five years ago.

According to the president of Telegraph property owners, planners in city government have relegated South Side streets to another state–the State of Neglect.

South side residents are painfully aware of killer side walks, but they will–sooner or later–be fingered by the fickle sidewalks of Berkeley’s most dangerous neighborhood, known for burglaries, smart phone and computer snatchings. Murder is rare, but serious stumbles abound.

Killer hump which upended a Berkeley reporter. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “How Safe Are You on Berkeley’s South Side Streets?” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 9, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

Inside, listening to Seeger 'sold' out memorial concert from lobby, Monday; outside looking in. Two insiders on stools, staring at outsiders--weird. Photo by Ted Friedman.

One thousand Berkeleyans wanted in for the legendary folk club–Freight and Salvage–tribute, Monday, to Pete Seeger, a Berkeley legend–inspiration to a plethora of Berkeley folk-singer-activists…but there was no more room at the inn. View from the Freight lobby, where some were able to listen to the on-stage concert from the lobby while have-nots hovered outside.

But why were two weirdoes gawking at them from inside?

Continue reading “Singing Seeger, Berkeley-Style” »