Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
July 10, 2016

Rare, right, testing new name. Photo by Ted Friedman

‘Rare,’ a Telegraph, Ave. legend told me, yesterday, that he’s changing his street name from ‘Rare’ to “Hell Yeah.”

The news comes, as Rare’s 40-year persona—RARE—has fallen on hard times.

The former Rare has told me he’s a self-described “fat slob” now. Once a gymnastic dare-devil who could chin himself on street poles, Rare has struggled even to roar out his name, which lately has gone from roar to rasp.
Continue reading “Berkeley Eccentric, Rare’s Last Roar” »

by Steed Dropout
Jul 10, 2016

Photo by Ted Friedman

Solutions to Bay Area homelessness rolled off the presses like EXTRAS, recently, as major media ganged up on homelessness.

Even as demands for homeless services explode, San Francisco, reportedly, was giving its all to take a bite out of the crisis.

Huddled between Oakland and Albany, tiny-land-mass Berkeley, with its frazzled homeless communities on the Southside and near the freeway, seems to have accepted homelessness as a life-style—for someone else.

Continue reading “Berkeley: The Homeless Mind” »