The rats of Telegraph Avenue

January 28, 2011 11:30 am by Tracey Taylor

One of the most graphic moments at Berkeleyside’s inaugural Local Business Forum on Monday night was when Marc Weinstein, the co-founder 20 years ago of Amoeba Music, stood up and described a scene he encounters regularly on the vacant lot near his store on the corner of Telegraph and Haste.

“I don’t want to turn people off any more from coming down to Telegraph because it’s such a wonderful place,” he said. “But there’s millions of rats in this one lot — rats — and there’s homeless people all around that lot right now feeding the rats all this thrown-away pizza out of the garbage cans… There are no plans to do anything with that lot. That empty lot has been there for 20-plus years. It’s just blight on the street.”

Berkeleyside set out, with some trepidation, to investigate — and indeed we found rats, perhaps not millions, but certainly dozens, feeding off what looked like bird food. The many passers-by, going to dinner or on their way home at 6.30 in the evening, barely seemed to notice the vermin in their midst.

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  • Daniel M.

    There are also huge swarms of mice that live all up and down Shattuck between University and Dwight. Rats and mice are really no more dangerous and filthy than pigeons, but people should not be feeding any of them.

  • marc weinstein

    to clarify: it is NOT local “homeless” residents who are routinely feeding these rats- some of the young “drifter-types” who care not what happens to our avenue, and who often cause all kinds of troubles on the avenue and especially for the local homeless population, come through and do this type of ridiculous stuff- where are the police ??

  • marc weinstein

    …and where’s “Public Health ?” We haven’t seen anyone from the city show up yet . . .
    apparently, most of these rats actually live in People’s Park . . .

  • Name Withheld

    It’s a crying shame that that lot has sat vacant for so long.

    So much potential wasted.

  • jjohannson

    Agree that that lot is one of the most potent symbols of institutional neglect of a modest downtown space I have ever seen. Can I prevail on Berkeleyside to post the name of the owner of that land, and whether any city action has been taken against him/her?

    Further, a rule of thumb is to multiply by ten the number of rats you see to get a rough estimation of their population in any given area. If you see a couple of hundred rats in that lot, you’ve got a couple of thousand. They need to be exterminated.

  • LK

    The owner of the lot is Ken Sarachan, who is the owner of Rasputin’s, and has bought the old Cody building that he has done nothing with, and he owns Blondies Pizza.
    Does not care at all about this community. Just wants to make money.

  • Tor

    Ken Sarachan owns it. He bought it to prevent one of his competitors from expanding, and he keeps it empty out of spite.

  • john holland

    here’s a story from the east bay express with some background on the lot.

  • Carol B.

    We pay for Alameda County Vector Control on our property taxes. Aren’t they supposed to be doing something about this, too?

  • Martin

    Maybe we should knock that damn fence down clear out that lot and use the space for a farmer’s market or some other pop-up retail/food space. Instead it has been sitting barren for over 20 years. WTF Berkeley city council. All these issues go over looked but you have time to discuss world politics(Like someone actually cares about your opinion nationwide). I would be willing to Volunteer my time are you willing to do your part?

  • Diane B.

    So why doesn’t the City of Berkeley condemn the lot, based on health concerns, take it away from Sarachan, and sell it to somebody who will do something with it?

  • Tonyboysf

    One of the ideas to prevent blight of this type is to heavily tax undeveloped/vacant property where the owners are not working with the city to improve it, and turn it into something productive. Productive property generates all sorts of taxes and fee income already, so the
    business owners can be given a break. Taxes can encourage or discourage development. And open space is not clean unless it is well cared for.

  • gentle rain

    Rodents are not the only vermin on Telegraph. There are plenty of the two legged kind there too!

  • john

    Sorry man. We’d love to help you but we’re kind of busy fixing the world’s problems.

    Berkeley City Council

  • Voxhumana

    Pretty amazing and another indication of the crazies getting their way. First, who in their right mind feeds rats bird seed? Then, who in the right mind keeps a property vacant out of spite. Only in Berkeley! We have a Vector Control Unit, maybe someone can call it in? Berkeley should institute a “Blight Tax,” which some municipalities do, when properties are left vacant and subject to blighted conditions. This would fit that bill.

  • Marisa

    Holy Molly!!! Are you sure those are not rabbits??!!!!! ;-P That lot on Telegraph is surreal… looks like a lot in dowtown Calcutta… or any Third World place, for that matter. I would hunt a few of those and send them regularly, carefully packaged to Mr. Sarachan. Or perhaps a volunteer should walk into Rasputin’s holding a dead rat by its tail and yell “Mr. Sarachan, you forgot somethig in your empty lot!”. In any case, Vector Control should do something about it, this is just unbelievable… but then again, welcome to the US!!!

  • devin bibens

    I believe it was the 22nd or 23rd? that I saw people passing out flyer’s in people’s park. Interested in what it could be I then acquired and read one of the papers which stated the known issue of the rodent problem we are currently facing and warning people to be careful with their animals in the park for the next few weeks as they were taking measures to reduce the rat problem, including dispatching poisonous materials.

  • Name Withheld

    Tonyboysf says:
    “One of the ideas to prevent blight of this type is to heavily tax undeveloped/vacant property where the owners are not working with the city to improve it, and turn it into something productive.”

    Great suggestion. Really.
    I don’t like taxes, but this is a good idea. As long as it’s worded in such a way that it only applies to people who are being purposefully negligent (like Ken Sarachan) and won’t hurt landlords who are just having a hard time during a recession, this would be great.

    I hope someone who works for the City is reading this.
    It’s depressing seeing the former ROSS location at the Downtown Berkeley BART empty for so long.

    When they finally get around to adding this tax, they should name it the Ken Sarachan Tax.

  • Name Withheld

    @ Marisa – Someone should write up an essay explaining that Ken Sarachan (owner of Rasputin’s) is to blame for the empty lot and explaining that he is leaving it empty out of spite, and then print it on a large board and zip-tie it to the fence.

    Every time he tears it down, another one should be put up to replace it.

    If the city can’t force him to do something with the property, perhaps he could be shamed into doing something? At least if people knew that a royal A-hole owned Rasputin’s they might be more inclined to go to Amoeba.

  • Robert

    Does Berkeley have a “Rat Lady” who puts out this seed for the rats?

    Lot owner Ken Sarachan is the biggest rat of all.

  • tonyboysf

    The “shame” angle is dependent on the target of the shameful acts caring what the community members think. Twenty years of neglect seems to rule that one out. Posting notices on the
    fence sounds good. Picketing his business might get his attention. Repeat calls to demand
    vector control work are appropriate, and Berkeley may have a “anti blight” ordinance like Oakland does that allows the city to clean it up, then bill the negligent property owner. You know he won’t like that! How about a sign that say “Rasputin Owner is a RAT.”

  • Leigh

    Marc, those “drifter kids” ARE local homeless, in that they’re here, and they’re homeless. That said, THEY are the reason (rather than the rats) that I won’t shop on Telegraph.

  • shop Berkeley

    This is simply ridiculous. Someone(s) need to sit down with the owner of the lot and figure this out. If his motivation is to make money, someone should buy the lot, or lease the land and develop the lot.

    I am curious, what legal remedies does a city have in a situation like this?

  • Bruce Love

    Third parties could gang up and, without the police realistically being able to do much about it, attract lots of rats to anyone’s property. If the owner of this lot can be punished for being unpopular, why not anyone else? Hey, maybe if the Kapors build that place, some punks should go attract rats there and shut them down?

    Not having a building on that corner is nice for light and for the feel of that block. Maybe some deal could be made to take down the fence and manicure the lot without adding to the owners liabilities. Everyone could win that way, personal fights among Telegraph business people aside.

  • Bruce Love

    (Also, @Marisa: maybe they are *breeding* the rats for stew? :-)

  • http://zekeblog.wordpress.com Zeke Krahlin

    Rats? In Berkeley? Empty, dreary, filthy vacant lot still there after two decades? Cody’s Books also vacant and drab for many years now. Depressing but appropriate: perfect visual allegories for the hollow dream that Berkeley has become. Likewise, the vermin.

  • Name Withheld

    @ Bruce Love

    As of right now the owner of this lot isn’t being “punished” at all, and he isn’t raising public ire for being unpopular, he’s raising public ire for wantonly creating urban blight.

    He’s let that lot sit vacant for TWENTY YEARS out of sheer spite.

  • Bruce Love

    @Name, in the eyes of the law, mere vacancy or lack of development is most often presumptively a by right use. That ain’t, in and of itself, anywhere at all close to the legal concept of blight. This is actually kind of good, in my opinion, not because I much like many of the deliberately held vacancies but because if the law worked out otherwise, property rights well beyond issues like this one would have to take a serious beating. Where blight taxes work and hold up, they tend to hold up against serious neglect. This property is a bit scruffy but… 20 years undeveloped and fenced doesn’t actually count as blight, in and of itself.

  • Bruce Love

    (Maybe I should add, @Name, that I came to that conclusion after doing research with an aim to apply anti-blight law in just the way people are suggesting here. Not against that corner, which I don’t think is a problem to the extent described here but against some different place. Blight taxes are a pretty weak weapon other than against the most egregious kinds of neglect.)

  • laura menard

    I contacted all agencies responsible for this mess back in Aug when the rat population exploded: city of Berkeley vector control, environmental health, UCB .

    Food not Bombs routinely leaves enormous amount of trash and food left overs daily which attracts and maintains the rat population. Food not Bombs does not have a permit to operate in People’s Park, and does as they please without any regulation.

    I am interested in pursuing a legal remedy in small claims court against UCB and the city of Berkeley with the intention of forcing change, several hundred residents and merchants at $7,000 a piece just might get their attention.

  • Chas

    Rats have dens under the ground that they dig. So whoever says count ten rats for every one is right. What you see above ground is just the tip of the iceberg. They probably have tunnels all up and down the area, even under the streets and sidewalks.

  • http://www.taliban.org Osama bin Laden

    Boycott Blondie’s !!!

  • Ephemerol*29

    Bubonic plague is an infection of the lymphatic system, usually resulting from the bite of an infected flea, Xenopsylla cheopis (the rat flea). The fleas are often found on rodents such as rats and mice, and seek out other prey when their rodent hosts die. The bacteria form aggregates in the gut of infected fleas and this results in the flea regurgitating ingested blood, which is now infected, into the bite site of a rodent or human host. Once established, bacteria rapidly spread to the lymph nodes and multiply. Y. pestis bacilli can resist phagocytosis and even reproduce inside phagocytes and kill them. As the disease progresses, the lymph nodes can haemorrhage and become swollen and necrotic. Bubonic plague can progress to lethal septicemic plague in some cases. The plague is also known to spread to the lungs and become the disease known as the pneumonic plague. This form of the disease is highly infectious as the bacteria can be transmitted in droplets emitted when coughing or sneezing, as well as physical contact with victims of the plague or flea-bearing rodents that carry the plague.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague

  • Lorenzo Avila

    The person who dumps that seed (almost nightly is a pigeon lover, drives a new Honda Fit, CA license 6EVK287, he’s about 6’1, maybe 60, full head of short gray hair, athletic, wears cargo pants. He also dumps along the sidewalk at Whole Foods, in the tree squares in the sidewalk
    outside Walgreen’s on Oregon near Shattuck, at the OneWorld benches near the HERE/THERE sculptures on Adeline near Ashby, on 55th near Telegraph at the CalTrans driveway, and maybe 50 pounds a night on the baseball field at Willard Middle School. Without him the rat population of Berkeley would be cut by half.

    Kriss Worthington, Berkeley Vector Control, and BUSD have all failed to take action. Simple for any agency to get his ID from DMV and sue in small claims court for damage to public health…..

    He stopped dumping at Sacramento and Julia because a neighbor caught him in the act at midnight a week ago and cleaned his clock.

  • The real story

    The real story here is Ken Sarachan. He is the rat who should be investigated and is causing ll these problems.

  • John Seal

    The vacant lot is one of the reasons I haven’t shopped at Rasputin’s for, oh, about twenty years or so…other reasons: customers are treated like criminals, staff are treated like criminals (at one point they were regularly subjected to searches at the end of every shift–I don’t know if that practice has ended), and (not surprisingly) customer service is terrible (well, it was twenty years ago). I have since spent far too much money at Amoeba.

  • Name Withheld

    @ Bruce – Thanks for the clarification. Maybe anti-blight laws aren’t what’s needed, but instead anti-nondevelopment or anti-vacancy laws. If a property owner allows prime retail to sit vacant for a significant amount of time (say 10 years?) without making any attempt to rent/use/develop it, perhaps a special tax could be levied to prod them into action.

    The problem with this lot is that it’s sat empty for two decades, and the lack of storefronts there hurts other businesses on that corner since it cuts down on traffic to that area (nobody sets out to visit an empty lot and then patronize nearby stores along the way). When you consider that the same property owner who has left that lot vacant for two decades also owns the gigantic empty book store on the opposite corner (and shows no signs of interest in improving/renting it) you can start to see even more how that can impact nearby businesses. Two huge empty corner lots mean far fewer people being drawn to that corner.

    Now consider that there is a business on one of the remaining corners that is a DIRECT COMPETITOR of one of the businesses owned by this landlord who’s allowing his properties to go derelict, and you can begin to see why this particular case poses a bit of a problem.

    Perhaps we’re wrong and the owner of Rasputin’s Records has secret plans to use that lot, and secret plans to do something with the empty Cody’s Books building, but from where I sit it looks a heck of a lot like he’s buying up all the land surrounding his competitor – Amoeba Records – in a lame attempt to drive them out of business by making the surrounding area undesirable.

  • Name Withheld

    Zeke Krahlin says: “Empty, dreary, filthy vacant lot still there after two decades? Cody’s Books also vacant and drab for many years now. Depressing but appropriate: perfect visual allegories for the hollow dream that Berkeley has become.”

    Zeke, these properties aren’t sitting vacant because nobody wants them, they’re sitting vacant because the owner of Rasputin’s Records – Ken Sarachan – is refusing to develop them.

    Now I’m curious how many other properties he owns and is refusing to develop.

    Does he own the Ross building near the Downtown Berkeley BART station?

  • Wes

    @JohnSeal – completely agree. I love Rasputin’s vinyl selection, but I much prefer to monetarily support Amoeba.

  • Tim C

    Thanks for the Express article..also the detail of the person leaving seeds all around. Telegraph Ave always could demand the highest rents and never had a vacancy..now look at it..pretty sad. It sure is difficult for people to do the right thing these days.

  • buster

    First of all, YES that is birdseed in the video—pigeonfood! For some time now a guy in a small grey car comes and feeds the PIGEONS in that lot. I have seen him do this time and again for years—he is feeding the pigeons but the rats are eating it too.In the past he would just put the birdseed down on the sidewalk right next to Amoeba on the southeast side of the street—but for the past 2-3 years he puts it in the lot.I don’t know his name but you could ask him next time Mark if you see him not to feed the pigeons there and it would help.I told the reporter for ch.5 yesterday it was food for the pigeons too. There were two news vans there for the “rat story”. I know what I am talking about—I have been in the area for quite some time and wish that there was at least a community garden there if nothing else.

  • buster

    P.S.– Rats are just “little people in fur coats” too! Remember there are lots of pet rat owners and they are very cute ! My adopted daughter has had a pet rat.

  • DC

    Domestic rats and street rats are entirely different. I know people with domestic rats as pets. Quite different from the foot-long feral rats I used to see in the NYC subways system. Feral rats are vectors for disease, and should not be fed and encouraged to establish colonies and propagate.

  • Fomer Berkeleyan

    From reading comments, the problem really isn’t the vacant lot or its irascible owner. He can leave his property empty if he likes. Special taxes to punish for lack of development smack of the pseudo-fascist idea of Lyndon LaRouche. No, the problems are that Berkeley is too lenient on the youthful (i.e.lazy) “homeless” who move up and down the coast, the food charity group that leaves food trash all over the place, and the idiot mentioned above who actively feeds the rats. All of these can be addressed with existing law, if the people of Berkeley can get their Council to do so. Unfortunately, the social disease my home town caught in the 1960s hasn’t cleared up yet.

  • visitor1

    Makes you think twice about eating from any food service along Telegraph because where there are rats there is food and where there is food there are rats!
    This is really a health hazard> Makes me want to stay away from Telegraph and find a faraway
    suburban mall to do my shopping!

  • marc weinstein

    The BIGGER question for the community is this: How could the city so thoroughly neglect Telegraph Avenue, once, and possibly still, the most famous strip in the East Bay, such that
    NOBODY, except the most hardy residents, are even willing to go there ?? SO MANY of my good friends won’t deal with it anymore- they won’t even come visit me at out store !! It’s one of the best retail strips in the middle of the richest metropolitan area in the country- on which retailers are paying some pretty hefty sums for rent . . Telegraph is OUR AMAZING AVENUE !!
    Can we not do a few things to improve the situation ?? Maybe not . . . We’ve been lobbying for improved pedestrian street lighting for 20 years- NOTHING. We’ve been lobbying for a decent beat officer or two for 20 years- almost NOTHING. We’ve been asking for help marketing the Avenue- NOTHING. We’ve been asking the city to enforce existing laws regarding certain street behavior- almost NOTHING. AND, we’ve been asking the city to force the hand of a certain giant property owner to STOP DESTROYING THE neighborhood by playing games with the city and the community as if WE are some sort of TOY for the rich guy to play with- when will the city ever get the nerve up to deal with this over-grown LITTLE KID with tons of property
    ??? Amoeba has been the ONLY open business on our formerly VERY busy corner for many
    YEARS now . . . –> Who killed Cody’s ??? Think about it . . . .

  • http://www.suzanneyada.com Suzanne Yada

    I’ve noticed in a 2007 article from the Daily Planet that Ken’s plans included building giant pagodas at that vacant lot:
    http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2007-08-14/article/27755?headline=Pagodas-on-Telegraph-

    I also saw a separate article written in 2008 that sums up more of the local politicking:
    http://510report.org/2008/10/06/frustration-grows-over-vacant-lot/

  • Dr. Little

    I am loathe to take this too far but, having lived in other areas I must ask: does Sarachan simply bribe his way around and that is why “Decades of Inaction”? Seriously: I hate the thought of ‘blindly dropping accusations’ of people acting in such a horrible fashion- But it’s obvious Sarachan is $-LOADED-$ and has been getting away with small-city murder on Telegraph for decades. Which for me, suddenly, bears the question: HOW? Before the fence went up it was an open green area (albeit weird, true) with art installations, we’ve been down that road- why was the fence approved & allowed to stay up all these many years?

    As far as Homeless vs. Drifter Types, I believe there is a quantifiable distinction to be made in defense of the fellow’s remarks here: there are hard-times homeless, mentally ill, drug-addict and chronic homeless, America’s heartbreaking PTSD Veteran homeless – but there are also other subcultures of what are generally referred to as ‘gutter punks’ and ‘crusties’ -other terms used for young people who fit in this general description that, while I believe they are needing services as well, I have found over the many years to have much more clarity in being aggressive & threatening, violent with or without inebriation, real or (faux) suburb/anarchy driven with a nihilism inherent -the nasty ugly kind that makes stepping over “fallen down Grandmother” funny and ironic. Additionally they’ve claimed many a time to come from ‘stupid normal homes with stupid boring Parents’ and actually choose this as a lifestyle. After much repetition and years passing, I realized- some of these kids weren’t lying: they were from pretty normal families that they disdained and they brought their lack of hope, their hate and their violence down to Telegraph. I am aware of throw away kids, I was one, I am aware of desperate runaways- I was one of those before getting thrown out: these ‘gutter punks’ are choosing a lifestyle that is enabled by Berkeley’s City Government over and over again.

    Again: for many years this has been allowed to flourish. They come to Berkeley & the Avenue because their home towns would have them in Boot Camps. Berkeley slaps a band-aid on the situation every several years, but they certainly haven’t stopped Sarachan’s blight from spreading and giving these two-legged rats who prey on people more and more places to nest. I ask again: WHY? HOW? Sarachan isn’t even interested in the Avenue or it’s health, he’ll get what he can, sure- but he spread his businesses all over the Bay Area: does he get away with this appalling community-destroying behavior in Campbell, San Jose or Mtn View? I sincerely doubt it.

    Come on, Berkeley City Council: once and for all – ACT and then Stick With It!!

  • Ephemerol*29

    Gutter punks and such: “Take a good look around you: You can’t go into stores or restaurants without seeing joyless children screaming, sulking, resisting their parents, or pulling things off shelves. Parents, in turn, nag, complain, and often try desperately to ignore their unruly, surly offspring.

    In today’s world, both parents and children are suffering all around us. But it takes a catastrophic event like the tragedy at Columbine High School — or one of any number of other frightening examples that make headlines weekly — to get us to acknowledge that something terrible is happening to our children. We have lost touch with what they need from us to grow and thrive, and in the process we’ve created enormous numbers of children who are disaffected, alienated, amoral, emotionally stunted, and even violent. In The Epidemic, esteemed child and family psychiatrist Robert Shaw brings to bear a lifetime of firsthand experience with and knowledge of this plague, which has become so much the norm that we often don’t even recognize its warning signs.

    This bold and timely book tells you how to save your child and yourself from this epidemic, but its suggestions will not be the ones that today’s parents are used to hearing. While the media is far from innocent, the bulk of the blame lies with the faddish, both neglectful and overindulgent, child-rearing practices that experts have promoted for the past three decades.” “These children are not an aberration. They are the natural outcome of the way we have been raising them,” Shaw notes. But there is hope, and Shaw’s commonsense approach cuts to the core of the problem and shows us the cure, covering such important and controversial issues as:

    The myths and realities of bonding and attachment
    How to recognize when nonparental care is working — and when it isn’t
    Milestones in your child’s moral and ethical development
    The difference between self-centeredness and self-esteem
    Why you must stop the media from mugging your child
    Strategies for bringing children back from the edge

    http://www.amazon.com/Epidemic-American-Permissive-Parenting-Resultant/dp/0060011831

  • Bill

    Ah, wait till the first case of Plague!

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