Category Archives: Berkeley History
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 »
Berkeley Flea Market: Going strong after three decades
By Niclas Ericsson
The downturn in the economy may be a threat to many small merchants in Berkeley, but the 35-year-old Berkeley Flea Market is still alive and kicking (watch the slideshow above to see it in action).
With its ethnic and lively environment, and diverse array of used goods, the market offers a distinct alternative to the more commercial enterprises in the city.
“It’s definitely Berkeley,” said Jane Boiso, who lives nearby. “There is more of a neighborhood feel to it.”
On most weekends, the market, located in the parking lot of the Ashby BART station, is teeming with students, local residents and people from all around the Bay Area looking for a bargain.
“The economy is bringing the vendors out,” said Prestina Wilson, assistant manager of the market. “And a lot of customers say they don’t go to the malls anymore because it’s too expensive.” … Continue reading »
Road closure adds more woes for UC Berkeley neighbors
By Niclas Ericsson
The east side of Piedmont Avenue – one of the main routes across the top of the UC Berkeley campus – was shut down May 23 for the summer, leading some nearby residents to complain about the continuing disruption caused by construction projects in the area.
James McClury, an architecture student, said getting around the east side of campus has been difficult this year with all the construction vehicles clogging the roads, and he expected the traffic situation to grow worse with the closure of Piedmont Avenue.
“But it’s impossible to stop it,” said McClury. “The university is like the guerrilla gorilla of Berkeley, they can do whatever they want.”
Jack Chang, who was packing up to leave for his summer holidays, said he not happy about the closing down of one lane of Piedmont Avenue.
“That’s going to be a mess,” he said. … Continue reading »
A trolley trip in Berkeley in 1906
Check out this three-minute video of a streetcar making its way north on Oxford and east on Hearst shot in 1906. The streets are rudimentary, (in fact Hearst east of Euclid is still a hill, not a street,) there’s not a lot of housing, (except you can see the chancellor’s white house in the segment showing Hearst) and people don’t seem to be in a hurry.
The best part of the video comes towards the end, when the conductors get in a dust-up with a passenger who won’t clear the tracks. A woman in a white cotton lawn dress even gets involved in the fracas.
Warning: the video takes a few minutes to load, but it’s worth it
Hat tip: Steven Donaldson.
