Category Archives: Berkeley History
City to consider suing owner of blighted Telegraph lot
The city of Berkeley may finally be getting fed up with the vacant, rat-infested lot on the northeast corner of Haste and Telegraph.
The City Council on Tuesday will consider filing a lawsuit against Ken Sarachan, the owner of the lot, to collect $500,000 in city liens on the property. The idea so delights City Councilman Kriss Worthington, who represents the area and who has long been frustrated by an empty space in such a prime commercial district, that he … Continue reading »
What about that vacant lot on Haste and Telegraph?
The lot on the northeast corner of Haste and Telegraph has been vacant for more than 20 years. A few weeds grow fitfully, and, as Berkeleyside has reported, rats come out at night.
A group of UC Berkeley students taking the class “American Cyberculture,” taught by Reggie Royston, were asked to select a question posed on the civic website City Sandbox and use social media to galvanize people to act. Lily Lin, who is double majoring in physics and molecular cell biology, decided to explore why the Haste and Telegraph lot was vacant and ask people what they thought should go there.
Lin and other members of her class interviewed long-time Telegraph Avenue storekeepers and vendors, as well as relative newcomers. The result is a 12-minute meditation on the role the vacant lot plays on Telegraph, and what might be achieved by building a park, a memorial, a bar, or even a store there.
“The point of the video is to let people know about the lot and create momentum to get something done, said Lin.
Other members of the group built a website where people can post ideas for the lot. There is also a Facebook page to gather ideas.
Interestingly, neither the video’s narrator nor those interviewed mention the owner of the lot, Ken Sarachan, by name. Lin said this was intentional: she was more interested in exploring what could be done with the space than ascribing blame for its unsightly nature.
Richard Misrach: A focus on the after-story
Richard Misrach is nothing if not patient.
When, in 1997, the renowned photographer moved into a home in the Berkeley hills and decided to capture his new view of the Golden Gate Bridge, he didn’t just take a few dozen shots and leave it at that.
Rather, over the course of three years, he shot hundreds and hundreds of photographs. The result was Golden Gate [Aperture, 2005], 85 beautiful meditations on the iconic bridge seen through the seasons from a single … Continue reading »
Tickets expected to go fast for Michael Pollan’s food class
When word leaked out in the spring that Michael Pollan would be co-teaching a class on the rise and future of the food movement, students at UC Berkeley rushed to sign up. The 10-week, two-unit course was filled minutes after it was listed online.
Now, the general community has a chance to participate in this gold rush.
UC will be releasing tickets for Edible Education 101 on a first-come, first-serve basis on August 15. There will be about 282 tickets available for each class and people will be able to sign up for just one lecture or all of them, said Carolyn Federman, director of development for the Edible Schoolyard, which is co-sponsoring and paying for the course. The tickets will be free and will be sold through Ticketweb, she said.
Pollan is co-teaching Edible Education 101 with Nikki Henderson, the executive director of People’s Grocery, a food justice organization in Oakland. While Pollan and Henderson are the co-teachers, much of the class will center around lectures given by luminaries in the food movement. Confirmed speakers include Carlo Petrini, Peter Sellars, Marion Nestle, Frances Moore Lappé, Raj Patel, Ann Cooper, Eric Schlosser, and Alice Waters. … Continue reading »
In Berkeley: The lost beauty of Schoolhouse Creek
Schoolhouse Creek is now mostly culverted and hidden under dirt, concrete and asphalt. It must have been a lovely sight before 1913, with its brushy banks accented by open grasslands.
The creek originally carried sediment from the quake-fractured Berkeley hills and helped form the Berkeley flatlands. It is fed by springs in the Berkeley hills, some located near the site of the Berryman Reservoir on Euclid Avenue, which travel down the Berkeley Hills and merge near the intersection of McGee Avenue and Cedar Street. The creek then continues down to the Bay between Virginia and Cedar Streets.
Before there was Interstate 80, the creek fed the south end of a salt marsh east of the current freeway. A tidal slough carried its waters north towards present-day Albany.
In 1854, an inn and general store was built on the south bank of Schoolhouse Creek, near today’s San Pablo Avenue and Virginia Street. It aimed to accommodate Gold Rush travelers as they headed to the Sierra to strike it rich. … Continue reading »
Shooting for posterity: Berkeley’s “Seven Days in May”
John Jekabson may have missed the summer of love, but he was in the thick of the “Seven Days of May” which saw Berkeley occupied by the National Guard under a state of emergency in 1969.
His black-and-white photographs of those events, a collection of which are currently on show at the Sonoma Coffee Café on Durant, tell the tale of those dramatic days in striking fashion.
Jekabson had a front-row seat to the turmoil as Assistant Editor of the Berkeley Barb, the well-known alternative weekly newspaper published by Max Scherr.
The Barb office was at 2042 University Avenue, just a block from the Cal campus which was the focus of much of the conflict. Jekabson was a writer rather than a photographer, and there were in fact dozens of freelance photographers working for the paper at the time. Nevertheless, he would often scoop up one of the paper’s many donated cameras and leave the office at lunchtime to snap pictures of the drama unfolding on his doorstep. … Continue reading »
Book details secret staircases of Berkeley and Oakland
Staircases saved Charles Fleming’s back.
In 2006, as he faced his third invasive spinal surgery, Fleming decided to walk. A longtime Los Angeles resident with a slew of best-selling books to his name, Fleming had his wife drive him down from their hilltop home in the Silver Lake district to the flats. He got out and took a few steps, which led to a few more, which led him to start walking up and down the public staircases that meander through that city’s hills. Soon the pain was gone and Fleming was a walking convert.
The excursions led to Fleming’s next bestseller, a book on the secret stairs of Los Angeles. It proved so popular that he decided to write a sequel, this time about the secret stairs of the East Bay. … Continue reading »
Ashkenaz provides music, “living room” for activists
Berkeley newbies may have trouble finding a cold beer and clog-dancing lesson on a Friday night. Bay Area long-timers, however, know the old brown building on San Pablo Avenue is a good place to start.
Since 1973, Ashkenaz has bridged cultural divides, supplying Berkeley residents with world music performances and a variety of dance lessons on an almost-daily basis.
“Ashkenaz has been around for 40 years, and it’s definitely a unique institution,” said Aaron Simon, board president of Ashkenaz. “We’re a world music venue with roots in the Berkeley counterculture and protest movement. We’re a favorite venue with many national touring acts and an important stage in the local music scene.”
Music enthusiasts are hard-pressed to find a more diverse show calendar. Ashkenaz’s upcoming week boasts western swing, Cajun/Creole, alternative rock, east-coast reggae and conscious hip-hop.
Most concerts at Ashkenaz follow a dance lesson that fits the mood. … Continue reading »
Berkeley poet draws on life and locale for inspiration
For a period of about three years, Lindy Hough spent an inordinate amount of time at Saul’s Restaurant on Shattuck Avenue.
On many Thursdays, she arrived around 5 pm, shortly after her duties as the co-publisher of North Atlantic Books ended for the day. She sat at a table, eating and observing, until 7:30 pm, when Play Café, a group of professional playwrights, got together.
But the time Hough spent at the deli was not idle. It was a chance for her to examine those around her and wonder about their lives. The musings ended up as “Thursday Night at Saul’s,” one of the new poems in Wild Horses, Wild Dreams, which was released this spring as part of North Atlantic Books’ Io Poetry series.
Wild Horses, Wild Dreams is a retrospective of Hough’s 40 years as a poet and draws on works from her previous four poetry books as well as introducing 28 new poems. The book showcases Hough’s evolution from a young mother in her early 20s to an accomplished figure in the publishing industry, one who has contemplated rural life, the dynamics of a college town, dreams, dance, and religion in its many forms, including Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism.
“I view the collection as very memoir-like, moving from place to place, from Vermont to California, coming of age as a writer and a thinker,” Hough said recently from her summer home on a small island in Maine. “That’s what this book is about.” … Continue reading »
Students learn about the past, themselves
By Robert A. Mills
Photographs from school dances and family reunions, shiny foam letters and fragmented family trees decorated posters throughout a crowded room at Berkeley’s Malcolm X Elementary School on Saturday. They were the work of dozens of African American and Hispanic youth from around the Bay Area and part of a four-month adventure into family history.
Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson created Who am I? Family Journeys: Alameda County Youth Testimonials with his staff and volunteers from the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California. Their goal: to help Bay Area youth better understand their family histories.
Carson, inspired by his own genealogical investigation, said knowing one’s self begins with knowing one’s past.
“When I think of who I am today, I have to think of who I come from and the person I’ve been,” Carson said. “I have a responsibility to my children and my grand children so they at least know who they are.”
The event kicked off at 10 a.m. with warm smiles, hot coffee and a select panel of youth who shared their personal journeys. Students from McClymonds High School Culture Keepers in West Oakland, Alameda County’s Beyond Emancipation program for former foster youth and Berkeley Technology Academy in south Berkeley made up the panel. … Continue reading »
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