Tag Archives: People’s Park
Urban think tank: Student visions for blighted Berkeley lot
By Rudabeh Pakravan
Empty lots raise questions. Projects take years to make progress, leaving people to wonder what ever happened to the ambitious images promised on signs surrounding the fences. Some of us daydream of transforming unused real estate into community gardens or public housing.
The City of Berkeley’s recent ultimatum to the owner of the site on Haste and Telegraph prompts another question: is there an ideal project for a given site? We typically trust city planners, architects, developers, and other experts to zone and build on the land around us. We may protest or applaud, but we usually let the decisions be made for us.
Students, however, can dream. Working outside of any parameters other than the physical boundaries of the site and the constraints set by their professor, students at UC Berkeley’s Department of Architecture spent the summer working on bold and unlikely proposals for the Haste and Telegraph site. Under the guidance of Professor Darell Fields, a lecturer on the design faculty at Cal, students worked on proposals for an “Urban Think Tank.”
“The project is conceived of as an opportunity to investigate the relationship between public discourse, architecture, and ideology,” said Professor Fields.
Students were encouraged to question how architecture can affect change in public spaces and create a link between research and community. Mainly unaware of the complicated and controversial transactions in the site’s history, students focused instead on issues such as the political legacy of People’s Park, sustainability, homelessness, and art as ways to generate an architecture that inspires public debate. … 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 »
Berkeley bicyclists go bare for World Naked Bike Ride
Update, 6:20 pm: Think we went too far posting a video of the naked cyclists? Not worried about nudity in this context? Take the poll on our Facebook page so we can get your feedback.
Update, 5:45pm: After YouTube took down our video (a first for Berkeleyside — being censored), we have uploaded the same video on vimeo with a perhaps less offensive still front image. It can be viewed above.
Update, 4:25pm: YouTube took down our video of the Naked Bike Day cyclists in Berkeley because of the nudity content. Stay posted –we will try to replace it or at least provide still images.
Just over a dozen Bay Area cyclists assembled in People’s Park Saturday to roll out Berkeley’s World Naked Bike Ride 2011. “As bare as you dare,” was the general rule at the gathering. There weren’t many regulations past that.
“This was my company”: rapper Yelawolf revisits Berkeley
There isn’t much rapper Yelawolf hasn’t seen or experienced. As his online biography notes, this “badass Alabaman” was born Michael Wayne Atha to an absentee father and a bartender mother, he attended over 15 schools while “soaking up slang and spiritualism in Baton Rouge, Antioch, Tennessee, and Atlanta”. He worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska and crossed the country on Greyhound buses exploring and honing his musical skills.
Yelawolf also spent time in Berkeley, trying to become a professional skateboarder, an effort he had to abandon due to injuries. He recently returned to Berkeley, and specifically to People’s Park, where, as he put it, he used to “keep company”.
In the video above Yelawolf talks about the time he spent here, and describes the day he decided to get up and walk away (potentially offensive language alert applies).
Yelawolf’s album Trunk Musik 0-60 came out in November, and mega-rapper Eminem signed him to his Shady Records label last month.
People’s Park tree-sitter charged with attempted murder
UC police have charged a man who has been sitting in a tree in People’s Park for the last three months with attempted murder.
Matthew Dodt, 54, was arrested around 3:15 am today after a six-hour standoff, according to Lt. Mark Decoulode of the UC Berkeley police department.
Dodt allegedly stabbed a man who had climbed up into the tree for a conversation, said Lt. Decoulode. Dodt stabbed the man’s hand, which had been resting on his neck. The man was … Continue reading »
How did Berkeley do on those 2010 resolutions?
A year ago, we suggested 10 resolutions for 2010 for Berkeley (we’ll have our 2011 resolutions tomorrow). How did our city do?
We went back to look at those 10 resolutions and scored them 0 for no movement (or backward movement), a ½ point for some improvement and a full 1 point for true progress. We have to say that, even with the most generous grading possible, we can only give ourselves a score of four out of 10.
Here … Continue reading »
Richard Friedman: right time, right place photography
When Richard Friedman came to Berkeley from Greenwich Village in 1968 to take a job at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, it took a while for his eyes to adjust. One of the first photographs he took in the city (above) shows a street with the hills rising behind it. “What impressed me, coming from New York, was seeing distances,” he says. “My eyes were so accustomed to narrow streets and caverns of buildings that moving to Berkeley required changing … Continue reading »
Running Wolf promotes tree-sit in People’s Park
Zachary Running Wolf, who participated in the long-running tree sit near Cal’s Memorial Stadium and who ran for mayor of Berkeley in 2008, has started is promoting a tree sit in the northeast corner of People’s Park. A tree sitter Running Wolf ascended the tree late last night and built a platform about 40 feet up, to protest what he sees as the ongoing destruction of People’s Park by the university.
“It … Continue reading »
A mother’s day, the Berkeley way
Jane Stillwater is the quintessential Berkeley mom. After reading our recent coverage of the “Your Mom is So Berkeley” website, she wrote this delightful account of her quintessential Berkeley Mothers’ Day. Stillwater, a grandmother as well as a mom, has four children and lives in Berkeley.
Did you know that there’s a website out now that is completely devoted to jokes about Berkeley moms? Blond jokes and Polish jokes are out now. Berkeley Mom jokes are in. “My mom is so Berkeley that….”
Hey, I’m a Berkeley mom. So when my daughter Ashley and son Joe asked me what I wanted to do for Mothers’ Day this year, I got to thinking about Berkeley. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s drive around Berkeley to all the places we used to hang out at when you guys were kids.” Tot lots? Soccer fields? Elementary schools? No way! My kids had different kinds of memories about their pasts.
First we went to the Caffe Mediterraneum up on Telegraph Avenue, where I used to sit and gossip in the 1970s and drink caffe lattes while my kids played under the table. Other kids may have gone to Blue Fairyland for daycare but not mine!
“My mom was so Berkeley that she raised me at the Med.”
Then we drove by People’s Park. “I was there when we first started to plant its gardens back in 1969,” I told the kids. “I was there for the riots and the tear gas. And I got my picture on the front page of the Berkeley Barb during our victory parade.”
That’s just great. “My mom is so Berkeley that she was a cover girl for the Berkeley Barb….”
Then we drove by the University of California. I always measure my life by this benchmark: “Am I having as much fun now as I did while going to Cal back in the 1960s?” And the answer is still always no.
“My mom is so Berkeley that she used to take us to hunger strikes up on Sproul Plaza.” And I still do.
Next we drove down past the old Mandrake’s nightclub, where I first met one of the backup guitarists for a band called Joy of Cooking. Two months later I was pregnant. “That’s not my child and goodbye,” said the lead singer for a band named Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen.
“My mom is so Berkeley that she spends our entire Mothers Day making us listen to stories about when she was a Flower Child.” Damn straight. And before that I was a Beatnik. And don’t you forget it. … Continue reading »
Forty-one years of People’s Park
By SlumJack: Forty-one years ago, I joined many others in creating People’s Park. Then I joined in to demonstrate and even skirmish to get it back again. Then rebuild it.
Through the years and decades since then, I’ve continued to use and enjoy this park. It’s yours, too.
Come together this Sunday, April 25th, from noon until… well, whenever we might feel like, to honor and celebrate Berkeley’s People’s Park 41st Anniversary.
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