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

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Man in mid-20 ' s; born in Berkeley I grew up in this house from about the time I was two and a half until I went off to college, and then my father lived in it by himself after my parents got divorced. He was going to sell it, so a bunch of us who were living in a few different houses, but were all friends, got together and said we wanted to rent it from him. He agreed and we all moved in. There ' s eight of us living here and we all do pretty well together. Before we moved here, all us lived together in different combinations for a couple of years — like two of the people would have an apartment and two other people would go there and crash frequently. A bunch of us lived in a farm workers ' organizing house in Oakland with two or three or four to a room. For a while I was trying to get together a bunch of landlords that I knew vaguely, and people who were into police science and so forth, to try to get together a neighborhood where it was all a non-profit corporation with a school and church and you didn ' t have to pay property taxes and stuff like that. But I didn ' t go very far on it. It was kind of a crazy idea and I realized that I couldn ' t pull it off. It would be overrun if there was actually free rent and that wouldn ' t work too well because it would get raunchy fast. I feel more realistic now. There ' s all sorts of stuff like who cleans up the dishes when somebody leaves them, and how to deal with your daily life. I do painting and hauling and gardening to get my money and just hang out, working on myself, trying to make myself happier. When I first quit school I wanted to change the world. I got into political organizing of some sort, waking everybody up to political consciousness. I had a really good time doing that — it was fun. I could do anything I wanted, go anywhere I wanted and talk to a lot of people, which is what I really get off on. Then I started working with an alternative school, quit rabble- rousing in the high schools and decided I ' d try and create a positive model. I did that for about a year and a half and then I got discouraged at the prospects. For me anyway, I wasn ' t getting as much as I wanted out of it — I found myself going to sleep and waking up worrying about the students, and I didn ' t need that hassle. Then I decided to teach what I wanted on my own, general hippie stuff, you know, sensitivity training and massage and body awareness. It worked OK for a while and then I discontinued the group. Now I ' m into radical psychiatry. I ' m taking individual classes not connected with the University and definitely a Berkeley phenomenon. I ' m in touch with a group of people who ' s into the same kind of thing as I ' m into, which is hard to put into words, but is basically the connections between emotions and your body, sensitivity awareness, and trying to figure out how to be happy. That ' s an orientation toward things which seems to me to be meaningful, rather than who ' s got the shiniest car or who can smoke the most dope or whatever.

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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.

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Man, age 22. Although born in Berkeley, he has lived here only the last three years. I love the city. A lot of my friends, though, are antsy to move out to the country. They get over-amped here, and a lot of them are kind of in limbo. Like at the age I ' m at, 22, most of my friends have just graduated from college and we don ' t want to get into a heavy work scene yet. So we all do part time work and we ' re all artists on our own time. We ' re trying to do it in our own way without getting into a big hassle and Berkeley ' s the best place to do that. You can do what you want as far as art ' s concerned and you can still find a part time job to keep the money on an even keel. For example, one of the finest glassblowers in all of California, like he enters competitions and he can ' t help but win because he does such beautiful work. He ' s working as a waiter at a crummy restaurant so that he can build up his glass studio. He can ' t do what he ' s meant to do and he ' s waiting on people that have no idea that in half an hour he could blow a vase that would be worth $300. It happens all the time. We get exploited to death because there are so many artists. We ' re going to be really poor in art if we don ' t watch it, so we refuse to be bus-boys full time. We ' re poor, but rich in th e mind. Before 1 came here I lived all over the world, and it ' s nice because all my friends come and visit. You know, everybody goes to Berkeley after a while to see what ' s happening, and it ' s nice to be here to tell them. There ' s always something happening in art in the area, so I take them to the museums. Also, I kind of enjoy tripping down Telegraph Avenue. When my friends come around and I go down there with them, even I am completely amazed by all the changes. Like stores change so fast on the Avenue, it ' s incredible. There was a restaurant which turned into a flower store and now it ' s a clothes store and I think that ' s going to fold soon. One thing I like about the people in Berkeley is that they seem to appreciate the changes in weather. When it rains they go indoors, and when the sun shines everybody ' s out, to the mountains or just wandering on the streets. The houses are so friendly. They have a sense of history because they ' re old and they ' ve been enjoyed by different people — someone ' s built a platform for a bed or knocked out a hole for a window or painted a whole room to look like a cloud. 1 live in a little tiny house with a bright red door with a unicorn on it with a golden horn. Actually, although I ' ve lived all over, 1 was born around here and I lived in the area when I was younger. It ' s a hell of a good place to be from, and it ' s a good place to come back to. Like when you have one thread to go from and have all the threads coming off of it, like a spider ' s web, you can do all these different thread trips and then come back to one main thread to see what ' s happened to everybody else. Berkeley ' s a good sounding board to find out what people are thinking, to reassess your own thoughts and values.