April is like a clock ticking. The student celebrations get frantic as that scene winds down. Meanwhile greater Berkeley had a few Spring events in the parks including Earth day deferred to Saturday and People's Park's 4oth anniversary on Sunday. As ever the Flaneur is there and herewith reports on what went down.
Saturday morning and the lone pathetic taiko drummer on lower Sproul blams out bursts of uninspired rhythm every so often. There seems to be a sporting event or some other chauvinist pageant for them to say they are drumming about. Actually the increasing nuisance of the taiko idiots is more about Asian triumphalism and about individuals calling attention to themselves than anything else. Here it is eight hours later as I write, the drums drag on with utter disregard to the peaceful enjoyment of others.
"Boom boom da-boom boom, boom boom boom"
It's the same dumb marshal tattoo over and over, again and again, no music, no expression except, "here I am I have a drum and I make loud noises"--strictly low chakra stuff. Then they slow it down to just "boom-boom-boom..."-- our army is approaching, fear us and surrender.
The taiko drums along with the increased alcohol-driven mayhem late at night--the screaming drunk girl at 2AM this morning for example-- are the two most sickening developments in social behavior in the area. Both are tied to the onslaught of the new student majority.
I get to my feet around noon and make ready for a minor excursion. Celtic songs concerning the love of the natural world waft from the radio as I roll me a shorty with the latest blend. Then it's off, not in a hurry but rushing nonetheless. A beautiful, cool and windy but sunny day--the temperature doesn't break 60 degrees. I drop by the library to return DVDs and divert past the post office to drop another one in the mail. I'm headed for the Civic Center park where the Earth day program is in full swing. I pull up a bench and sit down for one of the most charming parades of passing humans you can find. Lots of sweet children in states of enjoyment, little ones look at me seriously from strollers and I give them all a smile. Older kids and adults also wear their springtime finery. Two lovely girls walk by with a guitar, tiny flowers in their hair, wearing wispy dresses that look like slips. I'm beaming and in general I get a good return on the vibration.
Background music is provided by an anonymous band on a stage way down at the far end of the park. The lawn is loosely filled with folks camped-out in the grass. Young men exhibit lion-like manes of chestnut dreadlocks. Near me is the hemp clothes booth, and I can see the sign for the Cannabis Action Network from where I sit. I also spy some old acquaintances of mine at a table hawking their new book. A husband and wife team, they had already done a book on eccentrics, and one on loners. The new one was a scavengers handbook with a market eye on the new trend in poverty. "Another holiday in someone else's misery," as the old Situationist shibboleth sung by the Sex Pistols put it. I am tempted to go over and say hello, but I don't want to break up the tranquility of their signing table.
I notice that some anticipation seemed to be collecting over on Alston way. The street is cordoned off and a swelling cluster of cops is in evidence. I read a large hand-made banner in the wind from behind--what, "Berkeley Welcomes the Dalmatian"?...wait, "the Dalai Lama"? Who knew?
I learn from two lovely young women that he is in town for his speech on campus and apparently he is putting in an appearance at an unpublicized event at the Berkeley Community Theater. He'll be arriving across the street at the stage entrance so I find a little grassy knoll directly across from it with a nice sight-line.
More cops show up, more than twenty-five in all. In the type of grossly unconstitutional invasion of of privacy that people have resigned themselves to in America, one lard-ass cop starts panning over us with a video camera. I very much want the Dalai Lama to be protected from his vicious detractors but there is no sign of protest or even any Chinese people who might turn hostile. Well, maybe there is one annoying couple. The diminutive male comes and holds his camera directly in front of my face a few times until I tell him to fuck-off in a decidedly un-Buddhistic manner. More gently, I have to tell a little boy to stop what he was doing too--methodical pounding a rock on exposed tree roots to strip away the bark. His Earth day-attending dad ignores or apparently sees nothing wrong in the activity. "That hurts the tree," I tell him.
There's mainly just parents and kids around and a few Buddhists, all Earth day types. But of course, as a lone male in sunglasses and black beret, I can soon sense these armed and mustachioed officers mildly directing their scrutiny at me. What else to they have to do, really? And I do have the logistical sweet spot. It's between me and the little girl in the tree branch overhead.
Then a fire truck blocking the street is moved and motorcycle cops roar up with sirens on. A black SUV arrives followed by a limo. Ceremonial items including a bread basket stupa are in position and a troupe of snow leopard dancers kick into their act. A half-dozen men-in-black hit their marks and the limo door opens. I recognize the Dalai Lama first, the shape of his head, the unmistakable color of his robe, and I hold up my arms in a pranam greeting. Everyone cheers and applauds--maybe a hundred people in all scattered around watching. Certainly, many in the park don't even investigate what's going on. The old school R&B group just grooves on without notice.
The Dalai Lama turns to onlookers and gives us all a warm, smiling pranam turning in three directions. A final round of applause and cheers after he stops at the little altar. He waves and then proceeds inside escorted by city-councilman Worthington. Then it's just a battery of easy-paycheck cops and secret-service guys with frozen hard looks behind shades. We get to leave them to their duties and mosey away to nibble on free Clif bars.
I am reminded of the time I caught a glimpse of the Queen of England in Newport, Rhode Island for the Bicentennial. As that happened Ford and Kissinger flew over in a helicopter adding to everyone's anxiety-level. The Queen came out of the rear door of Trinity church and slightly waved. My glimpse of her was at around same distance for about the same length of time as my glimpse of the Dalai Lama. Only this is better by far, and unexpected, uncrowded, and painless. This is a blessing for us all. Everyone feels it, it is plain to see.
"We gonna pitch a wang-dang-doodle," sings a big gospel lady on stage projecting sort of a mellowed-down, middle-aged notion of what a wang-dang-doodle consists of.
Some more people-watching from my bench. A westerner walks past wearing the robes of a Buddhist monk. He is escorting a glitzy lady in a golden spangled skirt who looks more like a Thai prostitute than a Tibetan nun. Two kids go by in camouflage fatigues, one with an army helmet. Were they out to embarrass their liberal-looking dad?
Two teen-aged guys in amusing costumes ride up on scooters. The shorter blond kid has a long cape, and a plastic Roman breast plate, other kooky stuff. The taller kid wore things like a loose-knit tunic and a cowl over his head that gave him teddy bear ears. They chat with the straight arrow at the solar-panel table across from me. I love how young people can be so casually non-conformist in these times, in these parts. They obviously don't fear being made fun of, but believe in having fun regardless of what squares may think.
As I leave the taller one is crossing Milvia at the same time I am. He stops at a vehicle-- driven by a parental unit I'd say, and removes his mad gear, tossing it into the hatch. As he comes round to get in next to the driver, he faces me a second and we smile. I say to him, "How Berkeley can you be, baby?"
"Yee-ah" he laughs.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Festival Days: 40th Anniversary of People's Park
Sunday rolls around peacefully. KPFA is also having a round birthday--their 60th. Mary Tilson spins "America's Back Forty" one of my favorite programs. She reminisces about migrating to Berkeley from Michigan during another hard scrabble period in the USA--the early 90s.
I don't have time for a louche brunch today--festivities await out of doors.
It's cool again, less windy though. The park is very pleasantly full of people. On the east side of the lawn, there's a large gold-lame "god's eye" on a pole with dry reeds radiating out from the central orb. I go on up to the Southeast corner near the peace pole, a white column printed with messages of peace in several languages. Some slices of tree trunk arranged in a peace-sign next to it make good seats. Remarkable flowers abound here--big, upthrust, purple-blossomed flowers.
I think back to my first encounter with People's Park in 1979. I was on my way to see an apartment for rent on Benvenue. After a few months staying with my brother's family in a suburb, I was eager to get closer to where the action was and to have my own place to partake in it. As I made my way there, along with the impressive architecture of the Julia Morgan church across the street and a red brick school of divinity on Dwight, I noted the absence of architecture and the humanist divinity in a bordering park. Music was in progress on a small stage in front of a crowd of hippies, real hippies in those days.
My own days of enjoying such outdoor rock boogies were decidedly behind me at the time. I was intent on more thoughtful and avant-garde a pose than in the frivolous rut this represented to me. I remember sitting in the grass briefly and thinking such things.
Over the years, though, I have forgiven myself and others for our hippie ways. In the process I've gained some affection for good old People's Park. It was only ten years old back in 1979, and this weekend it is forty years old. I applauded its foundation in 1969 and it was a cause celebre in underground newspaper everywhere. Many communities with youth populations across the country saw similar attempts to create "liberated zones" where free music and food, pot-smoking and free speech, replacement of the smothering concrete with democratic seedlings could take place. Police were decidedly not invited or welcome.
The Provos in Amsterdam, the Diggers in San Francisco, and the Yippies in New York, all tried to organize something Utopian that could last a while. For the most part the communes, the free food, and the idealistic ideology faded out. Yet somehow People's Park, a prize morsel in every university vulture's eye, remained in the hands of the populace. This alone is reason to cherish it and to celebrate.
The marginal and the down-trodden that make up its more constant residents and visitors, can also provide a useful social barometer of how hard the haves have made it for the have-nots. The battle to discourage these people being waged by the UC and Berkeley police includes continual removal of the free box where clothes are donated for those who need them. They insist that foliage and shrubbery always be cut to a minimum so they can enforce a Draconian no-visitors-after-dark policy. And they try to disrupt or ban the feeding of the poor by groups like Food Not Bombs and the Catholic Worker.
Today the feeling is so bright it is hard to recall such issues. It came easier on all the recent overcast wintry days I walked through and just the usual alcoholics and monochromatic down-and-outers were here.
On this brilliant afternoon, a guy strums out songs of freedom away on the stage. Once again, I'm listening to it but I'm more interested in people-watching.
The sheer preponderance of colorful weirdos ain't what it once was. It is really mostly young people in their twenties and younger who are sympathetic with the hippie ethos and can use some free entertainment. There are also quite a few families with small children, which I like. Happily all are being fed regularly today with yet more free Clif bars. But whereas yesterday you went to a booth where generous pieces were available, today several strapping young guys go around giving away as many as people will accept. They are even dumping piles of the various whole-grain-and-fruit energy bars in the grass. I remember someone doing that with joints one year. So far I haven't seen that happen today, but the pot smoke is delightfully steady.
I decide to take note of remarkable freak-flag-fliers as they pass me by. The guy I notice straight off and want to award People's Park man of the day, is about 60-65 dressed plain to shabby, sunglasses, and with a sloppy but radical black-dyed "Mohawk" haircut. There are several other more flamboyant panache-style haircuts around but this guy is punk.
Dying one's hair jet black is back it seems, as seen on the next guy I spy. I'll call him, in his dark renaissance fobbery, "Brian Jones noir."
Another apparent mat-black member of the court shows up just then. Wearing a purple and gold monarch's crown, a black ballet dress and fish-net stockings, he provides his own high contrast with very blond hair and fair skin. He walks past me to rest out of the sunshine, sitting cross-legged on a rail in some nearby shade. Quite refined really.
Then there's a young hipster girl with tawny sylvan braids and a large cookie basket. I guessing it's cookies rich in cannabis-butter, there little red riding hood.
Assorted others add local flavor to the scene--there's the old gray woolly hippie wearing an American flag jacket over a priest's chasuble bearing a full-length Easter cross. There's another younger bearded guy who has a furry animal-ears get-up on top of his straw hat. He may be from the same tribe as the teddy-bear headdress youngster from yesterday .
A lonely guy with enormous hair, whom I couldn't help but notice yesterday as well, asks me if I have a bottle-opener. I would attempt to describe his hair as a farah-fawcet hairdo needing a trim caught in the wind after a shower. I regret that I don't have an opener. As with matches or rolling papers, I enjoy supplying such things. I have been many times in a similar position.
Next a young cat handing-out the local anarchist tabloid Slingshot comes by. One of their loose collective was nearly-killed by an IDF-fired high-velocity tear gas cannister at the apartheid wall in Palestine very recently. Tristan Anderson was a brave Berkeley tree-sitter last year and is now in a vegetative state in a hospital overseas. The table they operate offers massage for donations to his fund. May God bless him.
This group the Long Haul Collective also had a grossly unconstitutional police raid on its premises and computers in the last year. It was stated to be in connection with recent animal rights activity, but it was a fishing-expedition for information on such things as grassroots protest plans for last summer's GOP convention.
Then, on page 2 of Slingshot there's an obituary for an old colleague of mine, Franklin Rosemont, Chicago's lion of labor history and surrealism. We were in touch for quite a long time beginning around 1975. I admired his example of surrealist subversion and we collaborated on a few projects.
An obese rainbow clown is inclining down toward the stage. I figure this is Wavy Gravy. It's him alright and before long he is on the mic from a seat stage-side. I don't understand what he says but I do recognize the voice following his. It's Jonathan Richman strumming an acoustic guitar with a drummer backing him up. I make the proverbial bee-line to this nectar, right to stage front. Only a few people are dancing so it's easy to join without jostling. Naturally, considering where we are, a few of the dancers are quite smelly or somewhat lacking in self-control, or both. One bearded porker is fairly omnipresent at such hippie remnant events. He seems to be vying to be elected bull-goose hippie when Wavy departs. A very eager dancer, he franticly moves to the other side when he can't get the ground that others and I occupy. And a lot of the body odor seemed to go with him. I later see him getting shoddy-looking body paint with other flabby exhibitionists.
But it's all in hand and it would take a great deal more to spoil the good feeling Jonathan Richmond puts out without fail. He runs through a short set with his arabesque grooves, his witty lyrics and warm voice. His stage moves are really good too--a very seasoned performer. He keeps acting as if he only had been given a brief amount of time. Wavy keeps him from cutting out too fast though. He requests a song, a poor choice for dancing but one that goes over very well with the infants. Several parents are holding them aloft near me. (I think I represented a safe dance zone). It's a children's song about a dinosaur. A mom standing next to me signs the song for her baby who pays avid attention. Another tot sitting on her dad's shoulders behind me is really into the music, entranced by it. The way Jonathan sells his lyrics with facial expressions and schtick really puts him over with the kids.
Richman has always had a child-like demeanor himself and seems born to perform. He looks incredibly young and healthy. He's a year older than I am too. Staying happy has carried him a long way. He is a subtly swank dresser to boot in his cool rock-a-billy jacket. Too soon he calls it a set and waves bye-bye. He justly gets a sizable cheer from the mob.
A carpet is rolled-out next and a rather amateurish troupe of belly-dancers go to work to canned music. They have a slow hip-hop section but it seems to me to defeat the whole idea. While I'm watching this, Jonathan walks by for the second time, this time by himself. I can't resist and reach out to say hello. He's from Natick, North shore of Boston. I tell him he's a hero to me.
"I'm from Massachusetts and I remember when Roadrunner first came on 'BCN in the mid-70s...music hasn't been the same since." He smiles graciously and wants to know where I'm from. When I tell him Fall River, he says he's playing there soon.
I mention that I was just checking out Josh Ritter on YouTube and he had a video that was made in Fall River. I said, oh, Fall River's hip now. More laughter. Actually it always was, I add, but nobody knew it.
As we say goodbye I tell him, "You're like a beacon to me...like a buoy...you buoy us up...you're like a life jacket, that's it." Thinking out loud I'd hit on the right simile. A big smile and sincere thanks from a real sweetheart. He has lovely eyes.
After this I find an incline that's fit to recline on and have some more of a Clif bar. A Belgian girl takes the stage for one French song in a nice voice. Others are not as easy on the ears when they get the stage for their statements. Rarely do they seem to realize that they needn't yell into a microphone. Often they adopt a tone of such nervous urgency that they render their spiel ridiculous.
There's half an acre of people of similar age who all seem like they know each other. Seated close together they are charming to me the way a flock of birds or a family of lowland gorillas can be. Recent studies have proven that young people who smoke cannabis have better social skills than those who do not.
The next act is a blues band modeled on the Hendrix experience with the effects-laden guitar in the hands of Shelly Doty. The prominent bass resonates especially well with the assembled stoners. Acid flashback music still rocks a lot of souls, it must be said, who stand up and dance.
There's that old white hippie in a dashiki from years gone by. While dancing he walks back and forth portentously while playing psychedelic charades. There's a fat gal with a rat's head hat--she's available and her standards are easily met, I'm guessing.
There's the huge guy with a long white beard, leather vest, and pirate's hat, handing-out flyers of some sort--for the Biker-Pirate-Burner Ball perchance? There's an aging black queen with a flaming red hat and the brightest clashing colors of anyone here. There's that pale retired rock-star guy with dyed-black hair of course and today some flowery out-door pajamas. There's an authentic-looking railroad hobo.
And these are the people of People's Park.
Another one of these rocking souls made himself known just then. He is my selection for first runner-up People's Park man-of-the-day. A dready and beaded black man he wore a huge rainbow flag-winged cape with an Obama family portrait on a velvet rug attached to the front. Each color stripe was separate like feathers. There was also a "No on Prop 8" gay marriage-ban election poster attached somewhere in his spreading penumbra. Frolicking around with a huge grin, he was chanting, "Freedom at last." I only wish the first black president could actually be the super-hero of this guy's vision.
Younger folk are out in regalia as well---there's the guy on stilts in black silk chinese pajamas, or the girl with pink fairy wings. A cute young girl with fuchsia hair alights on a group sitting around a "911 Truth" placard. She has classic body painting and a wild paisley hippie-dress. And of course there's the very hip little kids who always take to the Aquarian vibe without hesitation. They don't even seem to be alarmed at all by a few saggy nudes around them. And the free food thing is their expectation. I watched with amusement as one little boy walked up to a Mexican ice cream-vendor's cart and opened the cooler. The sharp-eyed ice cream man sitting close by on a bench shooed him away firmly.
A black girl lying next to me was snoring away under her coat--I moved away a little. There, a line was forming a short distance away. From it all sorts of people emerged with paper plates of free cooked food. I had eaten several energy snacks and decided to leave the food for others. This is not to mention my fussiness. I'd actually had some lentils and vegetables from this group recently, hardy but gloppy. But it is a blessing for the hungry and for those who serve them.
Diamond Dave next seizes the mic to deliver his mummified rap. He was an early friend of Bob Dylan and may well have been Bob's first source for works by Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac, and others integral to his trip. Bob also kidnapped Dave's actual carnival experiences to fold into his own early fictional bio-notes. When Dave is motoring away like this, it leaves little doubt that he was in fact the one who left home and found work as a carnival barker.
After yet another impassioned plea follows, that this crowd personally stop the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's dangerous expansion in Strawberry canyon. That left only one more performer on today's bill. I moved down behind the stage to listen better.
Country Joe MacDonald, internationally known for cheer-leading at Woodstock, came on with his fascist-killing acoustic guitar. When I first moved here thirty years ago, his dad used to set up a table on Telegraph to sell a book called "An Old Guy Who Feels Good." Joe, who I first saw as the radical-edgy young front-man of Country Joe and the Fish in the late 60s, is now the age his dad was then. He mainly performs the old songs that feel good by Woody Guthrie these days. Today he plays "This Land is Your Land" as one of a fairly brief handful of tunes. He also performed the Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth", demanding and getting a sing-along out of the crowd. One can't help but wonder why he doesn't do any of the more lyrical stuff from the first Fish LP. Instead we get the most obvious choice and the best-known of their songs, "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag." Yeah, let's stop this Viet Nam.
That happens and it's getting past my bed-time for this affair. I bid fond farewell for another year and start home. In front of the empty carapace of the old Cody's, the same tropicalia jam band that was here last year is playing again. A little lady sings and shakes her maracas and seems to be good at getting the party started. I linger on the opposite corner and listen a while. They launch into an Amazon-inspired number replete with vocal impressions of birds and monkeys.
As I wonder why this scene can't be at least this funky and fun all the time, the singer asks, "How many of you want music to be here every week? Raise your hands!"
Everybody put their hands in the air and wave 'em like they just don't care.
Postscript:
Yes, it was bedtime for the park that Bonzo built and that in turn built Bonzo. By Bonzo I of course mean the late Ronald Reagan, c0-star of "Bedtime for Bonzo" and former Governor of California. He built the park by rallying its supporters after his initial brutal repression of it. He called in the National Guard, many were injured, and James Rector was killed.
People's Park in return built Reagan by making him a national reactionary hero. This led to critical mass for his presidential ambition. He was then able to spearhead through congress his "trickle-down" economic policies that vastly widened the gap between rich and poor. This insured that there would be a sizable permanent underclass for whom such a place is a haven of last resort. Without a doubt, the casualties of Reagan's whole crack-for-Contras thing sure beat a path to this place.
Today, while the merchants and neighbors may rail against the "nuisance" of People's Park, the police make regular use of it, telling unfortunate people to get off the street and go there.
"Go sleep it off in People's Park," I heard a cop instruct a guy passed-out on a Berkeley sidewalk near Peet's coffee shop. That kind of society leaves everyone with an ashtray heart.
(Note: Each part was written and originally posted the evening of that day's events. I'm re-posting them separately to make them into columns that are easier to read.)
I don't have time for a louche brunch today--festivities await out of doors.
It's cool again, less windy though. The park is very pleasantly full of people. On the east side of the lawn, there's a large gold-lame "god's eye" on a pole with dry reeds radiating out from the central orb. I go on up to the Southeast corner near the peace pole, a white column printed with messages of peace in several languages. Some slices of tree trunk arranged in a peace-sign next to it make good seats. Remarkable flowers abound here--big, upthrust, purple-blossomed flowers.
I think back to my first encounter with People's Park in 1979. I was on my way to see an apartment for rent on Benvenue. After a few months staying with my brother's family in a suburb, I was eager to get closer to where the action was and to have my own place to partake in it. As I made my way there, along with the impressive architecture of the Julia Morgan church across the street and a red brick school of divinity on Dwight, I noted the absence of architecture and the humanist divinity in a bordering park. Music was in progress on a small stage in front of a crowd of hippies, real hippies in those days.
My own days of enjoying such outdoor rock boogies were decidedly behind me at the time. I was intent on more thoughtful and avant-garde a pose than in the frivolous rut this represented to me. I remember sitting in the grass briefly and thinking such things.
Over the years, though, I have forgiven myself and others for our hippie ways. In the process I've gained some affection for good old People's Park. It was only ten years old back in 1979, and this weekend it is forty years old. I applauded its foundation in 1969 and it was a cause celebre in underground newspaper everywhere. Many communities with youth populations across the country saw similar attempts to create "liberated zones" where free music and food, pot-smoking and free speech, replacement of the smothering concrete with democratic seedlings could take place. Police were decidedly not invited or welcome.
The Provos in Amsterdam, the Diggers in San Francisco, and the Yippies in New York, all tried to organize something Utopian that could last a while. For the most part the communes, the free food, and the idealistic ideology faded out. Yet somehow People's Park, a prize morsel in every university vulture's eye, remained in the hands of the populace. This alone is reason to cherish it and to celebrate.
The marginal and the down-trodden that make up its more constant residents and visitors, can also provide a useful social barometer of how hard the haves have made it for the have-nots. The battle to discourage these people being waged by the UC and Berkeley police includes continual removal of the free box where clothes are donated for those who need them. They insist that foliage and shrubbery always be cut to a minimum so they can enforce a Draconian no-visitors-after-dark policy. And they try to disrupt or ban the feeding of the poor by groups like Food Not Bombs and the Catholic Worker.
Today the feeling is so bright it is hard to recall such issues. It came easier on all the recent overcast wintry days I walked through and just the usual alcoholics and monochromatic down-and-outers were here.
On this brilliant afternoon, a guy strums out songs of freedom away on the stage. Once again, I'm listening to it but I'm more interested in people-watching.
The sheer preponderance of colorful weirdos ain't what it once was. It is really mostly young people in their twenties and younger who are sympathetic with the hippie ethos and can use some free entertainment. There are also quite a few families with small children, which I like. Happily all are being fed regularly today with yet more free Clif bars. But whereas yesterday you went to a booth where generous pieces were available, today several strapping young guys go around giving away as many as people will accept. They are even dumping piles of the various whole-grain-and-fruit energy bars in the grass. I remember someone doing that with joints one year. So far I haven't seen that happen today, but the pot smoke is delightfully steady.
I decide to take note of remarkable freak-flag-fliers as they pass me by. The guy I notice straight off and want to award People's Park man of the day, is about 60-65 dressed plain to shabby, sunglasses, and with a sloppy but radical black-dyed "Mohawk" haircut. There are several other more flamboyant panache-style haircuts around but this guy is punk.
Dying one's hair jet black is back it seems, as seen on the next guy I spy. I'll call him, in his dark renaissance fobbery, "Brian Jones noir."
Another apparent mat-black member of the court shows up just then. Wearing a purple and gold monarch's crown, a black ballet dress and fish-net stockings, he provides his own high contrast with very blond hair and fair skin. He walks past me to rest out of the sunshine, sitting cross-legged on a rail in some nearby shade. Quite refined really.
Then there's a young hipster girl with tawny sylvan braids and a large cookie basket. I guessing it's cookies rich in cannabis-butter, there little red riding hood.
Assorted others add local flavor to the scene--there's the old gray woolly hippie wearing an American flag jacket over a priest's chasuble bearing a full-length Easter cross. There's another younger bearded guy who has a furry animal-ears get-up on top of his straw hat. He may be from the same tribe as the teddy-bear headdress youngster from yesterday .
A lonely guy with enormous hair, whom I couldn't help but notice yesterday as well, asks me if I have a bottle-opener. I would attempt to describe his hair as a farah-fawcet hairdo needing a trim caught in the wind after a shower. I regret that I don't have an opener. As with matches or rolling papers, I enjoy supplying such things. I have been many times in a similar position.
Next a young cat handing-out the local anarchist tabloid Slingshot comes by. One of their loose collective was nearly-killed by an IDF-fired high-velocity tear gas cannister at the apartheid wall in Palestine very recently. Tristan Anderson was a brave Berkeley tree-sitter last year and is now in a vegetative state in a hospital overseas. The table they operate offers massage for donations to his fund. May God bless him.
This group the Long Haul Collective also had a grossly unconstitutional police raid on its premises and computers in the last year. It was stated to be in connection with recent animal rights activity, but it was a fishing-expedition for information on such things as grassroots protest plans for last summer's GOP convention.
Then, on page 2 of Slingshot there's an obituary for an old colleague of mine, Franklin Rosemont, Chicago's lion of labor history and surrealism. We were in touch for quite a long time beginning around 1975. I admired his example of surrealist subversion and we collaborated on a few projects.
An obese rainbow clown is inclining down toward the stage. I figure this is Wavy Gravy. It's him alright and before long he is on the mic from a seat stage-side. I don't understand what he says but I do recognize the voice following his. It's Jonathan Richman strumming an acoustic guitar with a drummer backing him up. I make the proverbial bee-line to this nectar, right to stage front. Only a few people are dancing so it's easy to join without jostling. Naturally, considering where we are, a few of the dancers are quite smelly or somewhat lacking in self-control, or both. One bearded porker is fairly omnipresent at such hippie remnant events. He seems to be vying to be elected bull-goose hippie when Wavy departs. A very eager dancer, he franticly moves to the other side when he can't get the ground that others and I occupy. And a lot of the body odor seemed to go with him. I later see him getting shoddy-looking body paint with other flabby exhibitionists.
But it's all in hand and it would take a great deal more to spoil the good feeling Jonathan Richmond puts out without fail. He runs through a short set with his arabesque grooves, his witty lyrics and warm voice. His stage moves are really good too--a very seasoned performer. He keeps acting as if he only had been given a brief amount of time. Wavy keeps him from cutting out too fast though. He requests a song, a poor choice for dancing but one that goes over very well with the infants. Several parents are holding them aloft near me. (I think I represented a safe dance zone). It's a children's song about a dinosaur. A mom standing next to me signs the song for her baby who pays avid attention. Another tot sitting on her dad's shoulders behind me is really into the music, entranced by it. The way Jonathan sells his lyrics with facial expressions and schtick really puts him over with the kids.
Richman has always had a child-like demeanor himself and seems born to perform. He looks incredibly young and healthy. He's a year older than I am too. Staying happy has carried him a long way. He is a subtly swank dresser to boot in his cool rock-a-billy jacket. Too soon he calls it a set and waves bye-bye. He justly gets a sizable cheer from the mob.
A carpet is rolled-out next and a rather amateurish troupe of belly-dancers go to work to canned music. They have a slow hip-hop section but it seems to me to defeat the whole idea. While I'm watching this, Jonathan walks by for the second time, this time by himself. I can't resist and reach out to say hello. He's from Natick, North shore of Boston. I tell him he's a hero to me.
"I'm from Massachusetts and I remember when Roadrunner first came on 'BCN in the mid-70s...music hasn't been the same since." He smiles graciously and wants to know where I'm from. When I tell him Fall River, he says he's playing there soon.
I mention that I was just checking out Josh Ritter on YouTube and he had a video that was made in Fall River. I said, oh, Fall River's hip now. More laughter. Actually it always was, I add, but nobody knew it.
As we say goodbye I tell him, "You're like a beacon to me...like a buoy...you buoy us up...you're like a life jacket, that's it." Thinking out loud I'd hit on the right simile. A big smile and sincere thanks from a real sweetheart. He has lovely eyes.
After this I find an incline that's fit to recline on and have some more of a Clif bar. A Belgian girl takes the stage for one French song in a nice voice. Others are not as easy on the ears when they get the stage for their statements. Rarely do they seem to realize that they needn't yell into a microphone. Often they adopt a tone of such nervous urgency that they render their spiel ridiculous.
There's half an acre of people of similar age who all seem like they know each other. Seated close together they are charming to me the way a flock of birds or a family of lowland gorillas can be. Recent studies have proven that young people who smoke cannabis have better social skills than those who do not.
The next act is a blues band modeled on the Hendrix experience with the effects-laden guitar in the hands of Shelly Doty. The prominent bass resonates especially well with the assembled stoners. Acid flashback music still rocks a lot of souls, it must be said, who stand up and dance.
There's that old white hippie in a dashiki from years gone by. While dancing he walks back and forth portentously while playing psychedelic charades. There's a fat gal with a rat's head hat--she's available and her standards are easily met, I'm guessing.
There's the huge guy with a long white beard, leather vest, and pirate's hat, handing-out flyers of some sort--for the Biker-Pirate-Burner Ball perchance? There's an aging black queen with a flaming red hat and the brightest clashing colors of anyone here. There's that pale retired rock-star guy with dyed-black hair of course and today some flowery out-door pajamas. There's an authentic-looking railroad hobo.
And these are the people of People's Park.
Another one of these rocking souls made himself known just then. He is my selection for first runner-up People's Park man-of-the-day. A dready and beaded black man he wore a huge rainbow flag-winged cape with an Obama family portrait on a velvet rug attached to the front. Each color stripe was separate like feathers. There was also a "No on Prop 8" gay marriage-ban election poster attached somewhere in his spreading penumbra. Frolicking around with a huge grin, he was chanting, "Freedom at last." I only wish the first black president could actually be the super-hero of this guy's vision.
Younger folk are out in regalia as well---there's the guy on stilts in black silk chinese pajamas, or the girl with pink fairy wings. A cute young girl with fuchsia hair alights on a group sitting around a "911 Truth" placard. She has classic body painting and a wild paisley hippie-dress. And of course there's the very hip little kids who always take to the Aquarian vibe without hesitation. They don't even seem to be alarmed at all by a few saggy nudes around them. And the free food thing is their expectation. I watched with amusement as one little boy walked up to a Mexican ice cream-vendor's cart and opened the cooler. The sharp-eyed ice cream man sitting close by on a bench shooed him away firmly.
A black girl lying next to me was snoring away under her coat--I moved away a little. There, a line was forming a short distance away. From it all sorts of people emerged with paper plates of free cooked food. I had eaten several energy snacks and decided to leave the food for others. This is not to mention my fussiness. I'd actually had some lentils and vegetables from this group recently, hardy but gloppy. But it is a blessing for the hungry and for those who serve them.
Diamond Dave next seizes the mic to deliver his mummified rap. He was an early friend of Bob Dylan and may well have been Bob's first source for works by Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac, and others integral to his trip. Bob also kidnapped Dave's actual carnival experiences to fold into his own early fictional bio-notes. When Dave is motoring away like this, it leaves little doubt that he was in fact the one who left home and found work as a carnival barker.
After yet another impassioned plea follows, that this crowd personally stop the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's dangerous expansion in Strawberry canyon. That left only one more performer on today's bill. I moved down behind the stage to listen better.
Country Joe MacDonald, internationally known for cheer-leading at Woodstock, came on with his fascist-killing acoustic guitar. When I first moved here thirty years ago, his dad used to set up a table on Telegraph to sell a book called "An Old Guy Who Feels Good." Joe, who I first saw as the radical-edgy young front-man of Country Joe and the Fish in the late 60s, is now the age his dad was then. He mainly performs the old songs that feel good by Woody Guthrie these days. Today he plays "This Land is Your Land" as one of a fairly brief handful of tunes. He also performed the Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth", demanding and getting a sing-along out of the crowd. One can't help but wonder why he doesn't do any of the more lyrical stuff from the first Fish LP. Instead we get the most obvious choice and the best-known of their songs, "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag." Yeah, let's stop this Viet Nam.
That happens and it's getting past my bed-time for this affair. I bid fond farewell for another year and start home. In front of the empty carapace of the old Cody's, the same tropicalia jam band that was here last year is playing again. A little lady sings and shakes her maracas and seems to be good at getting the party started. I linger on the opposite corner and listen a while. They launch into an Amazon-inspired number replete with vocal impressions of birds and monkeys.
As I wonder why this scene can't be at least this funky and fun all the time, the singer asks, "How many of you want music to be here every week? Raise your hands!"
Everybody put their hands in the air and wave 'em like they just don't care.
Postscript:
Yes, it was bedtime for the park that Bonzo built and that in turn built Bonzo. By Bonzo I of course mean the late Ronald Reagan, c0-star of "Bedtime for Bonzo" and former Governor of California. He built the park by rallying its supporters after his initial brutal repression of it. He called in the National Guard, many were injured, and James Rector was killed.
People's Park in return built Reagan by making him a national reactionary hero. This led to critical mass for his presidential ambition. He was then able to spearhead through congress his "trickle-down" economic policies that vastly widened the gap between rich and poor. This insured that there would be a sizable permanent underclass for whom such a place is a haven of last resort. Without a doubt, the casualties of Reagan's whole crack-for-Contras thing sure beat a path to this place.
Today, while the merchants and neighbors may rail against the "nuisance" of People's Park, the police make regular use of it, telling unfortunate people to get off the street and go there.
"Go sleep it off in People's Park," I heard a cop instruct a guy passed-out on a Berkeley sidewalk near Peet's coffee shop. That kind of society leaves everyone with an ashtray heart.
(Note: Each part was written and originally posted the evening of that day's events. I'm re-posting them separately to make them into columns that are easier to read.)
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
The Last Barbershop
Yesterday afternoon, although it's still today because I haven't gone to bed yet, I went for a haircut and found a proverb...
As I climbed into the chair at Frank's barbershop, I told him I had just been reading a Chronicle that didn't look like the Chronicle, and I saw a picture of all the sidewalk mailboxes that they've taken away, while sitting next to a sign for his retirement party. "It's a new era," he laughed.
He's been in Berkeley since 1962. I started getting my hair cut there in the early 80s.
It was several years after I moved here. In that time I'd become familiar with Moe's seeming omnipresence at his bookstore. Moe's face was the face of Berkeley. But he's been absent a dozen years now. So from my perspective, after twenty-five years, Frank is today the face of Berkeley.
Frank is not very tall, bald, white of hair, not stout but nearly so, and quite pleasant but not always easy-going. I have not patronized his shop exclusively all those years by any means. I used to feel a little bit of an ambiguous vibe there at first. I was also concerned that some of his haircuts made me look too square. But square in a way he was--"I'm not a stylist." And that's why you went--nobody can give a white man a better "fade". I think he perfected his trademark cuts while in the military.
When it comes to short hair there is, of course, a fine line between square and not square. What I would usually do was to doctor the haircuts up a little when I got home. What was crucial was the professional short sides and back. If the somewhat longer hair on top made me look a little like a game show host, that was easily remedied. I could make slightly oblique and angular chops in it with my own barber sheers. With it gelled-up, I looked like an Interview magazine stylist had had his way with me.
Yes, I have cut my own hair when I felt like it. I actually cut my ex-wife's hair a few times too. A hairstylist was too timid to give her the cut she wanted, very short with a long forelock, so I did. She got compliments-- especially from some Japanese friends who ran a little restaurant in nearby Albany called Sakura. They dug my advanced design. My career was brief, however--hair-cutting is a headache and eyestrain for a crude perfectionist like me.
Nowadays I attempt to tend things when I need a trim between haircuts. Of course Frank notices the trail of my mutilations but doesn't mention them. I told him this week that I knew I looked like an overgrown vacant lot. I am tempted to paraphrase the old saw about acting as your own lawyer, and say a man who acts as his own barber has a fool for a client. But then I was reminded when watching Henry Fonda in the film "Young Mr. Lincoln" that old Honest Abe used to cut his own hair too. It kind of restored the nobility of it in my sight. The actual Lincoln has quite artfully messed-up hair in many photographs.
When I started going to Frank, he had his deluxe old shop next door to the UC Theater, which was then central to the local social scene. It was a familiar lay-out with all the classic barber furniture and equipment. The surrealism of everyday life abounded in these places, as with the vats of antiseptic with combs in them. They were always rather evocative of the barbershops, soda fountains and drug stores of...the twilight zone. The past as seen in the distorting mirror of memory.
While he sometimes had partners in those days as I recall, he's worked solo for two decades since. I seem to recall there was an elderly barber with him at first, and an awkward but routine decision by most people to wait for Frank. The old guy would sit quietly and read.
I even remember the period he shared the place with a woman barber, for once breaking with tradition. It never seemed quite workable but, like many unwieldy marriages, it went on for quite a while. She was incongruous in the same way the wall of framed posters by David Lance Goines was. But that was able to hang much longer. After all, Goines' deco-moderne posters for local high culture are echt Berkeley. He had a studio shop nearby for ages and probably got his hair cut at Frank's as well.
I recall experiencing a Proustian moment the first time Frank applied hot shaving cream to my temples and neck to shave me for the real aviator fade. It was something I had experienced regularly as a youth in the pre-Beatle-haircut days. It feels terrific.
A lot of the stylistic appeal of Punk and its aftermath, one of retrospective and revival, had to do with the charm of things lost in the hippie end of the sixties. This would include primitive rock and roll, tattoos, flat-tops, hot-rods, make-up, vintage clothes, low-budget movies--the whole morbid psycho-billy 50s-early 60s shebang. Frank's place still had illustrated cardboard racks of pocket combs and copies of Playboy with the reading material---it was the real thing, not some phony LA retro-style marketing concept.
Then, in the transformation of that UC Theater block, I lost track of Frank. His old shop between the theater and the corner cafe was closed-down. Another regrettable step downstairs for the city scene. But only some of us will feel the loss of habitat and resources. And with extinctions come new species.
That said however, I was pleasantly gassed when I picked up an issue of the New Yorker and read a full-page color comic by Adrian Tomine telling the story of a somewhat stern barber who looked exactly like Frank. And, of course, it was Frank. This fact was confirmed for me when I discovered that Francesco Caramagno was still open for business on University avenue, a mere few blocks west of his old place. And there on the wall was the New Yorker page in a frame.
In the comic, Tomine's character comes back to face Frank's consternation after having gotten his last haircut elsewhere. Many of us know the look. The story shows his utter trust in Frank's opinion and skills. I should say that this view is nearly unanimous among a multitude of his customers.
Though Tomine eventually moved away to New York on a more permanent basis, he started off his career locally. I used to see him walking along College avenue and frequenting the same Elmwood post office I did. We both had mailboxes there, and so did another star of alternative comics in the 90s and beyond, Dan Clowes. I became acquainted with Dan but never met Adrian. I believe he noticed me too though, observing me from across the street even. We were each noting another bright-eyed Berkeley-dweller at large and on foot in the mid-afternoon. He is the comic artist of his generation who has impressed me the most. I enjoy the precision and humor with which he draws subtle moments of emotion and behavior.
During the nineties I grew my hair long again and tied it back, "like Punk never happened." But not really, any moreso than that Punk was "like the Beatles never happened," as one slogan went. Nevertheless, for money-saving years all I required was the exchange of an ends-trim with a gal pal of mine. I had long hair like it in the seventies and it was a nice return to having it again. Long hair is spiritual and sensual, a blast and a bother. It's also amusing to see how differently people treat you with it and without it.
However, in recent years, with more snow on the roof, I try to keep it quite short. I have come to depend entirely on Frank to get my hair cut. More often than not it is not only worthwhile, a good cut at a fair price, but more fun and more informative than ever. After 47 years beside a big window on University Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Berkeley, he knows quite a bit about the life of this city. The "How Berkeley Can You be ?" parade goes by once a year, but really it's here every day.
Frank is unusually wise and always insightful on society and politics. I speak freely when I'm there and, even if I'm sometimes slightly tendentious, more often than not I find general amusement and a majority in agreement with what I say.
This visit, I was the last customer in the shop and said, for example, that I wanted to change careers, to become a bee-keeping monk in Hawaii. "The monks in Hawaii wouldn't get the property near the beaches," Frank replied.
At another point the mayor of Oakland came up. We'd seen him on TV airing some ceremonial rhetoric after an ex-con killed four cops in a traffic stop followed by a shoot-out. "I watch a lot of Western movies and it's not exactly honorable, but for the bad guy to take out four is certainly memorable." I took his silence as assent.
The conversation turned to cooking. I tell him that even though I am largely vegetarian I regularly use Israeli chicken consomme cubes in my cooking. I confess that I don't tell my vegetarian friend it's involved and he thinks I'm a really great cook. "Now I don't like Israel politically...at all...and I would just as soon boycott their products..."
"...but they are too good to do without!" he finished my thought.
There's just no one else I know of hereabouts who can cut hair like Frank anymore. Even his fellow old-timers rarely have the quality control that he has shown consistently. And that is after the decades of standing-up to work have made his walk a little slow and ponderous. My dentist once treated Peter Townsend who had broken a crown while he was here on tour with the Who. I doubt if Frank would care if he had a famous customer unless it was like Jerry Vale. I'll bet he has though, even if he didn't always recognize them. University Avenue used to be hip--the Berkeley Square (Mission of Burma, Robin Hitchcock), Keystone Berkeley (Jerry Garcia, Hugh Mundel), Lookout records (Green Day, X) to name a few lost locales whose scenes I used to make. Of course, there are many more I missed in the days, for example, back when there were "psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street." In it's heyday the old UC Theater next door to his shop was a magnet for the alternative film audience.
Ah the 20th century, how naive and complacent we all were back then.
From his barber's chair today, I could see the building for Trader Joe's going up on the corner of MLK. There is mercy in Frank's timing in that he will no longer be there when that Gordian knot of traffic starts tightening. Maybe it will be good for the locksmith next door or the hot hot-tub place across the street. Hope springs eternal hereabouts. I noticed a nice new whole wheat artisan pretzel place a few doors over. And I recently caught an art show by Mark Mothersbaugh, artist/composer and beautiful mutant, at a tattoo gallery in this patch. Naturally Frank himself will be fine, at home with his family, attempting to replicate his aunt's recipe for white beans with tomato.
Until then, he still occasionally smokes a cigar even after a local ordinance said no, again like Moe. I'd find him puffing and sitting in his chair on a slow day and other times he'd take a hefty puff while cutting your hair. I have never minded the smoke and it's a tiny place that airs-out in no time with the door open. The music is always at a good volume and is always on a radio tuned to a classical station. A real Italian, he has a authentic zest for life, a sense of humor and an open laugh. He can voice advice or opinion on anything. Or not. That's the wisdom.
Hat's off to Frank.
(He's open until May 2009 if a reader is interested)
As always with human destiny in this material world, the only constant is impermanence. It means one less cool attribute to Berkeley, at least it does for me. Like all substantial changes to dependable things: you can't imagine it could happen; it happens; you go on.
As I climbed into the chair at Frank's barbershop, I told him I had just been reading a Chronicle that didn't look like the Chronicle, and I saw a picture of all the sidewalk mailboxes that they've taken away, while sitting next to a sign for his retirement party. "It's a new era," he laughed.
He's been in Berkeley since 1962. I started getting my hair cut there in the early 80s.
It was several years after I moved here. In that time I'd become familiar with Moe's seeming omnipresence at his bookstore. Moe's face was the face of Berkeley. But he's been absent a dozen years now. So from my perspective, after twenty-five years, Frank is today the face of Berkeley.
Frank is not very tall, bald, white of hair, not stout but nearly so, and quite pleasant but not always easy-going. I have not patronized his shop exclusively all those years by any means. I used to feel a little bit of an ambiguous vibe there at first. I was also concerned that some of his haircuts made me look too square. But square in a way he was--"I'm not a stylist." And that's why you went--nobody can give a white man a better "fade". I think he perfected his trademark cuts while in the military.
When it comes to short hair there is, of course, a fine line between square and not square. What I would usually do was to doctor the haircuts up a little when I got home. What was crucial was the professional short sides and back. If the somewhat longer hair on top made me look a little like a game show host, that was easily remedied. I could make slightly oblique and angular chops in it with my own barber sheers. With it gelled-up, I looked like an Interview magazine stylist had had his way with me.
Yes, I have cut my own hair when I felt like it. I actually cut my ex-wife's hair a few times too. A hairstylist was too timid to give her the cut she wanted, very short with a long forelock, so I did. She got compliments-- especially from some Japanese friends who ran a little restaurant in nearby Albany called Sakura. They dug my advanced design. My career was brief, however--hair-cutting is a headache and eyestrain for a crude perfectionist like me.
Nowadays I attempt to tend things when I need a trim between haircuts. Of course Frank notices the trail of my mutilations but doesn't mention them. I told him this week that I knew I looked like an overgrown vacant lot. I am tempted to paraphrase the old saw about acting as your own lawyer, and say a man who acts as his own barber has a fool for a client. But then I was reminded when watching Henry Fonda in the film "Young Mr. Lincoln" that old Honest Abe used to cut his own hair too. It kind of restored the nobility of it in my sight. The actual Lincoln has quite artfully messed-up hair in many photographs.
When I started going to Frank, he had his deluxe old shop next door to the UC Theater, which was then central to the local social scene. It was a familiar lay-out with all the classic barber furniture and equipment. The surrealism of everyday life abounded in these places, as with the vats of antiseptic with combs in them. They were always rather evocative of the barbershops, soda fountains and drug stores of...the twilight zone. The past as seen in the distorting mirror of memory.
While he sometimes had partners in those days as I recall, he's worked solo for two decades since. I seem to recall there was an elderly barber with him at first, and an awkward but routine decision by most people to wait for Frank. The old guy would sit quietly and read.
I even remember the period he shared the place with a woman barber, for once breaking with tradition. It never seemed quite workable but, like many unwieldy marriages, it went on for quite a while. She was incongruous in the same way the wall of framed posters by David Lance Goines was. But that was able to hang much longer. After all, Goines' deco-moderne posters for local high culture are echt Berkeley. He had a studio shop nearby for ages and probably got his hair cut at Frank's as well.
I recall experiencing a Proustian moment the first time Frank applied hot shaving cream to my temples and neck to shave me for the real aviator fade. It was something I had experienced regularly as a youth in the pre-Beatle-haircut days. It feels terrific.
A lot of the stylistic appeal of Punk and its aftermath, one of retrospective and revival, had to do with the charm of things lost in the hippie end of the sixties. This would include primitive rock and roll, tattoos, flat-tops, hot-rods, make-up, vintage clothes, low-budget movies--the whole morbid psycho-billy 50s-early 60s shebang. Frank's place still had illustrated cardboard racks of pocket combs and copies of Playboy with the reading material---it was the real thing, not some phony LA retro-style marketing concept.
Then, in the transformation of that UC Theater block, I lost track of Frank. His old shop between the theater and the corner cafe was closed-down. Another regrettable step downstairs for the city scene. But only some of us will feel the loss of habitat and resources. And with extinctions come new species.
That said however, I was pleasantly gassed when I picked up an issue of the New Yorker and read a full-page color comic by Adrian Tomine telling the story of a somewhat stern barber who looked exactly like Frank. And, of course, it was Frank. This fact was confirmed for me when I discovered that Francesco Caramagno was still open for business on University avenue, a mere few blocks west of his old place. And there on the wall was the New Yorker page in a frame.
In the comic, Tomine's character comes back to face Frank's consternation after having gotten his last haircut elsewhere. Many of us know the look. The story shows his utter trust in Frank's opinion and skills. I should say that this view is nearly unanimous among a multitude of his customers.
Though Tomine eventually moved away to New York on a more permanent basis, he started off his career locally. I used to see him walking along College avenue and frequenting the same Elmwood post office I did. We both had mailboxes there, and so did another star of alternative comics in the 90s and beyond, Dan Clowes. I became acquainted with Dan but never met Adrian. I believe he noticed me too though, observing me from across the street even. We were each noting another bright-eyed Berkeley-dweller at large and on foot in the mid-afternoon. He is the comic artist of his generation who has impressed me the most. I enjoy the precision and humor with which he draws subtle moments of emotion and behavior.
During the nineties I grew my hair long again and tied it back, "like Punk never happened." But not really, any moreso than that Punk was "like the Beatles never happened," as one slogan went. Nevertheless, for money-saving years all I required was the exchange of an ends-trim with a gal pal of mine. I had long hair like it in the seventies and it was a nice return to having it again. Long hair is spiritual and sensual, a blast and a bother. It's also amusing to see how differently people treat you with it and without it.
However, in recent years, with more snow on the roof, I try to keep it quite short. I have come to depend entirely on Frank to get my hair cut. More often than not it is not only worthwhile, a good cut at a fair price, but more fun and more informative than ever. After 47 years beside a big window on University Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Berkeley, he knows quite a bit about the life of this city. The "How Berkeley Can You be ?" parade goes by once a year, but really it's here every day.
Frank is unusually wise and always insightful on society and politics. I speak freely when I'm there and, even if I'm sometimes slightly tendentious, more often than not I find general amusement and a majority in agreement with what I say.
This visit, I was the last customer in the shop and said, for example, that I wanted to change careers, to become a bee-keeping monk in Hawaii. "The monks in Hawaii wouldn't get the property near the beaches," Frank replied.
At another point the mayor of Oakland came up. We'd seen him on TV airing some ceremonial rhetoric after an ex-con killed four cops in a traffic stop followed by a shoot-out. "I watch a lot of Western movies and it's not exactly honorable, but for the bad guy to take out four is certainly memorable." I took his silence as assent.
The conversation turned to cooking. I tell him that even though I am largely vegetarian I regularly use Israeli chicken consomme cubes in my cooking. I confess that I don't tell my vegetarian friend it's involved and he thinks I'm a really great cook. "Now I don't like Israel politically...at all...and I would just as soon boycott their products..."
"...but they are too good to do without!" he finished my thought.
There's just no one else I know of hereabouts who can cut hair like Frank anymore. Even his fellow old-timers rarely have the quality control that he has shown consistently. And that is after the decades of standing-up to work have made his walk a little slow and ponderous. My dentist once treated Peter Townsend who had broken a crown while he was here on tour with the Who. I doubt if Frank would care if he had a famous customer unless it was like Jerry Vale. I'll bet he has though, even if he didn't always recognize them. University Avenue used to be hip--the Berkeley Square (Mission of Burma, Robin Hitchcock), Keystone Berkeley (Jerry Garcia, Hugh Mundel), Lookout records (Green Day, X) to name a few lost locales whose scenes I used to make. Of course, there are many more I missed in the days, for example, back when there were "psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street." In it's heyday the old UC Theater next door to his shop was a magnet for the alternative film audience.
Ah the 20th century, how naive and complacent we all were back then.
From his barber's chair today, I could see the building for Trader Joe's going up on the corner of MLK. There is mercy in Frank's timing in that he will no longer be there when that Gordian knot of traffic starts tightening. Maybe it will be good for the locksmith next door or the hot hot-tub place across the street. Hope springs eternal hereabouts. I noticed a nice new whole wheat artisan pretzel place a few doors over. And I recently caught an art show by Mark Mothersbaugh, artist/composer and beautiful mutant, at a tattoo gallery in this patch. Naturally Frank himself will be fine, at home with his family, attempting to replicate his aunt's recipe for white beans with tomato.
Until then, he still occasionally smokes a cigar even after a local ordinance said no, again like Moe. I'd find him puffing and sitting in his chair on a slow day and other times he'd take a hefty puff while cutting your hair. I have never minded the smoke and it's a tiny place that airs-out in no time with the door open. The music is always at a good volume and is always on a radio tuned to a classical station. A real Italian, he has a authentic zest for life, a sense of humor and an open laugh. He can voice advice or opinion on anything. Or not. That's the wisdom.
Hat's off to Frank.
(He's open until May 2009 if a reader is interested)
As always with human destiny in this material world, the only constant is impermanence. It means one less cool attribute to Berkeley, at least it does for me. Like all substantial changes to dependable things: you can't imagine it could happen; it happens; you go on.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Au Printemps...
Poster for a poetry reading
Stephen Ronan and Nanos Valaoritis
Drawing by RAY with digital color-design added.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The Enchanted Tree and the Gate of Gold
I was indoors working this afternoon when I felt the bonny day slipping away...
After a week of rain and cool weather, we have resumed the sunny and mild days that have been the norm this year. Even when it is stormy, when the over-heated newscasters marvel at helicopter films of a mere dusting of snow in the hills, the plum blossoms and the green, green grass make February the first full month of Spring around here.
I broke free of my desultory work at 4:30 to walk on campus among the young and in the sunshine. Cadres of exercise comrades were beginning their routines in lower Sproul. A lone soul drummer began a timbales-style tattoo, beating his bongos with a drumstick, out-numbered and defiant. I scurried on to protect my ear drum.
Out of curiosity, because any nostalgia has long faded, I ducked into the ASUC studio-gallery. It was where I first met two of my oldest California friends who were connected to it a long time ago. The occasion was an art exhibition I had put some works in. I'd found the place after first stopping by to use their color-xerox machine. It was still a novelty then and was utilized widely in the popular art of the new wave/punk scene. (In those days "new wave" meant the more pop side of the punk movement like the B-52s, not the hairdo synth bands of the 80s for which it became a marketing term.) Color xerox was in vogue not just for fliers, zines and postcards, but for jewelry, badges, and clothing.
Nowadays it looked more focused on digital graphics and ceramics and less on printmaking and old-fashioned photography. Except for a couple of cases of craft work, the gallery aspect looked non-existent--but that was a quick impression. Too often these days things can look a little dry or unexciting to me, perhaps because I'm no longer young.
Managing to avoid areas of shade, I continued on in the warm air. A being passed me by--blond, sort of feminine, tall, androgynous fisherman's sweater--and I could not decide whether it was a man or a woman. There was no apparent attempt at gender confusion on this person's part but, even though I am as observant and as intuitive as anyone can be, I did not have even a conclusive guess. I turned around after a discrete moment and looked back just as my enigma vanished into white sunlight.
Up at Faculty glade, the scene was festive. A big circle of students sat in the hillside grass quietly playing what I assume was folk music. They were just north of the music department and maybe somewhat shy as a consequence, not like the avenue buskers who try to attract listeners.
Downhill at the Dalian dogwood tree, three little children were climbing through it's symbolist lacunae and even up into the branches. Until today I had ever seen anyone else climbing in it. I sat above on the split log bench and watched them for a while. My figurative tail no doubt was wagging, and when they climbed down to stroll on with the mom-figure, I gave into my own urge to climb.
Clouds of steam billowed out a grating between the tree and the creek, adding to the fairy tale effect. I went down and mounted the black rock at the base of the tree to stretch a moment by grabbing on a lower branch. Next, I kicked of my boots and then ascended into the smooth boughs in my stocking feet. Once again, I saw smiles of amused appreciation from passing students after I went straight up without pause. One of the two little girls with a big cute face like Shirley Temple immediately came back to the tree to join me. I asked her to be careful but, as it turned out, all the kids were confident climbers who showed real instinctive caution and balance up in the tree. It was sheer delight to talk to them a little in this situation.
More mirthful passersby reacted to the sight of an older cat and three wee ones grooving in the second story of the world. Even the youngest, a boy of two or three years, was no longer content to crawl through the hollow trunk. He insisted his Mom lift him onto a lower branch. The other little girl had meanwhile climbed onto a branch just below where I was perched against the trunk. I exchanged pleasantries with the Mom who just then got a phone call. It was for the little girl nearest to me from her friend in Pennsylvania who was having a birthday. The nearby Campanile struck five just as she took the phone and said hello. The kids all appeared to take for granted that you can talk to a friend in Pennsylvania while you are sitting in a tree in California.
As she told her friend what she is doing, the first little girl remarked that this tree is like a house. I said it is an enchanted tree, like a story-book tree. The Mom liked that notion. She told me she appreciates the enchanting weather too, that they are here only for a year, hailing from snowy cold upstate New York. Whereas this burled old survivor was already putting out its new green leaves.
This play-time went on for at least a half hour. Feeling protective of the children, I gently asked the Mom to intervene when the little girl chatting on the phone stood straight up in the tree without a hand-hold. The girl told everyone not to listen as she whispered a secret to her far-away friend. "I know the secret--her name's Rachel and your name's Anna," yelled the other little girl. The little boy meanwhile had been loaded into a stroller but he kept saying, "no, no, no..." When he was released he came right back over and said, "I want to go high, Mommy, real high." It was like being in a real-life cartoon for this contemplative loner who never gets to hang out with the under-five crowd.
Despite my genuine enjoyment, I soon had to urge things along and get down. Again, and with almost Taoist delicacy, I suggested that the Mom take the phone so Anna could have both hands free to climb back down. And so I could be free to descend from the tree myself--my feet were beginning to feel the strain. These things we did. Then I put my boots on and said my good evening. As I started to walk off, the first little girl called loudly, "good bye," and we all waved, secret best friends forever.
On tentative legs went the Flaneur, over the creek via the ziggerat bridge and around to the Campanile. There bay and bridge came into view in a blast of sunlight. Already wearing shades, I pulled my beret down half way over them to be able to look. (Biensure, le Flaneur wears a black beret.)
How far the sun has come back in the two months since the winter solstice. The clear sky was softened by ethereal clouds. It was one of those times when the entire Bay reflects the lowering sun in a vast field of light like white gold. Today this effect of a golden bay of light within the larger watery bay extended all the way under the bridge and out to sea for a distance. Then it ended at a remote band of metallic-looking ocean before another lake of light appeared beyond that. It seemed to float in the air over the Pacific horizon. I squinted into to see if I could descry the Farrallones, a wild group of islands visible from here on very clear days. I couldn't see them however. There was too much light; a different form of clarity prevailed.
Although the sun was still fairly high and warm as the giant clock hands reached 5:30, I was tiring. I had a lot of retinal after-images from trying to look at the view. I began to hear the call of my nearby pad. To which I repaired, to commence cooking a cauldron of lentils and vegetables. And over a cup of coffee and a taste of medicinal caramel, to type up another day's expedition.
After a week of rain and cool weather, we have resumed the sunny and mild days that have been the norm this year. Even when it is stormy, when the over-heated newscasters marvel at helicopter films of a mere dusting of snow in the hills, the plum blossoms and the green, green grass make February the first full month of Spring around here.
I broke free of my desultory work at 4:30 to walk on campus among the young and in the sunshine. Cadres of exercise comrades were beginning their routines in lower Sproul. A lone soul drummer began a timbales-style tattoo, beating his bongos with a drumstick, out-numbered and defiant. I scurried on to protect my ear drum.
Out of curiosity, because any nostalgia has long faded, I ducked into the ASUC studio-gallery. It was where I first met two of my oldest California friends who were connected to it a long time ago. The occasion was an art exhibition I had put some works in. I'd found the place after first stopping by to use their color-xerox machine. It was still a novelty then and was utilized widely in the popular art of the new wave/punk scene. (In those days "new wave" meant the more pop side of the punk movement like the B-52s, not the hairdo synth bands of the 80s for which it became a marketing term.) Color xerox was in vogue not just for fliers, zines and postcards, but for jewelry, badges, and clothing.
Nowadays it looked more focused on digital graphics and ceramics and less on printmaking and old-fashioned photography. Except for a couple of cases of craft work, the gallery aspect looked non-existent--but that was a quick impression. Too often these days things can look a little dry or unexciting to me, perhaps because I'm no longer young.
Managing to avoid areas of shade, I continued on in the warm air. A being passed me by--blond, sort of feminine, tall, androgynous fisherman's sweater--and I could not decide whether it was a man or a woman. There was no apparent attempt at gender confusion on this person's part but, even though I am as observant and as intuitive as anyone can be, I did not have even a conclusive guess. I turned around after a discrete moment and looked back just as my enigma vanished into white sunlight.
Up at Faculty glade, the scene was festive. A big circle of students sat in the hillside grass quietly playing what I assume was folk music. They were just north of the music department and maybe somewhat shy as a consequence, not like the avenue buskers who try to attract listeners.
Downhill at the Dalian dogwood tree, three little children were climbing through it's symbolist lacunae and even up into the branches. Until today I had ever seen anyone else climbing in it. I sat above on the split log bench and watched them for a while. My figurative tail no doubt was wagging, and when they climbed down to stroll on with the mom-figure, I gave into my own urge to climb.
Clouds of steam billowed out a grating between the tree and the creek, adding to the fairy tale effect. I went down and mounted the black rock at the base of the tree to stretch a moment by grabbing on a lower branch. Next, I kicked of my boots and then ascended into the smooth boughs in my stocking feet. Once again, I saw smiles of amused appreciation from passing students after I went straight up without pause. One of the two little girls with a big cute face like Shirley Temple immediately came back to the tree to join me. I asked her to be careful but, as it turned out, all the kids were confident climbers who showed real instinctive caution and balance up in the tree. It was sheer delight to talk to them a little in this situation.
More mirthful passersby reacted to the sight of an older cat and three wee ones grooving in the second story of the world. Even the youngest, a boy of two or three years, was no longer content to crawl through the hollow trunk. He insisted his Mom lift him onto a lower branch. The other little girl had meanwhile climbed onto a branch just below where I was perched against the trunk. I exchanged pleasantries with the Mom who just then got a phone call. It was for the little girl nearest to me from her friend in Pennsylvania who was having a birthday. The nearby Campanile struck five just as she took the phone and said hello. The kids all appeared to take for granted that you can talk to a friend in Pennsylvania while you are sitting in a tree in California.
As she told her friend what she is doing, the first little girl remarked that this tree is like a house. I said it is an enchanted tree, like a story-book tree. The Mom liked that notion. She told me she appreciates the enchanting weather too, that they are here only for a year, hailing from snowy cold upstate New York. Whereas this burled old survivor was already putting out its new green leaves.
This play-time went on for at least a half hour. Feeling protective of the children, I gently asked the Mom to intervene when the little girl chatting on the phone stood straight up in the tree without a hand-hold. The girl told everyone not to listen as she whispered a secret to her far-away friend. "I know the secret--her name's Rachel and your name's Anna," yelled the other little girl. The little boy meanwhile had been loaded into a stroller but he kept saying, "no, no, no..." When he was released he came right back over and said, "I want to go high, Mommy, real high." It was like being in a real-life cartoon for this contemplative loner who never gets to hang out with the under-five crowd.
Despite my genuine enjoyment, I soon had to urge things along and get down. Again, and with almost Taoist delicacy, I suggested that the Mom take the phone so Anna could have both hands free to climb back down. And so I could be free to descend from the tree myself--my feet were beginning to feel the strain. These things we did. Then I put my boots on and said my good evening. As I started to walk off, the first little girl called loudly, "good bye," and we all waved, secret best friends forever.
On tentative legs went the Flaneur, over the creek via the ziggerat bridge and around to the Campanile. There bay and bridge came into view in a blast of sunlight. Already wearing shades, I pulled my beret down half way over them to be able to look. (Biensure, le Flaneur wears a black beret.)
How far the sun has come back in the two months since the winter solstice. The clear sky was softened by ethereal clouds. It was one of those times when the entire Bay reflects the lowering sun in a vast field of light like white gold. Today this effect of a golden bay of light within the larger watery bay extended all the way under the bridge and out to sea for a distance. Then it ended at a remote band of metallic-looking ocean before another lake of light appeared beyond that. It seemed to float in the air over the Pacific horizon. I squinted into to see if I could descry the Farrallones, a wild group of islands visible from here on very clear days. I couldn't see them however. There was too much light; a different form of clarity prevailed.
Although the sun was still fairly high and warm as the giant clock hands reached 5:30, I was tiring. I had a lot of retinal after-images from trying to look at the view. I began to hear the call of my nearby pad. To which I repaired, to commence cooking a cauldron of lentils and vegetables. And over a cup of coffee and a taste of medicinal caramel, to type up another day's expedition.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Night-crawler
Night-crawlers was the name given to the large worms that appeared only on certain summer nights. The long bulbous worms stretched themselves across a particular moist green lawn under a street light in our neighborhood. They were prized by the older guys as bait for fishing and we learned how to catch the worms from them. It involved grabbing the worm's exploratory end before it could rapidly retract itself back into the earth. Once grabbed you had to ease out the rest of its length or risk snapping it in two. It was marvelous game for a young boy and for once the somewhat cruel treatment of small creatures had a redeeming purpose.
The worms only came out later in the evening when it finally gets dark. Although any boy would have loved to take part, really only those of us with cool enough parents could be out that late. My Mother was among the coolest and my brothers and I gained the status of kids who could stay out late in the summertime. By association we were ourselves night-crawlers, and I have always remained one.
In this column allow me to ramble around in musing and anecdote on the subject of night-life. Perhaps I should confess right away that, although I on occasion still night-crawl, as I have matured I have evolved into something more aptly called a night-owl.
From quite a young age I was in competition with brothers two and four years older than I was, to postpone having to go to bed. As they conquered new later hours, I griped that I should be allowed to stay up late as well. As a last resort, I would sneak out from my darkened bedroom to watch TV from the threshold behind a chair. Because it was almost always television, that great opponent of wholesome bed times, that was the crux of the matter.
I remember the wild style of Friday night horror movie showcases on TV when my Mother would bail out early and my brother and I would stay up until midnight, the breakthrough of staying up that late. This naturally led to the nocturnal sybarite's other requirement-- sleeping late the next day.
And of course many more of the night's thrills would follow.
The stars and the planets were closer in those days, before night-time illumination pushed us into a mole-like existence, into a tunnel of ambient light pollution through particulate mist. One night we looked up at a designated time and saw a tiny traveling blip that was Sputnik or a maybe it was Telestar, the data flickers in the mists of time. This all took place in the common back yard of a housing development where a floating community of kids flourished. We were united in the egalitarian order of the night world, maybe after a game of hide-and-go-seek.
Sunday night when Walt Disney came on one or another kid's Mom would call him for it and all the kids would disperse to very similar home lives.
Trick-or-treating was a gas, a lot of home-made costumes in those days. The Hallowe'en archetypes frequently encountered included gypsy fortune tellers that could be boys in drag, hobos with burnt cork beards that could be girls, and candy-driven pirates, as well as the witches and ghosts. I remember my particular delight in seeing a backyard kid in perfect a beatnik get-up--striped boat neck shirt, fake goatee, sunglasses, sandals, and a black beret. "Hey, Daddy-o" he yelled to me. I suspect there was some sort of foreshadowing of my destiny in my immediate fondness for the Beat generation--their art-loving laziness, their kohl-eyed women pale as vampires, their rejection of the square life so full of tedium.
Just beyond the dark end of the street was a rough-hewn lot known as "the rocks" where Xmas-tree snowball forts were built and untold illicit kid rituals took place out of sight of parents. Alongside was an old New England estate with stone walls and a tall stand-alone wooden tower where actual bats were seen swiveling about. This was locus of our most haunted nocturnal imaginings. I can still feel the frisson I felt at the time while regarding the Goodrum house under a bright moon with its great trees newly bereft of leaves in the expressionism of the vast nights of childhood.
Once a week, on summer nights for a few years, block dances were held in the next yard. I stood still for a hair-combing and gleefully donned my Sunday pants to make the scene. I remember a friend getting red chino slacks and all my Mom scored for me was a black pair, being miffed about it-- what was I thinking?
These affairs consisted of light bulbs on wires strung between clothesline fences to create an enclosed "dance floor." The people running it hauled a record player outside and spun 45 rpm singles--""I Want to Walk You Home" by Fats Domino was huge. They operated a concession table next to it selling bags of potato chips and small bottles of coca cola.
I loved everything about it. I loved the suspension of everyday dullness and the great American pop and rock'n'roll music of the period. I enjoyed observing the ardent teen-age couples dancing and the bonhomie of the older, less steamy couples. And I wasn't one of the boys who watched shyly and did nothing--I got out there with a little girl and tried to learn to dance myself. An incipient Dionysian, I was again setting a pattern for life.
(more to come soon)
The worms only came out later in the evening when it finally gets dark. Although any boy would have loved to take part, really only those of us with cool enough parents could be out that late. My Mother was among the coolest and my brothers and I gained the status of kids who could stay out late in the summertime. By association we were ourselves night-crawlers, and I have always remained one.
In this column allow me to ramble around in musing and anecdote on the subject of night-life. Perhaps I should confess right away that, although I on occasion still night-crawl, as I have matured I have evolved into something more aptly called a night-owl.
From quite a young age I was in competition with brothers two and four years older than I was, to postpone having to go to bed. As they conquered new later hours, I griped that I should be allowed to stay up late as well. As a last resort, I would sneak out from my darkened bedroom to watch TV from the threshold behind a chair. Because it was almost always television, that great opponent of wholesome bed times, that was the crux of the matter.
I remember the wild style of Friday night horror movie showcases on TV when my Mother would bail out early and my brother and I would stay up until midnight, the breakthrough of staying up that late. This naturally led to the nocturnal sybarite's other requirement-- sleeping late the next day.
And of course many more of the night's thrills would follow.
The stars and the planets were closer in those days, before night-time illumination pushed us into a mole-like existence, into a tunnel of ambient light pollution through particulate mist. One night we looked up at a designated time and saw a tiny traveling blip that was Sputnik or a maybe it was Telestar, the data flickers in the mists of time. This all took place in the common back yard of a housing development where a floating community of kids flourished. We were united in the egalitarian order of the night world, maybe after a game of hide-and-go-seek.
Sunday night when Walt Disney came on one or another kid's Mom would call him for it and all the kids would disperse to very similar home lives.
Trick-or-treating was a gas, a lot of home-made costumes in those days. The Hallowe'en archetypes frequently encountered included gypsy fortune tellers that could be boys in drag, hobos with burnt cork beards that could be girls, and candy-driven pirates, as well as the witches and ghosts. I remember my particular delight in seeing a backyard kid in perfect a beatnik get-up--striped boat neck shirt, fake goatee, sunglasses, sandals, and a black beret. "Hey, Daddy-o" he yelled to me. I suspect there was some sort of foreshadowing of my destiny in my immediate fondness for the Beat generation--their art-loving laziness, their kohl-eyed women pale as vampires, their rejection of the square life so full of tedium.
Just beyond the dark end of the street was a rough-hewn lot known as "the rocks" where Xmas-tree snowball forts were built and untold illicit kid rituals took place out of sight of parents. Alongside was an old New England estate with stone walls and a tall stand-alone wooden tower where actual bats were seen swiveling about. This was locus of our most haunted nocturnal imaginings. I can still feel the frisson I felt at the time while regarding the Goodrum house under a bright moon with its great trees newly bereft of leaves in the expressionism of the vast nights of childhood.
Once a week, on summer nights for a few years, block dances were held in the next yard. I stood still for a hair-combing and gleefully donned my Sunday pants to make the scene. I remember a friend getting red chino slacks and all my Mom scored for me was a black pair, being miffed about it-- what was I thinking?
These affairs consisted of light bulbs on wires strung between clothesline fences to create an enclosed "dance floor." The people running it hauled a record player outside and spun 45 rpm singles--""I Want to Walk You Home" by Fats Domino was huge. They operated a concession table next to it selling bags of potato chips and small bottles of coca cola.
I loved everything about it. I loved the suspension of everyday dullness and the great American pop and rock'n'roll music of the period. I enjoyed observing the ardent teen-age couples dancing and the bonhomie of the older, less steamy couples. And I wasn't one of the boys who watched shyly and did nothing--I got out there with a little girl and tried to learn to dance myself. An incipient Dionysian, I was again setting a pattern for life.
(more to come soon)
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