A Culture Vulture Looks at Berkeley Today

 

 

 

 

 

 Slim pickings as the Art world slowly reopens
I pause a while at BAM/PFA
before reverting back to nature

 

 

 1.

 

 

University lawn on Oxford
long a grassy hang spot
showing signs of life

 

 

 RAY Man is there to observe

and document the demise of dormancy

 

Coming Attractions

Well, Hey hey hey

That's what the new breed say

The Shah etcetera

The USA made an enemy of Iran

 

Hallucinatory abstraction

 

In your eye

 

 

 

 

Faces hidden

 

Bohemian die-hard

 

 

 A Hookah makes a home

 

 

 

 

 

 Nowadays a woman got to hit a man

just to let him know she's there

 

 

Silent simulacrum

The belly of the leviathan

An arboreal rest stop on campus

The creek ain't exactly raging this year

 

 

 I sat in the lap of a tree

for a healing smoke

 

 

 

 

Uncle Sam needs your help again

He's got himself in a terrible jam

Good old Berkeley

Ain't what it used to be

 

22 May 2021

2.

I trained into town myself
This is a mere artifact of a bygone time

when Berkeley's downtown hardware store
had an extensive offering of trains and other models

Being oneself is never a dumb idea

This sign on the other hand may well be

Veteran's Building location of many counter cultural events including

a re-enactment of the Howl reading a year after the Six Gallery

No one calls it Provo Park anymore
just Civic Center Park
a lone hippie sadhu keeps faith

An older lady living in the park
Eating singing listening to her radio dancing
Wonder if she had eaten mushrooms

 

 

 I think they were forced to shorten the title

so participants didn't feel compelled

to go on and on about their private parts

 

 

Maybe a bearded lady

Berkeley protects it's trees from road work

 

 

 

 Historic site of innumerable events and concerts

Dylan and the Hawks, Jimi Hendrix in the 60s

And in my day The first US show by The Clash, 

Lou Reed and the Feelies, Joan Baez for KPFA,

Bo Diddley, Robert Plant, etc.

I visited Elvis Costello in his bus parked here

and the Dalai Lama gave me a pra nam

on this spot

 

 

 

F-off! Don't fender me

11 June 2021

Berkeley Shade of Winter

Mostly Cloudy

and cool

Fog Holler

playing on Shattuck

in downtown Berkeley

The Winter sun

House on Blake street

Authentic Bluegrass

musicians from Hawaii

home of steel pedal guitar

Must seem cold here

note the fingerless

fingering gloves

Winter house

not clearly visible

in the leafy months

 of the year

Both were very talented

but the banjo player was the star

His rather prominent skull

with thin surface topology

He looks blue and lonesome

plaintive and tragic

deep river blues

Woodstock is still playing

at the Pacific Film drive-in

Starving Artist guitar shop

Berkeley is a guitar town

Banjo a wagon wheel

 a steam boat wheel

The guitar can be anything

Sometimes you just have to,

row, row, row your boat

on old man river,

But that's a different genre

slower but not sadder

 We were having light rain,

Scant snow in the mountains

all the rain we can get

The sun plows across

a dark embankment








2.
Mostly Sunny
and Mild



Rule by vintage Fiat

Some folks have to make

a home out in the wind

Remarkable
hair colors
mais non au naturel

 Low-slung birdhouse
front yards of another
part of town



Looking under the skirt
of a tremendous redwood
on Grant

Kids around here
like their toys
to be weird

The quills have eyes


Uncloudy Day
Mildness

Wall of Peace tile
in re-opened
Civic Center park

Berkeley is a center
of back to the land
primitive socialism

Ironic isn't it
The joke's on both
of us

Lifestyles based on
the Romantic West
persist even today

Arrayed under
 the inspiration
of tall old trees

After thought

Not happy about the new

BART cattle cars,

More doors fewer seats

and hard ones at that

Standing room begins early

amid skinhead biker mayhem

last week in January 2018