Beast Blog

Berkeley J-School Events - Including one TODAY

Sorry for the late notice.

Today the J-School presents Charles Mann talking about his latest book "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus."

6pm-8pm, September 21.

If this isn't enough notice (and I only just found out about it), well, I suggest subscribing to their RSS feed or getting on their mailing list.

The Cleveland Cascade Needs You!

In a recent update sent to the Cleveland Cascade mailing list, Jim Ratliff writes:

save this date: evening of Monday, September 26. We will hold a public Open House at the Lakeview Branch Library to hear from the community their hopes, desires, and ideas for the restoration of the Cleveland Cascade. (Time is currently TBA, probably 6-ish.) This is a crucial part of the design process. Please come, bring your neighbors and all those good ideas you've had!

For more information about this cool historic landscape structure, or to get involved, go to the Cleveland Cascade website

UC Berkeley Conservatory Archaeology

The Berkeley Daily Planet offers up an article on the archaeology work unearthing the remains of a conservatory that once graced UC Berkeley.

As it happens, I was at the site and took a bunch of pictures a couple days ago.

If you wanna learn some local history, stop by and say Hi. It's right off the Memorial Glade.

Old School Oakland

First of all, I can’t believe the Kwik Way by the Grand Lake is in danger of becoming a McDonald’s. Yikes. Things change. I left the Bay Area in 1993, and have been living in New York City since then. Writing, living, teaching, editing—the stuff I do. I miss Oakland in a big way, though. I’m moving home next year.

I was raised in Oakland (though I went to high school in Los Angeles). Born right at Providence Hospital (it's no longer called that, right?), which is also where my great-grandfather died. More Like Wrestling is about Paige and Pinch—two sisters growing up in Oakland during the 1980s. Places like the Grand Lake figure prominently in my book. The city of Oakland is as much a character in MLW as Paige and Pinch and Maynard and Oscar and Jess and all the people who fill out my first novel. I think the SF Bay Guardian (where I used to work) said MLW is a “love letter” to my hometown, and I hope it is. I made every effort, though, to include the good, the bad, and the ugly. Like every long-distance love affair, mine with Oakland is intense. There are short, spirited, melancholy visits, and I’ve got high hopes for coming back to my love and watching the sun set over the Bay Bridge during my wise and wrinkled winter years. The longing is deep because I’m Oakland old school. Not Black Panther-era, but I remember when BART didn’t exist. I remember Swan’s Market, and I remember Rhode’s department store. I’ll be thirty-nine in June. All this said, I’m not a complete romantic. I see my town for what it was and what it is:

From Pinch's prologue to More Like Wrestling:

"But we’re from Oakland. And Oakland builds quality. Folks who creep but don’t crawl. Melt down, but don’t vaporize. I move around — Oakland, anyway. So I know the Bay Area creates righteous people who deal with splendor and sting, sham and certainty, gray velvet fog and lemon–glass sunshine — all while just getting from Point A to Point B.

I know this because I can see. I watch. And this place — with its indigo–green jewel of a lake and its underdog nature and dead downtown and Southern Negro mores and shiny liberal whiteness and slow–motion port and fifty–cent tacos and fern–cloaked hills and baby tunnels and beckoning bridges and Victorian crack–houses and modern manors from which you can see San Francisco twinkling and Marin sleeping and after that straight to God’s cool pacific pond — it had to be Oakland that pasted Paige and I together. It would be Oakland that pulled us apart.

Life, though, had a lot to do with it. And death, too."

***

The Kwik Way/Mickey D’s drama makes me think of my days around the Lake. I went to Lakeview Elementary, right there across the street from the theater. Is that closet-sized cigar shop still next door? It was when I was kid, and we’d go there to stock up on candy before the movie started. My sister and I saw a bunch of stuff at the Grand Lake: Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Pippi Longstocking, Sinbad and the Seven Seas. This was back when my sis and I would take the AC Transit No. 57—same bus, whether we were going to school, or to the movies. I also went to Luther Burbank Elementary (or it was called Luther Burbank back then) in East Oakland, where we lived. I spent a lot of time at Eastmont Mall (when it was new!)—going to Kress (I think it was Kress) and JC Penny with my great-grandmother. Going to Otis Spunkmeyer’s for hot chocolate chip cookies, going to H. Salt Fish & Chips (more vinegar, please) or Pizza Hut. There was a mini-branch of the public library in the mall back then, so I spent lots of time there. I read a thick, thick book about the Jim Jones cult/massacre/mass suicide from that branch when I was about twelve. My mom thought I was crazy, but she let me read it, and liked my verbal summaries and odd facts about the cult. I got my first library card from the Fruitvale Branch when I was about eight. When I was home just this past January, I noticed that the Fruitvale Branch (or was it called the Diamond Branch?) is no longer there, or is no longer where it was when I was a kid. I took bowling lessons at Diamond Bowl, which I guess is gone, too. I can still keep score by hand, which is a neat trick these days when bowling scores are done automatically and electronically. I had a K/Casper’s dog when I was home last, too. My mom got her hotdogs there when she was in high school (Fremont class of ’62). No tomatoes for me, just pickles and kraut and mustard. I like stuff sour, just like the Pixie Stix I used to get at the cigar shop by the Grand Lake.

Man, I miss Oakland. New York pizza is fine, but I could have a quarter chicken and fries from Kwik Way right now. Or at least a sloppy handful of meat and bread with grilled onions from Giant Burger.

I’m moving home next year. I know I’ve been saying that since 1993, but this time, I mean it.

I swear.

More later.

A Neighborhood Grows in Berkeley

Celebrate Berkeley's Architectural Heritage!

(and stick it to the developers!)

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association launched the "baha blog", covering what's happening in my preservationist freakjob town.

Actually, they have some pretty nifty pointers. Check it out.

Ishmael Reed Speaks His Mind

Last night, Ishmael Reed read from his new book, Blues City: A Walk In Oakland at the University Press Bookstore.

It was a good time. Ishmael presentation style is basically his train of thought. At times erratic, usually entertaining. He began the reading by complaining about how initial reviews labelled his book a "rant." He insisted that it's filled with facts, that it's not at all a rant.

He then proceeded to read, and, well, actually, yes, the book is a rant. Very much a rant against Jerry Brown's attempts at gentrifying downtown and West Oakland. Not that his rant is misplaced.

He also addressed Oakland's multicultural stew -- whites, blacks, asians, latinos, even native americans, living and working side by side. Kwanzaa festivals lead by white women. Traditional native american rituals lead by african americans. Etc.

He also touches on a fair amount of Black Panther history, and positions them, to some extent, as unsung heroes.

There was a whiff of conspiratoriality in Reed's dogma, though, again, not without foundation.

The one disappointment is that Reed was terrible in the question and answer session -- I don't think I heard him actually address a single question, instead rambling into some tangential polemic.

Oh, and he lives somewhere near Market and 55th.

And look for more readings at University Press Books.

Always the Best Show In Town

I love going to see movies at the Paramount- and not only for the chance to see a Hollywood classic on the big screen, but because the whole place is a living museum of Art Deco. So, I don't know what took me so long to take the $1, Saturday morning theatre tour that they give the first and third weekend of every month.

My tour group of 35 people (mostly age 50 and over) was led by the encyclopaedic Ken Walters, with the occasional assistance of the also knowledgeable Art Hazelton. Starting at the 21st St. box office, we followed our guides to the main entryway, up to the second and third floor lobbies, into the theatre for a recorded demonstration of Jim Riggs on the Mighty Wurlitzer, and back down to the grand lounge in the basement. We were introduced to the "seat enunciator" (how ushers used to know which of the 3000 seats were available) and amazed with dozens of facts about the building. Did you know that architect Timothy L. Pflueger intended the main entryway to be reminiscent of a redwood forest? That 80% of the interior surfaces are from the original 1930-31 era? That in 1972-73 the Oakland Symphony bought and refurbished the building as their new venue? That there is a sofa in the basement lounge which hasn't been re-upholstered since the theatre opened more than seventy years ago?

Although I enjoyed the tour - it's definitely worth the $1 - I was disappointed that we were only taken through the public areas. A "behind the scenes" tour would be my preference for next time, if such a thing is ever offered. Also, while the guides' knowledge is impressive, a full 2 hour tour is a little long.

For what it's worth, I think I still prefer to soak up the Deco glow on movie nights at the Paramount - when I can sip a cocktail in the lounge, powder my nose in the muraled and mirrored ladies restroom, and gaze up at the golden gods and goddesses of the theatre with three thousand other happy customers. Now that's historic.

Their next show is "Top Hat," playing on November 28th.

Notes from the Telegraph Ave Historic Walking Tour

I'd have more than notes if my digital camera weren't acting up -- all the photo files are corrupted somehow.

Anyway.

Telegraph Avenue used to reach all the way to Sather Gate, where it intersected with Allston Way. Meaning that Allston was the southern border of campus. This changed in the 30s or so.

The Berkeley street grid south of campus was once alphabetical. The north/south streets were named for men of science: Audubon (now College), Bowditch, Choate (now Telegraph), Dana, Ellsworth, Fulton, Guyot (now Shattuck), and Henry. The east/west streets were for men of letters: Allston, Bancroft, Channing, and Dwight (Durant and Haste were plowed through later).

The former Unitarian Church, now a dance studio, at Bancroft and Dana, is beautiful. I attended Cal for 4 years and never bothered to notice this building.

(This is where not having photos is frustrating). There's a parking lot, between Channing and Haste, on the block just east of Telegraph. The lot was the gardens of the Anna Head School for girls. The school buildings still exist - beautiful brown shingled edifices used by various university departments. The gardens haven't been wholly removed -- a look around the parking lot reveals a variety of tree species which had been planted many years before.

Telegraph Avenue Walking Tour - Saturday

Learn the history of the school's main drag. Begins at 10am, at Sather Gate, on Saturday the 8th.

Historic East Bay Panoramic Photos

Got some time at work? Browse the Library of Congress' "Taking the Long View", an exhibition of panoramic photos.

Beast-ers will likely be interested in Berkeley and
Oakland. (They don't seem to have much else from the Beast.)

History is a Dirty Business

In UC Berkeley's summer session course Anthropology 133, students learned not only how to dig square holes and sift through archival materials, but also that archaeology and history are public endeavours. Local press this last week noted our efforts at two sites on Cal campus - a nice piece in today's San Francisco Chronicle followed less detailed offerings in the Oakland Tribune and Berkeley Daily Planet on Thursday and Friday. As a graduate student instructor for the course, I helped supervise excavations at the C.U. Conservatory site, where the remains of a shining Victorian glass-house now lie under a parking lot.

Before: the UC Conservatory ca. 1900

(photo from the Oliver Family Photograph Collections, Bancroft Library, University of California)

After: a field school student excavates remains of the west-wing foundation.

(photo by author)

Berkeley turns 125

On April 1, the city of Berkeley turns 125 years old. Since folks are unable to pass up acknowledging arbitrary intervals of time, the city has a number of celebrations planned.

Perhaps the niftiest is the "group photo" that will be shot on April 1, 4:30, at 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. All members of the Berkeley community (i.e., residents) are invited.

Berkeley, A City in History

The Berkeley Public Library has published on its website, Berkeley, A City in History. For a free book, it's remarkably thorough. The only noticeable lack are photos and illustrations.

One thing I'm fascinated by is how decisions made over 100 years ago resonate today. This is particularly clear in Chapter 3, "Enter the Octopus," about the laying of railroad in Berkeley. Among the passages is:

He was the major developer of the community of Lorin, which once boasted a train station located at Adeline Street and Alcatraz Avenue

It's a reminder that what we do today will often have an impact on what comes long after us.

Are you the Gatekeeper? I am the Key Route Master.

Click map to enlarge.

This map, drawn in 1911, depicts the old Key System routes, a commuter train system for the East Bay named for the shape of the routes (said to resemble a skeleton key). The Bay Bridge originally had special lanes for Key System crossings, but the Rise of the Automobile meant the death of the commuter train, and by 1948 the last streetcars ran, and by 1958 the trans-bay trains stopped.

Vestiges of the Key System remain. Most obvious is Key Route Blvd in Albany. The oddly situated Shattuck Square in Berkeley, where Shattuck splits before it meets University Ave heading north, used to be a train station. At the corner of Piedmont and 41st in Oakland there is a plaque as you enter the parking lot, marking the terminal of a Key line. It states you could reach downtown San Francisco from that spot in 30 minutes.

For more facts, stories, and pictures of the Key System:

Susan Cerny's "Berkeley's Growth was Dependent on Public Transportation". (Part of her "Berkeley Observed" collection of essays.)

An amazing collection of photos of the Key System in action.

And perhaps my favorite, an old film of a ride on a Berkeley Street car (down Oxford, up Hearst). Make sure to read the summary at the bottom of the page.