Excursions in Berkeley Today

 

 

 

Berkeley Today

 

Emerging from the 
Downtown Berkeley BART station
Looking up 

 

 

 

A Dance to the Passing Year

 

 

Main Post Office

Alston Way

 

 

 

Doorway to the past

 

 

 

 

Legacy of progress 

destiny and entropy

 

 

 

 

Mailed out vinyl albums

and purchased some new stamps 

 

 

The Main Post Office standing still

despite depredations from above and below

and from within-- the joylessness of Dejoy

 

The most recent tent encampment has moved on

from the sidewalk next door

 

 

 This street so familiar from so many 

previous solstice-times gone-by

nearly a  ghost town today

 

 

 

Some fifteen years ago or so

there was a modern Buddhist institute here

They were going to rename this something like Dharma Street

I would have preferred Dharma Bums Street

After Jack Kerouac, gary Snyder & Philip Whalen

and the Jack's novel of Beat generation Berkeley
 

 

 

A state of perpetual change

 

 

 

 

 That place broke the height limit laws

when it was built

Today few such constraints still exist

The greenish windows in front were the location

of the original KPFA

RAY spent many midnights performing there

on Over the Edge with the late Don Joyce

and a revolving cast of sound artists 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mind-expansion marches on

nevertheless

 

 

 

 

home in a jig

I have had pads in Berkeley that it took longer 

to reach from Downtown Berkeley

than it takes to ride BART to my Oakland pad

 

Our Lady of the Clouds
Birds fly through her womb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30 December 2022

The Curse of O'Finnerty

Shattuck Avenue

Enclosed in decades 

of thick house paint

 

 

Eyes stuck open

to the passing years

 

 

 

 

 

Unnoticed by passers-by

 

 

 

10 December 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Rockridge Anima

 

Borderline North Oakland

 

 

 

Abstract Expressionism

or distressed floorboard?

 

 

 

 

 

Where schmatta matter

 

 

 

 

 The plush life

in faux leopard

 

 

 

 

 Fashionista

 

 

Yogini in a crosswalk

 

 

Back Street girl 

 

 

But baby, It's Cold Outside

 

 

 

 

Fur coats optional

 

 

 

 But wear something sensible

 

 

 

Man cave refuge 

 

Anywhere out of this world

SPACE

It's apparently a place

 

 

 

 

Back at the pad

for the intense colors of 

another Winter sunset 

11 January 2022

Berkeley Main Library

Kittridge Street

 

 

O Strange New Sparta

And we once thought we were Athens 

 

 

The former Library garden

Emptiness makes things feel like a replica

 

 

 

Odd painted metal signs

warped civic pride

 

 

 

 

After school

Berkeley high student

 

 

 

 

 Sadows of January

in the last sunlight today

 

 

 

Life goes on quietly

The lamps are lit

 

 

 

 Sidewalk chalk out front

Berkeley starts to feel

like somewhere I once lived

quite some time ago

18 January 2022