University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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Fred Cody, a Telegraph Avenue bookstore owner. We ' ve been in Berkeley about 1 7 years now, except for vacations and stuff. It ' s been our home. After we married, my wife and I traveled about nine years to get that out of our system. So once we came here we thought it would be a good idea if possibly we could have the kids grow up in the same place, not being borne from place to place as is the usual American pattern, moving from house to house, from city to city according to where the government or your company sends you. Isn ' t a lot of Berkeley ' s population moving though ' Probably the two most stable elements in the city of Berkeley are the black population in the lowlands and the people up in the hills, and that ' s a weird kind of combination — to work out something in common between those two. Telegraph Avenue runs right through the midlands, and that seems to be marked by a lot of movement by different kinds of people. Most University people are gypsies in a way; they ' re quite prepared to move on if they get an offer from Harvard. They debate very strenuously between living here and Cambridge, or Yale or wherever, I don ' t think there ' s much tradition in the University for those people to take much part in community life, or to take a stake in it. I have a business here which forces me to have a commitment. We have a home here and I like the place. Now that we ' re settled here , I wouldn ' t want to live anywhere else. It ' s been a matter of determining that, for me, this is where it ' s happening. Nobody is going to offer me a job managing Brentano Book chain and then ask me to go to New York, because I wouldn ' t go. Berkeley is certainly one of the most stimulating communities, it ' s also one of the most aggravating, perhaps because of the transient nature of a lot of the people here. But I get a great deal out of the kind of people that I encounter in just the ordinary course of my work. I don ' t think that the people in most communities are as open as they are here. They ' re not as free in the sense that they don ' t give out. They hold more back; they hold it in. Can you read Telegraph Avenue ' Well, I think the street ' s always a reflection of where this country is and what things have been left undone. We have millions of young people in this country who really don ' t have anything to do, who don ' t have much hope. Basically,

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Berkeley — Low clouds over light haze, the Campanile erect and pointing from the other world. There ' s something odd about it; but not really, not if you ' ve lived here for any length of time. There ' s electricity in the air from the people. Something ' s happening. It ' s home for a few immediately; even if they leave, it was home for awhile — somewhere not quite like any other place, a sculpture being molded by passing souls. Beaut y is about, rising from warehouses on bay fill over garbage dumps, in old houses divided into studio apartments out of the stucco. An energy is focused here, an intensity that spills over and lures those people, and is made with them. It ' s all an act of faith. Images: a small horse for transport a boy and his father on a hillside a girl playing slide guitar some Brothers styling down Telegraph Avenue a street minister preaching people doing mime sitar music a man looking inward images . . . Francis Woods April, 1973

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their condition is oppressive and they ' re trying to escape, but they ' re exploited on the Avenue as well. A lot of the property owners think they ' ve run into the second Great American Bonanza and they can raise the rents accordingly. That ' s forced certain kinds of businesses off the Avenue, and it ' s brought other kinds in, like schlocky food operations which depend on a mininnum of labor and a maxinnum of quick turn-over, basically horrible foods. Our bookstore replaced a gas station about ten years ago and may have introduced some intellectual pollution. Might you say something more about the Avenue right nov i ' Maybe this time of year; maybe the last few months? My feeling is that there ' s a greater separation now between the kinds of people on the Avenue than ever before. There are a lot of closed societies in operation on the Avenue that have very little to do with other closed societies that are also operating on the Avenue. I think that drug pushing still goes on, but by now it ' s become so ritualized and organized within its own terms that it functions as a society within a society. The Avenue functions fairly smoothly without impinging on the University and to some extent on the businesses. Restaurants, for instance, feel the impact of the drug scene more than businesses like ours. I think that ' s a change, because at one time the whole drug experience was more pervasive than it is now. I may be wrong, but I don ' t think that the violent kinds of experimentation that were going on three years ago are going on now. The last census figures showed this is one of the most populous areas of Northern California, stretching from the University boundaries up on Bancroft down to College and Shattuck and running all the way down to the Oakland border. I think it ' s about a third of Berkeley ' s population that ' s crammed into that area, and the average income is around $6000. So if it ' s middle class, it ' s not very affluent. You suspect that most of the people living here are spending a very high proportion of their income on their rent — just on living — and that ' s pretty hard going. Some people call it a hippie ghetto, but I don ' t think it ' s that. It does have a distinct coloration to it, however. Probably if you surveyed the people in the south campus area, you ' d find they ' re one of the better educated population groups in the country; but that isn ' t reflected in their income figures. I know very many people who come to Berkeley, and this is their hope: that somehow or another, they will be able to build a new kind of society here, within the city.