Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 23, 2015

BERKELEY REPORTER IN RESTROOM BEEF WITH POLICE AT CAFFE MEDITERRANEUM

Photo of good cop investigating me for illegal photography, Cafe Med.
Photo by Ted Friedman.

Those cops coming through the doors of the Caffe Mediterraneum, as they do hella lot–those cops were coming for me.

Minutes earlier, I had been photographing upstairs at the Med. I have been publishing my photos–in several Berkeley publications–of inside the Med,since 2011; my eye caught a strange scene at the restroom upstairs. Med owner Craig Becker was seemingly about to enter an occupied restroom with his master key. He didn’t knock.
Continue reading “Berkeley’s Good/Bad Cops and Me” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 19, 2015

BIG BERKELEY-INN STORY WAS KNOWN FOR MONTHS

Hippy Graveyard. Photo by Ted Friedman.

A recent news story that the Berkeley Inn site, an eyesore since it burned thirty years ago–was about to be developed–long after Heaven and Earth had tried…that story was born on Telegraph Avenue and almost stayed on the avenue.

When a diligent local reporter [not me] broke the story, the gossip-mill was shocked. Shocked to think all those rumors were true.

Development of the eye-sore site into student apartments will, reportedly, trickle-down from U.C. Berkeley builders.

Rumors of U.C. Berkeley eating the town are handed out on the South side like salted peanuts. Cal is now poised to dine on the Berkeley-Inn site. The myth is winning, as Cal, reportedly, will build student apartments on the site of a beatnik hotel that was destroyed by fire thirty years ago.
Continue reading “Hippy Graveyard Too Big To Hide” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 16, 2015

BERKELEY SOUTH SIDE BEAT IS SMALLER THAN LIFE

Who hung this--a 40 year first--on my Berkeley Telegraph Ave. beat?
Photo by Ted Friedman.

At fifteen square feet, this newspaper beat could be the smallest in the world.

To worsen matters, there’s not much really happening here at Telegraph/Haste, the host of Telegraph Avenue. Two TeleHaste construction projects–vital to the survival of lower Telegraph–are clanging and buzzing forward.
Continue reading “Just a Postage Stamp Beat” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 8, 2015

Gassed in Berkeley. Photo by Ted Friedman.

How not to get gassed in Berkeley? Stay home or bring a gas mask, or neckerchief-mask soaked in vinegar, vaseline, milk or lemon juice. Try to disguise your gas protection so you are not singled out for your Mick Jagger’s “fair share of abuse.”

Berkeleyans and Cal students, who were gassed and clubbed recently at the height of the Ferguson, Mo. protests on Telegraph Avenue, may have wandered distractedly into the vortex of the protest–where they were dosed.

Continue reading “How Not to Get Gassed in Berkeley” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 4, 2015

Take-down on Telegraph. Photo by Ted Friedman.

The other Peoples Park Mural; you’ve passed it every time you visit Telegraph Avenue. the mural is the work of Edithe (“Edy”) Boone, 77, who installed it, overlooking the burned-down Berkeley Inn site at Telegraph/Haste, early in the 1990s.

The Berkeley Inn, destroyed by fires in 1986, was a bohemian be-hive on Telegraph Ave.
Continue reading “Beloved Mural Packs It In” »