A Typical Day in Berkeley
I spotted this unusual sign on the outside of a local Berkeley middle school: “Metal Shop Theater.” Later, I researched it online, and discovered some interesting history that painfully illustrated the direction of modern American education. For most of the 20th century, Willard school had a metal shop where students were taught metalworking and industrial manufacturing skills. Then about 30 years ago the metal shop was permanently closed and all shop classes deleted from the curriculum (due to budget cuts they claimed, but I have little doubt that shop classes were cut partly for ideological reasons as well). Eventually, the room that formerly held the metal shop was turned into a student theater, where the kids are taught drama and perform plays about coming out of the closet as gay and various other predictably PC themes.
Now, in a perfect world, I’m not against having arts education, including drama education, in schools. But if there are budgetary constraints and tough choices to be made, why did Willard (and countless other schools across America) cut instruction in hands-on technical skills, in favor of touchy-feely classes that convey little or no employment aptitude?
If you ever wondered why America is no longer a manufacturing nation, and why we have a massive trade deficit with China: The Metal Shop Theater is why.
They apparently stopped teaching people how to spell as well, if the city’s manhole covers are any indication: “City of Bekrley.”
My camera never found a moment’s rest as the day progressed. Next I encountered this glorious anti-Monsanto truck.
The back side of the truck revealed that it was likely owned by Code Pink, or at least by a supporter.
Perhaps this Vagina Warrior standing nearby?
I was a little disturbed by this Berkeley sticker with an AK-47 and Arabic-looking script, but once again subsequent online research came to the rescue and revealed it was an ad for Arab-American anti-capitalist rapper “Opium.” Actually, after reading about Opium’s politics, I remain disturbed.
Back on BART, having finished my errands, and whaddya know? Once again I found myself sitting near some typical Berkeley types; the Lenin-style cap was a giveaway. They even seemed to be on the way to some kind of protest. But I thought to myself: “Don’t be prejudicial. Just because they look like washed-up Berkeley radicals doesn’t mean they are washed-up Berkeley radicals.” Still, I needed to know: Was my first impression accurate? So I pressed the zoom button on my camera lens and tried to snap a picture of the paper they were holding, to see what it said. …
“The democratic revolution and the socialist revolution (in brief).” Sigh. Don’t you just hate it when stereotypes prove true?
BONUS PICTURES
The following six pictures were also all taken in Berkeley, but on previous visits. I had saved them aside in a random-photos folder, since they didn’t fit into any previous reports. Their moment has now arrived. Here are six bonus images taken in Berkeley on earlier excursions:
“Come celebrate a Communist themed Shabbat with the Berkeley Bayit!” One wonders: Was this shabbat some sort of satirical costume party in which people dressed up as Marx and Trotsky? Or was it a serious Communist event?
Most likely, the answer is: Both. For this generation’s kids, there is no difference between ironic mockery of something and sincere affection for it. I’m reminded of a line from an old Simpsons episode, when a hipster kid points at Homer being a buffoon, and says to his friend, “That old guy’s cool!” The friend replies, “Are you being serious?” The first hipster looks distressed and says, “I don’t even know any more!”
But this is how it begins. You defuse a taboo and become comfortable with it by joking around with it. That paves the way for possibly later embracing the taboo. All one needs to do is see the proliferation of Che shirts to understand the principle.
Meanwhile, the Muslim students are not joking around. This sign advertised a conference sponsored by the MSA, teaching Muslim students how to become sophisticated in their political activism. Note that one of the speakers at the conference was Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, infamous for his anti-Semitic tirades at events on U.C. Irvine, U.C. Berkeley, and other campuses. I would have filmed his undoubtedly hair-raising rant, but I didn’t see the flyer until after the conference was already over. (Ah, heck, who am I kidding? I wouldn’t have had the nerve to attend an Abdul Malik speech.)
U.C. Berkeley’s Bancroft Library houses the world’s largest collection of books, maps and documents about the American West. It is a researcher’s paradise. But one day recently I went there to look something up, and noticed an exhibit in the lobby. Here’s the sign explaining it.
And then I moved along to the exhibit itself, which turned out to be mostly composed of gay porn magazines and sex books.
This is what counts as scholarship in one of America’s greatest libraries.
A typical neighborhood bulletin board. Right? But this is Berkeley…
..where typical neighborhood bulletin boards have notices about Orgone Generators and Chemtrails.
You gotta love this town. If Berkeley didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
People with that many demands will never be happy. Or normal.
What Zombie has shown is a mixture of communism and counter-culture. Not surprising that the first Pacifica radio station (KPFA) was started in Berkeley. I wrote about its founder Lew Hill here: http://clarespark.com/2010/07/04/pacifica-radio-and-the-progressive-movement/. It was social democratic heaven and anticommunist, but was friendly to the communist movement that had infiltrated the peace movement generally. Lew Hill was a suicide when he lost control of the station, and came from a very wealthy family, like other social democrats that we could all name.
You know, I’ve seen you plugging your site and pandering to us for quite a while now, and stupidly I said to myself “Maybe I’ll check out this badgers site, and see if it’s as annoying as her badgering”. So the badgering didn’t work in this case, as much as I had hoped it might just be another like-minded individual with something interesting to say. But typically, when I first get to your site it has a tiny little blurb and then says something to the tune of “Read The Story, Click The Link Below”, so clicked the link and it took me to almost an identical page, that yes once again asked me to click a link to read the story.
Clicked that link in the vain hope that I would see a story finally, and low and behold…..another small blurb and another friggin link. Still being stupid and clicking, well needled to say that this process went on for a long time and I never even once, anything remotely resembling an article. Apparently Claire likes to play a game to see how many hopeful or mindless folks will continue clicking link after link, never reaching anything of importance, just more moronic links.
Honestly this could be an isolated experience on my part, but keep in mind this was me clicking on a link from one of her comments a day or two ago, so it wouldn’t make sense that I was hitting dead pages. But I’m just naive enough to even test out this link that you’ve posted. And I would caution other readers here to be weary of going to the site, and if you do, be weary of continually clicking on link after link as I did. I can’t even fathom the purpose behind linking to your website that just appears to be linked page after page, with zero content. I mean I can think of some malicious computer breaking reasons, but as I said, I don’t if my retarded link session was just an errant problem at the time, or whatever. But just thought I would pass my experience in actually clicking one of Claire’s links, yours may differ but it doesn’t negate my fruitless journey into linkland.
Yo, Destroy! Maybe you should change out of your grungy pajamas, shave, and brush your teeth for the first time this month, and emerge from your mama’s basement, ehh?
Your rude and cowardly whacking of Clare Spark from the safety and shelter of your blog handle –which is itself ugly and offensive, and ultimately meaningless– is deeply offensive and inconsistent with the generally elevated threads on PJM sites.
Clare has never seemed to me to sticking herself into our faces, her life experiences are of considerable interest to many of readers here –particularly us veterans of the Pacifica wars– and she’s come out of it all pretty level-headed, it appears. And I don’t what your problem is navigating her site??? The links have always worked and the interactivity is perfectly intuitive.
You ow her particularly and all of us generally a heartfelt apology. Bummer man, to encounter with no warning such an abject jerk!
I’m sorry “Destroy…” but I completely agree with Alan Potkin. Clare Spark could run circles around you intellectually if she so desired. She visits the occasional PJM article, and leaves a brief comment (unlike yours) if and when she, in her years of serious writing has touched on a related topic. If so, she says as much.
This is “badgering?” I think not. Rather, I think it more says something about you to describe it as such.
I’ve read countless articles by her. They are the creme-del-a-creme of enlightened anti-PC anti-Leftist writing in an arena of cultural topics. What is particularly wonderful about them for me is that, like many Jews, she and I were both liberals when younger and have both “seen the light” for different reasons.
In Spark’s case it was a prolonged negative experience with ultra-Lefties in UCLA’s History Department where she obtained her Doctorate. A PhD is more than I have (an MS in CS) and it’s more, I dare say, than you likely have as well. How on earth do I know this?
Well, putting aside the spelling errors in your post, you apparently don’t know the difference between the words “weary” and “wary.” It’s not a mistake you made once.
And far worse than repeatedly misspelling her name and your ham-handed construction of English sentences was the pettiness you displayed. Your repeated references to to Dr. Spark by her first name were patronizing. I’m afraid it doesn’t reflect well on you.
Overall, you were unnecessarily cruel. This woman is a veritable icon for neo-cons such as myself. She’s a light espousing many of the principles found here at PJM. You’ve not made a friend here today in writing such a mean-spirited post.
You’ll note that both Potkin and myself do not address you in the same pedestrian tone you used with Spark. That’s called having a certain level of refinement. It’s something you may want to try to acquire.
I’d like to think that perhaps, when you do, you’ll reconsider your missive and extend Dr. Spark the apology she deserves.
You meany! I can’t believe you! Clare is so awesome. She is great. You are a jerk. Shame! Clare, let’s get outta here. Come on. Clare? Clare!
Nope, no mention of Lew Hill on that page. It’s a short paragraph, as is every other entry on Clare’s blog. Not particularly useful or interesting. It would be far better if Clare posted a link that was actually what she says it was. I’d followed her links before. None of the pages has much content and none are particularly interesting – I’d prefer if it were just a few pages with all of the content instead of dozens with so much clicking.
– of a PJM Troll while it was on a rare visit to this dimension. Otherwise, you should bless BART as it was no doubt a refreshing break from unreliable MUNI’s denizens, many boarding without paying the fare.
– covering the Chick-Fil-A at Fairfield tomorrow?
Fairfield is a LONG WAY from me, unfortunately.
I just may go up to Fairfield…with my camera
Send me the photos, if you do. Seriously.
– if some use dental dams or are viruses not transmitted by saliva?
Back from Fairfield Chick-Fil-A. A big store in a large mall that has every other fast food co. represented. (Noticed this one is a franchise). The young ladies in the long array of registers taking orders were a tad harried….only because of the crush of folks at midday. No sign of any protests. Just legions of moms with kids in tow, young locals on break, seniors and some military waiting their turn.
After I negotiated my exit from the jammed lots, and turned the corner I saw a TV News Van with a long faced, bored lady inside. That story template will have to wait for another time or place.
No protest?!?!?!??!?? Awww, drat!
Well, your yeoman’s work is GREATLY appreciated, nonetheless!
Meanwhile, check out Ringo, who was lucky to find a kiss-in at the LA branch:
Chick-fil-A Kiss-In, Hollywood: the pictures
Very funny, as always. You have a good eye for detail.
Sort of off-topic, and I’m already somewhat tired of the Chick-Fil-A hoo-hah, but I do wish that, just for giggles, they’d start offering a Lettuce, Bacon, Guacamole, and Tomato (LGBT) sandwich.
They already serve bacon on their breakfast menu, so it wouldn’t be a stretch.
That’d be hilarious!
You may also be interested to know that Q.U.I.T. (fourth photo) is one of the few remaining gay groups to be aggressively opposed to same-sex marriage. Their current stance used to be the mainstream gay activist stance back in the ’70s and ’80s, when dismantling the family unit was more overtly out on the table. Q.U.I.T. (and Gay Shame, another radical group) are furious at the conformity and what they say is dishonesty of the contemporary gay political scene. The goal is supposed to be the destruction of heteronormativity, not the emulation of it!
Interesting to see that the old SDS/Maoist ideology of the gay-liberation movement survives in the Land That Time Forgot.
“The goal is supposed to be the destruction of heteronormativity, not the emulation of it!”
Perfect description.
It’s never been about loving persons of the same sex. It’s about HATING people of the opposite sex (except your Mother, which is just frikkin’ SICK!)
Back in the day when psychiatrists actually practiced medicine, not politics, they had it all figured out. They hate their fathers. That’s it. And want to embarrass them severely. And, of course, they hate themselves.
I’m beginning to see their point. I kind of hate them, too, because they are SO annoying!
Screw sheep, if you want to, but can’t you people just shut the hell up?
The answer is no, because they’re miserable, and they want you to be miserable, too. “Gay”, my ass. They’re the least gay people on the face of the Earth.
What makes them think the goal has changed?
“A middle ground might be to fight for same sex marriage and its benefits, and then, once granted, redefine the institution completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution.” — Michelangelo Signorile, “Bridal Wave,” OUT Magazine, December/January 1994, p.161
Only in Berkeley can you find Q.U.I.T., radical Islamic groups and Jewish communists. I wonder if any of them realize how much they all have in common.
I’m just waiting for the sparks to fly when they realize what they [i]don’t[/i] have in common.
When that finally happens, you KNOW that’s going to be hilarious…
The goal has moved from destruction of heteronormativity to destruction of church/religion/faith and morality. It’s probably an easier goal, since heterosexuality is normal and will never go away (otherwise we will go extinct). But destroying God and moral values seems to be already taking place.
You know, it was only last weekend that I learned I’m … heteronormative. (Curious, my spell checker doesn’t even recognize it as a word!) I’m recalling that fellow long ago startled to realize he was talking in prose.
Sitting around a table at a communal shabbat meal much of the talk among these liberal Jews was about “social justice” projects they’re involved in, the Dream Act, and the and gay/lesbian synagogue one couple had attended. That’s about when the word entered the conversation. Never heard it before. Israel was never mentioned, so we know how these guys are voting in November. Sad really.
A GLBT sandwich?
Oh Jeez.
I’d have to have my CCD sensor cleaned following each trip.
I like the subtle. In the photo of the peeling Obama bumper sticker, the license plate has a frame on it for “Precision Peoples Car Repair”
re. the picture with the “weeds”
are these really weeds or the hoightytoighty “native” plants for “green” landscaping?
i’m also guessing the home where the “a selfish people” minivan is parked next to is above the $1 mil mark as well
What you’re referring to is known as “xericulture” — gardening with “dry” plants (i.e. that don’t need watering). Very trendy. Save water to save the environment, etc.
However, in addition, to the xericulture (which usually looks like weeds), there are also actual weeds.
Wow! Here I’ve been trendy for years and had NO idea!
Of course, my neighbors don’t always appreciate all I’m doing for the native flora of Mastic Beach. I’ve carefully cultivated the most native species I can find. I believe they’re known as “weeds”, colloquially.
And they just call me a slob. Now I can call myself a xericulturalist!
You always learn something new from Zombie!
I noticed that the van with the sign read “You have become a selfish people” instead of “We”, implying that the vehicle’s driver/owner, who doesn’t consider him/herself a “selfish person, wants “the rich” (meaning everyone else) to share their stuff.
Just get ‘em all together in one place….
I must disagree. If Berkeley didn’t exist, any attempt at inventing it would be laughed off as beyond absurd. Jews are going to fall for communist tripe again? They’re a people who put great stock in learning history, surely they wouldn’t repeat such a fresh mistake.
Wanna bet?
I’ll put $50.00 with Snork
Considering that evil is an inevitable part of the human condition, I have to agree with you and Snork on that. Not that I have 50 bucks to bet…
There is still fire in the 19th Century Marxist religion, and the Marxist Priesthood still seeks omnipotent earthly power. Sinners will be punished with hell-fire – in the here and now – by the Jewish and non-Jewish Marxist Priests of Power.
“The [Marxist] Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the Priests of Power… The real power; the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind… How does one man assert his power over another… by making him suffer… Always we shall have the heretic at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible; and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord.” George Orwell – 1984
You are exactly correct.
With the left the issue is never the issue. The issue is always power.
Much like the warmistas, Sunset.
“They’re a people who put great stock in learning history, surely they wouldn’t repeat such a fresh mistake”
As a Christian, I’m willing to risk my life (again) to defend the Homeland of my Jewish “older cousins” from the animals that seek their destruction.
But why, oh GOD why, do they always support GUN CONTROL?
And vote for DEMOCRATS that appease their muslims tormetors?
They are so smart and industrious, prosperous and decent…but in some ways, just BLIND.
well just remember when you talk about jews that its really “some jews” not all.
and these are usually secular jews far removed from anything religious besides for some remaining genes and some cultural flotsam thats under the pc radar.
and in about a generation there will no longer be any left since logically they integrate and disappear.
Wells never envisioned a decrepit sub-culture where the Morlocks and Eloi were combined in one suicidal, self-cannibalizing sandwich.
The funniest/most tragic thing is that if these people were forced to live by their self-professed principles they’d be horrified, since being gay and living in a Third World Muslim commie sh-thole where you make 100 dollars a month isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Telling them they’d have to live forever in Guatemala City forever on its own would probably produce a nervous breakdown. So basically they want to reproduce what would make a normal human have a nervous breakdown over here in America. This is why people say liberals hate America.
This is also why people say that liberalism is a mental disease.
These leftists are not the least bit liberal.
Didn’t Lewis Carroll invent Berkley?
Zom,
This is a touch of heaven. ROFL. Thank you.
In #4/QUIT, the note on the wall says: “Dear Customers, Please ask Cafe employees before playing __________. Thank You.”
What’s that at the end?
(Inquiring minds assume it might be … “with y**rself”)
It continues “…before playing the piano.”
The cafe has a rinky-dink piano (that the sign is affixed to). It’s more there as old-timey ambience, for decorative purposes, and isn’t meant to be played, really.
That particular cafe is a hippie collective; the back area (which one passes through on the way to the restroom) is mortifying; nothing seems to have been upgraded or cleaned since about 1972.
And the health department does nothing?
Some places basically count as “cultural artifacts”; if no customers complain — and why would they? They love the ambience — then there’s little motivation to act. Any place which harkens back to the ’60s is honored, not inspected.
“They love the ambience — then there’s little motivation to act. Any place which harkens back to the ’60s is honored, not inspected.”
ROFLMAO
I was there a couple of times — mid-Sixties in the Navy, with an iconoclastic shipmate who hung out in Berkeley, and late-Sixties, with my ex on a deliberate visit to one of the Methodist churches there, on semi-official business.
I never saw the underbelly, but I got enough of a glimpse to imagine what you mean in that reply.
What I saw was semi-deliberate — meaning, they thought it worked for their purposes, so they kept it. It was improvisational, germinating from whatever young minds could come up with.
The virulently-anti-Establishment “Counter Culture” came a bit later, so what I saw was relatively mild.
Nonetheless, because it was snarky they cherished it. It was part of who they (thought they) were. It … uh … self-actualized the existential cusps of their cosmic identities.
I was Silent Generation (pre-Boomer, thank G*d), growing into maturity on the occasions I was there, able to recognize what I saw.
Juvenile, and immensely pleased with itself.
Emotional [period].
Perhaps it grew from different roots than Chuck Berry so fatuously singing about his Ding-A-Ling, but it was no more noble. It was, and remains, simple rebellion.
Their noses are so firmly inserted in their navels (as in, gazing), I do not know how they can breathe.
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Statistically, this is the most common comment on threads about Berkeley.
How about build a megamosque there?
Shouldn’t we keep a few of the species for scientific study?
Eeeuuuw!
And risk them breeding. Nah, we just can’t take that chance.
Based on those pictures, I’m not convinced that’s a threat.
Sure. Pickled in brine.
Just a few words about the “Lenin cap” that you show in one of your photographs.
I have little knowledge of hat history but I strongly suspect that a fashion history expert would tell you that such caps were worn long before Lenin’s time upon the world stage and that they are still worn today by people of all political persuasions.
I know I’ve seen them in northern Europe when I was there in the 80s and the 90s. Now, I don’t know that the wearers were NOT Communists but I have my doubts….
Certainly, the book being read by the passenger you saw gives every indication of being a Marxist. I just want to make the point that not everyone wearing such a cap necessarily has similar political views.
Struck me as the trendy “Greek Fisherman’s Cap” that used to be sold in the equally trendy L.L. Bean catalog.
Being a sailor, such caps proliferated for a time in the 70′s and 80′s…but I never adopted the look.
I did, however often note that the Greek Fisherman’s Cap often was accompanied by what passed as a beard and some form of tobacco product…and also seemed popular among the original Dylan crowd. I always thought they just looked stupid. Except, perhaps on a Greek fisherman. But maybe…that had more to do with the wearer than the actual headwear itself. Examining a few, they appeared very well-made and of very high quality.
Uhhh..I got rid of my Greek fisherman’s cap when my university students thought it was a railroad engineers hat. I knew then that it was NOT hip.
Way back in 1965 I worked with a guy who wore one of these. He always attended meetings sitting on a radiator, above his teaming and squalid colleagues below. He was an overly eliteical, preppy kind of guy. I could never discover what his actual job was. I just finally supposed his expensive libul education left him too overqualified to do any actual work. As the poet says he was full of high sentence but a bit obtuse.
Oh, I forgot to add, in those days the Beatles used to wear these caps sometimes.
I believe it was Pete Seeger who made the Greek fisherman’s cap popular among lefty folk music types back in the day.
You may be right.
“I believe it was Pete Seeger who made the Greek fisherman’s cap popular among lefty folk music types back in the day”
I believe it was Mike Nesmith of The Monkeys TV show that first wore a knit cap in inappropriately warm weather…
Seemed to skip a generation though…we kids who watched The Monkeys never wore one…unless we did so with burnt cork smeared on our faces playing “commando” in the back yard with our BB guns, but that was more of a “Hogans Heros” kinda thing.
How or why the kids “after” us started wearing itchy uncomfortable watch caps in the middle of summer, while ALSO working up an extra sweat with physical activity (skatebording) I’ll never know…
But I DO know, their politics make about as much practical sense as their headgear.
Sorry…forgot to use Tinyurl. I hang my head in shame. <>
Not only that, it isn’t a picture of Obama.
Now sit in the corner wearing a Dunce Cap!
Hey….word is out!
Harry Reid told me that a guy called him and told him to tell me that it was a young BHO in the photo! I commented that it was a color photo and I didn’t think it was him. Reid told me, “Tough!”. So..I’m just passing along what I was told. Word is out!
AHA!
FOUND OUT!
A young Barack Obama….sporting…none other than….the Greek Fisherman’s Cap!
http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=UnN&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=np&biw=1280&bih=823&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=HO53ZONghF4NtM:&imgrefurl=http://www.chictopia.com/photo/show/314192-The%2BWorld%2BChanged%2BWhen%2BMen%2BStopped%2BWearing%2BHats-greek-fisherman-cap-hat-bdg-blazer-red-heart-pin-accessories-acne-shirt-&docid=XdY8I30W7TPw0M&imgurl=http://images0.chictopia.com/photos/JerryBerry/8107512084/greek-fisherman-cap-hat-bdg-blazer-red-heart-pin-accessories-acne-shirt-_400.jpg&w=400&h=600&ei=mRccUNH1FMWX6wGX-IDQBA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=965&vpy=315&dur=190&hovh=275&hovw=183&tx=102&ty=140&sig=116065638050424145600&page=2&tbnh=153&tbnw=104&start=18&ndsp=30&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:18,i:166
Sarah, Your city is incredibly diverse and it’s incredibly expensive. unfortunately for the rest of us, WE are stuck paying the bills. Your state is currently around 84 BILLION dollars in the hole. That’s a hefty price to pay for diversity.
To force others to pay for it is insane.
As for passion? Joseph Mengele was passionate too, we see where that got him.
I see all these colorful clothes from other cultures and lifestyles that these people have no business wearing and I’m reminded of a saying “a pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth”.
The United States is not Europe, but unfortunately much of Berkley is a European Marxist metastasis. In this country, especially in Berkley, when a man wears a Lenin cap while sporting a Trotsky beard, along with a black pseudo-proletarian coat, accompanied by socialist literature, you can have little doubt that he is Marxist clergy.
The prior history of the Lenin cap is irrelevant in this country. Liberty-loving, Declaration-loving, Constitution-loving, red-blooded Americans don’t wear Lenin caps; you will usually find them wearing baseball caps or Cowboy hats. If in Berkley a man looks like a Marxist, dresses like a Marxist, and reads like a Marxist, then it is reasonable to conclude he is a Marxist until proven otherwise.
You can’t always judge a man by his hat, but Marxists seem to like wearing European caps, while ordinary non-Marxist Americans tend to like baseball caps or Cowboy hats. Don’t forget, Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin were Europeans, and it remains true that American Marxists prefer European caps and European ideas, such as totalitarian government, compared to American ideas.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenin-with-Cap-Goatee-Profile-Glass-Mirrored-Badge-/320545340026?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aa1fdba7a
http://www.hollandhats.com/catalog/i17.html
Zombie, thank you again for a wonderful photo essay. You have captured the disconnect from reality very well. Your body of work, including this, should be required viewing for a “Culture of Atrophy.” You deserve a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, but you won’t get it, as the Pulitzer reinforces failure.
My last sustained time in the Bay Area was around the Loma Prieta earthquake. My ship was off-shore, and came in the next morning. For the last 12 years I’ve been telling stories about the strange denizens there.
Berkeley does not know how blessed they are to be in America. Do Oakland residents appreciate Berkeley’s residents obsessions?
The amazing thing about Bezerkeley is its conservatism – it hasn’t changed in 50 years. It is still like a flashback from a bad acid trip. I hitch hiked through there in 76 or so. The youth hostel in SF was some strange place run by a weird cult that had dozens of cats in every room. Somehow they’d get into the dorms even though you tried to keep them out.. The cats and the cult members just stared at you. It creeped us out so much we went to Bezerkeley where it got even stranger – the youth hostel there was like sleeping in a living nightmare of insane people blabbering, making strange contorted movements, sad skeletons of humanity lost in the nightmares of their utopian dreams.
Zombie is a hero-going where angels fear to tread.
I love your Berkeley reports, Zombie. They always help remind me that real life is usually weirder than anything a writer can invent.
Oh, hi NaCly, good to see you around. Yes, Zombie IS a national treasure, isn’t she? And BMoon behind you has cretated an almost all-time CLASSIC description of Berekeley’s denizens: “…sad skeletons of humanity lost in the nightmares of their utopian dreams.” I’m committing literary Grand Theft on THAT phrase..lol
VX,
Great to read your comments again. I’m going to steal BMoons phrase also.
O/T I skim Lexicans, xbradtc’s porch and Neptunus Lex’s facebook site when I have time. Local politics is keeping me busy. No Berkeley values in my community, please. I sure miss the sterling company of posters at Neptunus Lex.
Nacly Dog @20 and and VX:
Yes, I miss it/them too. Sorely. But Lex has moved on, and I guess we all have to as well.
Regarding Berkeley, I lived there about ten years, about 1975 ~ 1985 or so, along Shattuck Avenue, and later close to the UC Berkeley campus. At that time I was a mix of country-boy conservative and young-twenties liberal, with new-age religion thrown in. I moved in with the Moonies, across the street from a Buddhist building and stone’s throw from a Hare Krishna house. What a neighborhood!
Gazing at Zombie’s photos, it hasn’t changed much, not at all.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
Zombie is a she? Bigger balls on this woman than any Berkley male.
Man or woman, I’d say they’re even bigger than Inflated Scrotum Guy’s.
Vagina Warrior
Trying hard to understand, I believe that when feminists say vagina, as in Vagina Monologues, they are actually referring to the vulva. I wonder if those in power have ever looked at the female anatomy? Let me recommend Grey’s, old, but reliable in the basics.
Gray’s Anatomy is a obsolete heteronormative manifestation of repressive phallocentric oppression of womynkind by, by, — aw jeez, I can’t keep this up any longer.
It was ALL I could do to parse that.
Bravo Zombie! As a long-time fan who lives a stones throw from the Willard Middle School, I’d say you captured the ambiance perfectly. I walk and bike past that Code Pink truck all the time and have a whole folder of photos of it over the years with its various “messages”.
That ”mansion” with the weedy front yard?
Looks like they tried to go lawnless.
(I killed my lawn; ask me how)
We, too, put in native CA drought-resistant plants.
But we WEED around our plants.
So our yard looks wonderful.
Looks like they consider the weeds to be part of the native plant growth.
LOL!
“Out of curiosity, I noted down the address and later looked up the home’s estimated assessed value on one of those real estate property records Web sites: $1.2 million.”
I’ve been hunting for land for years; here in Ohio you could get 300 acres for that price — in shale gas country and including the mineral rights. For half that you can get 200 acres outside of the shale gas area.
That’s with homes and barns and fences and the lot.
Different universe. Shanties and lean-tos in San Francisco go for a million. A condo in NY recently sold for $60 million.
It’s all about the quality of the neighborhood. Within the city of Oakland, you can get a grandiose Victorian duplex for $200,000 — in a bad neighborhood. Meanwhile, in the fancy part of Oakland, a dilapidated shack will set you back $800,000.
The coasts, where the wealthy liberals live, are astronomically expensive. They are the elite, the 1%. Meanwhile Middle America, where the redneck Tea Partiers live, is dirt cheap. They are the 99%.
Wait, the media told me different. I am confused!
I can’t understand how low income people afford to live in a sh-thole like Oakland much less Berkeley. When I retired in 2003 I sold my overpriced home in the Puget Sound area and bought a home 150 miles east of there for $40,000 cash – and no – it isn’t a mobile home – its a stick built home circa 1950 when they used real wood. I had to remodel it to bring it into the modern age – even with that effort I still only have about $55,000 into it. I couldn’t have bought a city lot for that much money where I used to live. Plus there were so many liberals there I had to get out.
Really? You don’t?
Well, I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but…YOU, my friend, are paying for it.
Very few low income people in Oakland actually pay their own rent. The vast majority are in the “Section 8″ (or similar) program, which means that the government — i.e. taxpayer dollars — pays the landlord directly. Section 8 people can live wherever they want — at least wherever a landlord accepts Section 8 tenants. And most landlords around here do — the money is GUARANTEED by the government, whereas if you rely on the tenants to pay the rent, it’s a hit-or-miss proposition.
Many other low-income people live in housing projects where they pay no rent whatsoever — but there are fewer housing projects in Oakland than in places like Chicago or NY.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many people are also on “SSI” — what the media nonchalantly calls “disability.” I’d estimate that about 10% of the people getting up to $800/month or $1,000/month in direct payments from the government are actually physically disabled in the way the average person imagines “disabled.” The other 90% are scamming the system, with the cooperation and encouragement of the system.
To be classified as SSI eligible, you merely need to either go to a shrink, who will gladly sign a scrap of paper saying you are mentally unbalanced; or simply go to a counselor, who also have the authority to make the call. You want to know what a common justification for “disabled” is? “Unemployable.” And how do the counselors know that you are unemployable? All you have to do is demonstrate that you haven’t held a job in X number years. Presto! If you can’t hold a job, then that must mean you are unemployable, and disabled people are unemployable, therefore you must be disabled. The logic is completely circular, but no mind: I’d wager that upwards of one third of the residents of Oakland benefit from the “unemployable = disabled = big monthly check” scam.
Then of course there are food stamps, “general welfare,” Woman and Infant Children programs, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum. The scams are nearly endless. Your head would explode if you even learned about half of them.
And you, my friend, pay for it all.
That is how poor people afford to live in expensive coastal cities.
And that’s ALSO how they can afford to be full-time activists.
I was in Berkley in the 70s when I was young and stupid and thought it was cool. I’m sort of amazed that it hasn’t changed aT all – although I certainly have. I’m almost ashamed to admit it now that I actually pay taxes through the nose. Being Cuban born though I NEVER wore any kind of Che likeness and I actively boycotted stores that sold Che paraphenalia. Now I have children that live in the Valley and a brother in San Diego and I can barely bring myself to visit them. It’s hard to keep my big mouth shut when surrounded by so much idiocy in Liberal Hell. II feel many of the nation’s illls would be cured if that fault would finally spiral the state into the Pacific. It’s not like they make anything the rest of the country needs any more. Great photo essay-sad commentary.
Years ago, when my brother worked at the Berkeley Tower Records, he rented a couch in an apartment filled with other people.
Zombie: “The goal is supposed to be the destruction of heteronormativity,…”
If and when the brainwashed facebook masses realize that this is teh gheys real endgame, well, aren’t they just going to feel a little duped?
Another fine photo essay Zombie.
No more than how the lefties will feel duped should the islamists realize their goals. I think that thought won’t hit them until just before they part with their heads – or commit body and soul to islam and ala. In any case the LGBT’s will simply get their heads lopped off – and wondering all the while where the love went.
Berserkley.. spent a year there one day.
If it wasn’t for their awesome outdoor concert venues and Rasputin Records store I’d visit during the same getaway in the 90′s I had NO business there whatsoever.
Not to mention taking-in/ participating in a few midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show acts.
Though being over the crowds and everything in-between experiences at concerts and the dawn of mp3′s, ITunes technology – the Berserklians, Boulder’s trustfundarians are in my rear view.
As for the Commies, Socialistas – there’s pinheads like that even here in SE Asia.
In Hong Kong, Bangkok etc., you’ll see plenty of overweight, balding White Westerners with their mail-order wives wearing ‘Che’ and ‘Mao’ busts on shirts, bumbags and shoulder bags for ‘fashion’.
Heck there’s a ‘Che’ store on Lantau Island’s Outlet Mall in HK. Idiocy.
The encouraging aspect though is Czech Republic’s young and old small business owners I’d met, befriending some remember well Communism/ Socialism doctrine and detest it altogether,
BTW, Zombie. Having grown up in Concord and later stationed at Travis AFB, us riders on BART ALWAYS were on alert when going to the city and stopping at the West Oakland station.
Whether it was 6 a.m. or 10 p.m. – I imagine it’s still the case.
Sad, really. For there are spectacular churches, 2nd hand stores, multi-generational cafes, dessert shops that are to die for.
My wife’s family has lifelong friends in Albany, next to Berserkley. Very nice though Illiberal and politically-tunnel-visioned as they come.
About the Communist-themed Shabbat… you might find this interesting:
http://www.secularjewishculture.org/haggadah_for_non_believers.html
The “Wicked Son”, in one Communist Haggadah, is depicted as a businessman.
“If Berkeley didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it.”
I’d rather not, if possible. But there are previous versions.
‘In addition to this there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words “Socialism” and “Communism” draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, “Nature Cure” quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.’
George Orwell, “The Road to Wigan Pier” (1937)
BTW, it’s Berserkeley, as in berserk. Berzerkeley is a somewhat acceptable alternative. But hey, I just used the ATM at the Chase at the top of Solano Avenue, and on the receipt it says “Berkley”.
Does the San Andreas Fault run anywhere close to Berkley?.
Just hoping it does.
Or, failing that maybe yet another season of “Lost” (ha, didn’t realize the irony) and have all of the residents transported to the island. Oh what tragicomedy would ensue…
The Hayward Fault runs through Berkeley. Almost as bad as the San Andreas.
However, plenty of quakes have hit the city through the decades, with comparatively little damage. Most of the houses are wood frame and bend with the swaying. Very little of the city is on landfill. All UC buildings are strictly up to seismic standards. No real skyscrapers. So, although obviously any quake would cause damage, it’s not likely to cause catastrophic damage, especially compared to some other cities.
However — and this comment applies to everyone who speculated or hinted about earthquakes — wishing physical harm upon the city is not amusing to those of us who live in the Bay Area! No such thing as a strong earthquake that affects one city; anything big enough to damage Berkeley is going to be big enough to shake hundreds of square miles. And physical “punishment” is not going to “solve” anything. Better to wish for a seismic rupture of the population’s common sense. I understand that to many folks an “earthquake” is just a comic substitute for basically a “cosmic cluebat,” but rain falls on the just and unjust alike and earthquakes affect everyone equally as well.
I’m sure it’s strictly coincidental that the eagle symbol on the flyer for the Muslim Peace Coalition so closely resembles that of Hitler’s Nazi party.
Yes, I’m being sarcastic.
“I’m sure it’s strictly coincidental that the eagle symbol on the flyer for the Muslim Peace Coalition so closely resembles that of Hitler’s Nazi party.
Yes, I’m being sarcastic.”
Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini, appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by Sir Herbert Samuel the High Commissioner of British Mandatory Palestine in 1921, played a central role in introducing the ideology and tactics of the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler into the Arab World. In a career that spanned more than 5 decades, el-Husseini contributed to the development of Nazi style organizations
in Arab capitals, acted as a conduit for money confiscated from Jews by the Nazi’s during World War II to be used to finance anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activities, and lived in Berlin during the war years where he headed a Nazi-Muslim government in exile.
Five decades!
Don’t know the policy on links here but any search engine will bring this up…
Precisely. And the modern parallels of both movements is unmistakeable to anyone with functioning mind. Yet Islamic fascism is the new darling of the left while Nazi fascism is forever (and rightly so) condemned.
Just another example of why the term ‘liberal hypocrisy’ is redundant.
On getting rid of the actually useful shop equipment and replacing it with the theatre, it is called Dewey’s aesthetic and is is grounded in emotion, not reason. Feel, not know is the current rage and so much got piloted in CA back in the 70s when the feeling curriculum was supposed to spread empathy that the Soviet people were just like us. Therefore, nuclear disarmament would be a goodwill gesture.http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/why-quality-learning-may-be-the-last-thing-you-want-for-your-child/ explains what Quality Education based on Dewey’s aesthetic vision really looks like. In case you hear your school principal or district super mention it this fall and believe what they are pushing is a good thing.
Not in the least.
Those pictures really show where the political corruption of the modern research university via funding finally leads. It’s like we are looking at people with beliefs with no souls or any solid basis for what they have been taught to feel and believe.
Quibble:
That cap on that one radical is actually a Greek fisherman’s cap. Very bohemian, but not particularly bolshie.
Everyone keeps saying that, but from my angle it really looked more Leninesque and less Greek. Take a look at these photos of Lenin’s exact style of cap, and you’ll see that it matches this guy’s exactly.
It could be that Lenin was himself wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap, or at least a variant that was popular in Russia at the time, so there’d be essentially no difference between a “Lenin cap” and a “Greek fisherman’s cap.” But I posit that at least one of two things are true:
1. There are minor variations in Greek fisherman’s caps over the years and between manufacturers, and this guy chose the style that most closely matched Lenin’s.
And/or…
2. He chose the cap specifically because of its radical connection to Lenin, not because he wanted to resemble a Greek fisherman. The familiar “dog whistle” that lefties love to point out. In a comparable vein, a tennis shoe is just a tennis shoe to an outsider, and plenty of innocent random people wear Tennis Show Style XYZ — but if you live in a certain cultural milieu, wearing that shoe will mark you as a sympathizer to a specific gang. The best known example is that wearing K-Swiss shoes marks you as a Norteño gang member (since K-Swiss stands for “Kill a Sureño When I See a Sureño.” Seriously). The gang in our photo is “Marxists.”
What Bruce Bawer said of the hippies in Christiana, Denmark might be said of many of these denizens: They imagine themselves to be rebels against the sytems, when they are in fact its wards.
Berkeley’s even worse than Christiana, since in Berkeley, the rebels are the system itself.
Good Lord. I thought you were confusing something with Christiania, Norway (Oslo), but I guess not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania
The sticker of Obama with the drawer of butterflies and doves was in a “Election Collection Packs” of stickers that were offered by sickerobot.com. Although you cant find the image on their site, there is one on their flicker site. http://tinyurl.com/ckcdenj
[The moderator is tired of these quotes from Alien, so henceforth they will be excised from comments, leaving the non Alien parts intact.]
It’s just that their complete disconnect with reality appalls and frightens me.
Well done, Zombie. I used to find Berkeley to be an open air zoo for a certain human type, but now I just find it boring.
This is all very amusing until we realize that these people have WON. That’s right, these people now control our country. They own the media, educational system from K through Phd and most of the government. Anybody who spends 30 minutes on Google can prove Obama is a marxist infiltrator. Obama IS a Black Panther, Obama IS Jeremiah Wright. Obama IS Bezerkely. What comes next? I used to be a Marxist 40 years ago and I’ll tell you: the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. That’s why Obama puzzled everyone with his bizarre remarks about establishing a “Civilian Security Force, just as powerful as the US Military”. Don’t get it? I do. He’s setting up the “People’s Revolutionary Vanguard”, to defend the Revolution against the “counter revolutionaries” and “capitalist roaders”. Who are they? That’s YOU…that’s US! You can’t say, “It can’t happen here”, because it already has! Just a few more gates to lock shut and it’s done. Who’s going to stop them? The media? The Congress? The “gay” military? The US is as doomed as the Titanic a minute after it hit the iceberg. The band still played but anyone who had the brains to go below decks and see the damage knew she had only an hour or two left. Get out now if you can. Good luck to everyone.
Who is going to stop them? *We* will, one way or another. “Who dares wins.”
The guy with the Lenin cap is funny until you think about the Obama’s “Civilian Security Force”, AKA, “The People’s Revolutionary Vanguard”. That’s right, imagine this guy, during a declared “national emergency”, being promoted to general and put in charge of 10,000 inner city gangsters who have been given military equipment and told they are now going to “defend the revolution” by going out into the conservative American countryside and “pacify” the “white racist redneck Christian bigot crackers”. That’s how the Nazis did it and Stalin and Mao. Find a few sadists, put them in charge of sociopaths with machine guns and then clamp down on the population using pure terror. Understand the Second Amendment now?
Bob, those ten thousand inner city gangsters won’t have a fucking clue what to do with top-shelf military gear. They have no discipline, no drive, and little intelligence. Honest-to-Christ illiteracy would be a significant problem in their ranks.
They could be easily scattered by a well-armed force of patriots a fraction of their size. Plus, they all come from the cities. How long do you think the inner cities will last when there is no water, no power, and no food deliveries?
Remember, we surround them, and we’re sitting on about 80% of the strategically important real estate.
It’s not just Berkely that looks like this. You see the same stuff in places like Nyack NY.
no offense, but berkeley is in a league all its own
Anyone doesn’t believe “Mr. Lenin Cap” or guys like him could be a threat? Read about the Nazi’s, men like Himmler and Goebbels. They were powerless little desk clerks and wannabe’s until someone gave them a black uniform with a shiny metal “Death’s Head” empblem on the tall peaked black cap and the power of life and death over their fellow citizens. These Bezerkely types all have one common thread: they grew up feeling rejected, different, ridiculed, unloved…outcasts. They are filled with a bottomless pit of rage, hate and no outdated Christian morality to keep them in check if they ever were given real power and an excuse to use it.
That is really good insight.
Those of us who live in leftist enclaves see things a little different than those of you in middle america. Your oddballs, malcontents, and losers flood our hometowns.
Everybody craves to be around like minded people. The freakiest of the freaky who grow up in places like Bakersfield hate that environment. Their solution — move to SF or Berkeley where their hatred of middle america fuels their politcal activism.
Evidently if put on one of my newsboy caps, I could confuse the he££ out of them! (I even have a nice little beard, too.)
Thank you Zombie. Fascinating as always.
On a walk through Berkeley Hills (admiring the million plus homes) I managed to cross the city line into another town (Albany). On the return trip I was welcomed back to Berkeley by a sign “You are entering a nuclear free zone.”
Also, you missed one hypocrisy moment. I was impressed by the prevalence of Priuses parked in Berkeley Hills but check the wheelbase of that “you have become selfish people” vehicle. That’s one voracious gas guzzler!
Berkeley is home to bittler aging radicals who went away to college and never gave up their rent controled apartments.
Young occupista types are moving into formerly all black West Oakland where they are starting ararchist-bicycle collectives. Some of them work at Pixar in neighborhing Emeryville. Some of them make latte’s for the aring hippies. Some of them beg for money by the freeway.
When everybody wants to be a freak it does not make for a healty society. Some of us have to be squares and have kids and serve in the military.
The manhole cover with the entertaining “City of Bekrley” was probably cast in India. I have no idea whether the average Bekrleyite is aware of this, or what they think of it if they are, but the manhole covers are at least functional, which is not true of all Bekrley denizens.
Weed-choked yard??
No, no.
Those are native California plants, planted because lawns require watering.
It’s purposeful.
This issue has been addressed in previous comments. Read up-thread.
Zombie,
At the risk of being nitpicky, if conservatism had a style manual it would require scare quotes around the word “economist” when used to describe Robert Reich. He writes about the economy but he doesn’t think like an economist and he doesn’t seem to have any idea of how economists think. He has no discernible credentials and his “analyses” (which are pure Democrat party hackery liberally sprinkled with the full range of man-in-the-street myths about both microeconomic and macroeconomic phenomena) betray no economic training whatsoever.
Shoulda gone to Smokey Joe’s diner, Shattuck and Cedar(I think). “Famous for blocks around”, “Where the elite meet to eat no meat”. Kosher breakky and din-din, although old Ned may be a “Jew for Palestine”,I don’t know, but he’s a dead-head and all-around hippie and runs a good grill.
I probably will not be able to refrain from laughing and clapping when the “Big One” wipes the Californian coast from the face of the map.
Sigh. Please see comment #31b above.
California’s not dropping into the ocean; it’s apparently grinding its way up the coast & in some tens of megayears is expected to crash into Alaska.
“Oh sweet Saint of San Andreas, hear my prayer”.
I know I’ll likely get nothing but vitriol and abuse for this but: I live in Berkeley. I love it and I’m proud of it. For the record I’m a white, married, heterosexual 30-something woman. I went to UC Berkeley, voted for Obama, drive a Prius and eat organic. I also think that lots of the politics that go on in Berkeley are pretty out there and I haven’t participated in a protest since college (and even that was a “Take Back the Night” march against rape & sexual abuse, an issue I hope everyone can get behind.) Yes, we attract more crazy lefties than almost anywhere on earth, but we’re also incredibly diverse and the people here are passionate. And I’ll take a diverse population of passionate citizen over homogenized, boring suburbia any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
You seem to think unwarranted generalizations are being made about Berkeley Sarah. I don’t think Zombie is making unfair generalizations, though some of the reader comments go too far. However, I notice you are making a generalization yourself with the “homogenized, boring suburbia” remark. In the small town where I live, I’ve never seen so many passionate citizens when it comes to the election this year. There are even a few passionate in supporting Obama!
we’re also incredibly diverse and the people here are passionate.
And you love diversity as long as no “boring suburbanites” are included in your diverse population.
I lived a year in Bersekeley as a hippie activist dropout. My impression of Berkeley is that there are a lot of people in Berkeley who are full of themselves. I recall some middle-aged professionals saying that in future centuries, Berkeley would be seen as comparable to Renaissance Italy. No, they weren’t talking about Nobel Prize winning scientists at UCB, but about all the activists.
Like I said, full of themselves.
All well and good you like, love, and desire no place else but Berkeley, Sarah, but you do realize that the diverse population you speak passionately about includes people like Inflatable Scrotum Man, right?
Yes- I picked that example out so I could poke at you a little
I will take boring suburbia any day. Oh, by the way, its not boring. Society really cannot afford too many places like Berkeley, so thankfully there aren’t many places like it. It far from normal, and reality seems to be rather absent there.
I would hope it wouldn’t be necessary to invent. The place is an insane asylum! AND, diversity is not their ultimate goal. They’re activist because their goal is to silence their opposition not co-exist. Che was a bloody murderer. Communists have killed millions of their citizens all over the world for not agreeing with the tyranny of their government. Those Berkley people who embrace such tyranny are stupid, gullible, ignorant jerks, period. There is no way to sugar coat it.
We were in Berkeley two weeks ago. We walked right into a group protesting the sale of the (quite beautiful) old post office building to a group of INVESTORS who want to make MONEY from it. And one of them is DIANE FEINSTEIN’S HUSBAND!!! (I thought she was a liberal. I am confused…)
The amusing contrast is to the group protesting the sale of the (quite ugly) La Jolla (San Diego) post office. There they spoke of the historical value of the building.
My favorite artifact in Berkeley is the peace sign in the marble floor of the Shattuck Plaza Hotel.
The campus is beautiful and I loved the old buildings but no way would I allow my kids to attend college there.
Anyway Zombie, we loved your piece and I need to start reading your blog!!
I wonder up to Berkeley once every few years or so. The place is such a caricature of itself that I have to laugh when I go up there. I mean, it is so totally predictable. I once had a college student stop me on the street (Ashby) with an arm full of fliers and started off on this tirade about the evil Republicans. I listened for about a minute. Then I told her that I had heard exactly the same pitch on exactly the same street nearly probably not 2 blocks away 30 years ago from a woman who could have been her mother. I suggested maybe she could come up with some new material.
I asked her what she thought of Democratic Party corruption and the skimming of taxpayer money by public employee unions to kick back to politicians’ political campaign funds. That’s when she lost interest in talking to me.
CP, good to see you on another venue. (Admire your stuff on HG.)
It is amazing how timeless — and dreary — Berkeley and San Francisco really are. Same liberal Bravo Sierra, different decade.
Frankly, a lot of charm of “The City” is just embellishment for the tourists. It’s not pretty at all. Were it not situated where it is, it would be a grimy, pathetic burg with absolutely no qualities to recommend it except that it affords a refuge for the truly strange, the panhandlers, and the unions. Gertrude Stein had it right — except the wrong side of the bay
Berkeley..well, zombie’s marvelous album of candid shots show how tragically mindless these folks truly are.
“Berkeley’s full of heathen scum – I should know, I am one” etc
from the FANG LP “Where The Wild Things Are” around 1984
+500 for getting Fang into the discussion.
I’ve lived in SF since about 1986. I’m probably one of the only living conservatives you’ll find there (I have, quite literally, only met one other). But it’s true that an occasional trip to Berkeley makes SF seem like Houston when I get back.
Next year, at long last, I will make my escape to Montana. “Viva la retirement!” I shall scream as I leave California forever, pockets bulging with my ill-gotten home equity gains (I bought early and in the right place–pure luck).
Great photos. I lived in Berkeley for a few years during the 1980′s. It was nice, but I was living in North Berkeley away from the bums who peed in doorways and weirdos more desperate to find a cause than a job. The problem with Berkeley is that the city government and majority of residents are unable to evolve. They are a curiosity, much as Neanderthals must have been to Cro-Magnons; an evolutionary dead end. What one typically sees in Berkeley is a rehashing of the same old socialist and empowerment crap. That and people who are afraid to be functional adults. It never changes.
Try owning rental property in Berkeley, don’t. It’s a mistake.
http://bpoa.org/articles.php?pid=25&menu=8
I consider Berkeley to be a zoo for exotic, potential dangerous humans.
There are endless dreary bumper stickers, signs, graffiti etc attached and painted on the walls everywhere reminding people that we are a bad country and a bad people. Oxymoronic signs “Queers for Palestine” had an ironic ring and “Take Back the Night” parading against rape and sexual abuse yet as left wingers attaching their empathy to Islam a misogynistic killing machine. They also expressed solidarity with various global dictators who jail and murder anyone who protests anything.
The elderly man with the OWS button seemed a little long in the tooth for this raucus group of unwashed 20 somethings w/o jobs or an ability to be coherent. Nothing became them so in New York as their leaving of it. They were all quite rude and abusive when they demonstrated. They were also filthy from life on the streets that were filled with trash from food and plastic and sewage from their using the streets as a toilet. The smell that emanated from where they slept, ate and went to the bathroom was unspeakable. They were charged with rape and robbery and encountering them anywhere on the street could be an unpleasant affair. If you got in their way, they’d scream invectives or gave a body push. They were exceptionally abusive towards senior citizens.
I visited Berkley more than 30 years ago. It was a happier more up beat place than it is now. It has become a nag with its endless carping, its everything is hopeless messages transmitted by dull sloppy signs painted badly without care or imagination. Egads, we almost lived there!!!!! New York on the other hand is dynamic, smart, beautiful, rich, a never ending creativeness that effects everything from travel to homes to business to the arts and institutions. Yes, we demonstrate on occasion for a good cause but we never ever destroy our streets and parks nor do we abuse those who do not agree with our cause. It would be unthinkable for anyone to despoil our sidewalks and streets with human sewage. OWS left New York with millions of dollars in clean up costs, memories of abusive behavior and a sad array of young unwashed and confused older teens who were more boorish than articulate and more criminal than idealists. We were unimpressed.
I’m missing something here: Is a magazine that carries the article “Ex cons: ‘We abuse fags’” homophobic or not homophobic?
It’s gay porn: masochistic fantasy.
Berkley is, of course, the penultimate example of the Leftist “progressive” college town.
There are others. The one that comes immediately to mind to me is Yellow Springs, Ohio. Home to the former Antioch College (bankrupt but now re-organizing!). A lot of the same scenery with regards to people and t-shirts, but on a smaller, less militant scale. A bit of a charming place at one time, but getting rather seedy now.
Oberlin,Ohio, west of Cleveland, home of Oberlin College. Another “hotbed” of progressive thought.
As others have noticed, the whole concept of “progressive” is amusing, in that they hold onto the same ideas and false consciousness year after year, decade after decade. They are the progressive ones, though. They have, for the most part, never thought through the full implications of the ideas that they foment. They are tolerated and indulged within a wealthy capitalist society, as they truly are not much of threat to anyone. No, they haven’t won.
What is winning is the culture of dependency and subsidy, where government largesse (as Zombie described above about SSI, WIC, etc) is creating a society of parasitic non-producers, whose vote counts just as much as yours and mine. My wife’s cousin is an arch example of that, who appears as a white middle class normative, but has been on disability for forever, and of course thinks ‘Obamacare’ is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
A more regimented Leftist society would actually be the death knell of places like Berkley. They would never know what hit them.
Who here lives in Berkeley? I’m a student finishing up 4 years, and I’ve never seen many of these. Certainly the City Council is inept, and some residents are crazy, but this report doesn’t seem very accurate. I don’t think there is any way I could collect so many photos of weird things in one day (disregarding the ones from the previous visits at the end). Over a week maybe, if I was working hard. Shame on you for taking advantage of people’s ignorance of Berkeley and their impulse to have someone to belittle. If you were being accurate, you would take pictures of the 36,000 students (primarily Asian and pretty conservative) who live in the houses and apartments of Berkeley. You would also take pictures of all the TopDog stands – an incredibly libertarian (and incredibly berkeley!) hot dog business that posts articles and bumper stickers all over their walls. I think I saw Imprimis, the publication of Hillsdale College, there.
I said in the post itself that this wasn’t an “official portrait” of Berkeley, just some scenes I randomly stumbled across during my visit. It was not meant to be an exhaustive documentary about every possible vista.
I have a very keen eye for these things. Just because you don’t notice them doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
I lived a year in Berkeley, not as a student, but as dropout hippie activist. There is a difference between the transient student population, which tends to leave Berkeley after 4 years, and the permanent residents. The permanent residents tend to have a higher proportion of moonbats than the students do. Zombie was describing moonbat residents more than students.
For example, a cousin of mine got his Ph.D. in Biology from Berkeley, and went on to a productive career as a professor and research scientist. Not a moonbat.
From the web, I can find evidence of moonbattery among some people whom I knew during my time in Berkeley, who have remained in Berkeley for decades- some of whom are native to Berkeley. They were not UCB students when I knew them.
Terrific photo essay. Great observations and pithy captions. I loved it, even if some parts creeped me out a little!
The People’s Republic of Berkeley is not a joke. As a business student at Cal in the 80s, I watched many instances of insanity, such as the City Council spending money on street signs proclaiming Berkeley to be a nuclear-free zone, while the potholes got bigger because there was no repair budget. But there’s one story that most clearly shows how the city and denizens think:
Berkeley has a population of about 120,000. Of that, about 30,000 are students (20,000 undergrad, 10,000 grad). There is on-campus housing for maybe 10,000 students, and some commute, but there is and always has been a huge housing crunch. Some friends of mine wanted to buy a house and convert it to house 5 students. They did their research and went before the Rent Board (of course housing is a regulated community asset in Berkeley). The mortgage, taxes and other costs would be $1300 per month (back in the mid-1980s) so they wanted to charge $1400 per month to allow for repairs, vacancies, etc.
The board looked over the plan, and approved it…for $1200 per month in rent. But the mortgage was higher than that! Yes, but the Board had decided that it wouldn’t be fair to the renters to charge more than $1200, so that was the maximum allowable rent. No appeal. My friends did not buy the house, 5 potential student housing spots were lost, but the Rent Board had done its duty of protecting innocent renters from evil capitalist pig-dogs. (At the time, I was paying $250 per month for an UNregistered room in a private house. The free market cannot be suppressed, but costs can be increased by government interference.)
Side note: In November 2008 I received a special post-election issue of the Daily Californian (UC Berkeley’s student newspaper is an anomaly – a nonprofit corporation owned by the students, and it functions as a de facto local newspaper for the campus and the city). This issue was dedicated to the tremendous victory in which our savior Obama had emerged with an overpowering mandate to purge the galaxy of the evils of Bushism. Now that the people had come to their senses, all would be well in the promised land, and puppies and rainbows and unicorns would be free for all. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. The language and presentation was…orgasmic. And, it was truly offensive to the 47% of the population that had chosen to reject the Kool-Aid. My Daily Cal donation budget now goes to PJMedia.
Berkeley is a Holy City. The inhabitants fiercely display their joy following the 3rd Commandment, and show they believe in the soul-converting power of Holy Scripture.
DISABILITY, SSA AND SSI
It is not what the Media says. The criteria demand symptoms, signs, and laboratory findings to establish loss of capacity. It must agree. A diagnosis by a sympathetic doc has no weight. Symptoms and claimant descriptions of loss of function have no weight unless signs and lab findings agree. If there is a lack of scientific backing of reported loss, next is to see if the claimant has a mental disorder. Failing a mental limitation, they are denied. Those denied might have a good chance to get on state disability as some states give weight to symptoms having no means of support and to a doctor’s diagnosis with less or hardly any medical description supporting it.
DISABILITY PROBLEMS
–SSA Disability was set up to minimize cost. States’ agencies worked the cases. Federal reviewers read the cases for errors. All of it should have been Federal. Some states were rehabilitation-minded and wanted to block the lure of an alternative lifestyle of endless vacation. They sort of followed Workman’s Compensation criteria on whether the person could find “other work,” instead of SSA criteria which is different. They would deny the disabled. Some states played Earth Mother Cornucopia. Some states wanted to plug non-workers into Federal money. Federal review blocked this nonsense.
–When SSI rolled out in the 1970s, Congress cut the overhead by cutting back on Federal Review. Then the billions started flying out the door. Some, but not enough Federal Review came back, and in the strain the Federal Review had gotten war-weary.
–Swarms of Baby Boomers are hitting the demographic region where disability in their time cohort is rampant and where retirement will decimate the ranks of the Federal Reviewers.
–Add with the drop in taxable events and job evaporation and there is disability everywhere.
That may be how it’s SUPPOSED to work, but, if you think that’s how it works, you’re a fool.
This is for one reason: there is no incentive for government employees to do their job. NONE! So they don’t. This rule applies equally clean across the board, from Barry the Dolt to the janitor at the TSA. They hire affirmative action babies, so they’re stupid and lazy. Once they realise that they really don’t have to do anything to retire with a nice pension, but might get in trouble of they make waves, even the good people quickly become coasters.
NOTHING should ever be done by government that can possibly be done by private enterprise, preferably without any govenrment interference.
Private industry screws you, there are courts, which may or may not help you. Government ALWAYS wins, unless they have decided to just give you money, which means you kiss their butt all day long. They let a mad dog murderer out and he kills your child, go scratch. You have no recourse. None.
If you think otherwise, just because “people are good” by default, you’re an idiot.
And will probably vote for Ostupid.
I really enjoyed the Bancroft Library’s LGBT display, and they have collected a wide array of both literature and pop culture to showcase at the library. As well as beautiful photography! And it outlines and follows how LGBT history has been portrayed and addressed over the ages. I think it is wonderful scholarship and storytelling, and wholeheartedly disagree with you. If you want kosher, check out the exhibit on university and library history down the hall.
Next time take your camera to Santa Cruz – Weirdo Capital of the World!
On a recent visit to Santa Cruz I was nearly assaulted, and paid 15 dollars for a hamburger, and seven for a glass of beer.
So now you are monitoring people to see what they read and how they exercise their freedom of speech.
“Noticing” something is not the same thing as “monitoring” someone. I have no idea who these people are, nor do I particularly care. Please note that I also, out of a courtesy to everyone in this report, including and especially people I make fun of, blurred all faces and license plates to ensure anonymity — the exact opposite of what progressive trackers and stalkers who practice “the politics of personal destruction” do.
If I’m not allowed to even notice what people are reading next to me on BART, then we’ve definitely entered a postmodern police state.
As for monitoring how people “exercise their freedom of speech” — the whole point of public speech is to have an audience. They WANT their message to be noticed. If you didn’t want everyone to know that they “have become A SELFISH PEOPLE,” then you wouldn’t drive around with a big sign on your car, hoping everyone will see it and take note of it. Instead, you’d think it to yourself, privately.
You gotta right to exercise your rights also Zombo. :: ))
*sigh*
Not our countrymen.
Arguably not our species.
Coexistence is not possible.
My daughter and son-in-law live and own a business within 100 miles of there. The Democrats are about to tax their 20+ year old business out of existence in California. Fortunately, it is eminently portable. I have been urging them to return to America for a long time. They may soon. At which time, I will no longer have any reason to ever visit California again. And they can happily return to being the province of Alta California and I would gladly cede it back to Mexico. Because it is not part of our country anymore.
The citizens of Berkeley can deal with the P.R.I. and the cartels.
Subotai Bahadur
Just lump an entire city of 112,000 people together by cherry picking the most ridiculous scenes you can find and mocking those whose views are different than your own. Stellar journalism, just stellar.
Never mind that we have the most respected public university in the world and a more culturally and intellectually diverse citizenry than anyone commenting on this blog can imagine. Please, stay home in your little bubbles and stop poisoning thinking people with brainless drivel.
And for God’s sake, if you’re going to whine about it, at least pay enough attention to spell the goddamn name of the city correctly. It’s BERKELEY.
Please point to where I misspelled the city’s name (Aside from noting how the city misspelled its own name).
Any city that votes 90+% for Barbara Lee is not “intellectually diverse.” I don’t think “diverse” means what you think it means.
Come on Zombie, diversity of thought and reason is NOT what they mean. I wonder if they really believe all cultures are equal? Would they accept with open arms, cannibalism? h/t Oleg
No one is saying that all residents of Berkeley are moonbats. However, the proportion of moonbats among Berkeley residents is substantially higher than elsewhere. Consider Gus Newport, former Berkeley mayor, who was an officer in the Soviet front World Peace Council. From Destructive Generation:
How many mayors of an American city would say that they have problems with Democrats and Republicans, but not with Communists?
The moonbat reputation of Berserkeley is well-deserved. If you don’t like the moonbat reputation of Bersekeley, I suggest that you show some spine and stand up to the moonbats.
Don’t tell me I don’t know what I am talking about, because I have lived in Bersekeley.
You’re being far too mild about Gus Newport: After retiring from the mayor’s office of Berkeley, Newport was a leading communist.
For all their hypocritical political flailing about, 1) at least it’s mostly localized to Berkeley (though portions of SF and Marin do have similar strains of stupidity), 2) it is almost worth putting up with it just for the existence of The Cheese Board and the produce section at Berkeley Bowl. Rarely go to Berkeley Bowl, but a trip to The Cheese Board is worth it for their awesome selection of cheese and fantastic breads, especially the onion cheese curry habrot on Tuesday. I think I can learn to ignore a bunch of delusional twits just to continue to have access to The Cheese Board and their bakery. I am not forced to live in Berkeley which gives me the freedom to just partonize something they do right in that city. And despite The Cheese Board being a collective, as long as the selection of cheeses continues to be awesome and the bread top notch, I will patronize them. In some way, The Cheese Board despite its commie tone, flourishes based on capitalism that people will vote with their wallets and those that make a product or provide a service better than others at a fair price shall thrive.
I agree wholeheartedly with your shopping preferences.
I will take my selection of Wisconsin cheeses ANYDAY of the week.
The Cheese Board has a lavish selection of great Wisconsin cheeses…and great Oregon, California, Italian, French, New York, etc. cheeses. So even if you just like WI cheese, this is a good place to get them (for those of us who don’t live in Wisconsin). Yeah, it’s a worker’s collective, but underneath it all they are hardcore capitalists who make a big profit by offering a customer-pleasing outstanding product selection.
The Cheese Board, Pete’s, Chez Panisse, and in the old days, Black Oak, all within one block—what’s a few commies?
Add great weather, SF a BART ride away, hiking in the East Bay Hills, Yosemite close enough for an overnight backpacking trip, the UC Campus (and there is plenty going on that is not radical stupidity—check out the performances at Zellerbach), and it’s a great place. We just need to reclaim it from the morons.
Zombie, you have your very own bookmark on my browser. Sooooo, how goes the Californication. I hear the city I lived in is about to go bankrupt, Fresno. You have to love liberalism, where surrealism replaces reality. It is all Bush’s fault anyway.
Bob J. up there had a point when he wrote, “This is all very amusing until we realize that these people have WON.”
He’s right. Ridicule and satire employed by Zombie and others are potent weapons, to be sure, but those are tactics, not a strategy, and can only be effective tactics if a broader audience is exposed to them and–for the most part–the MSM has a lock on that audience, a block that’s nearly impenetrable. Thus, we can criticize and satirize these insufferably smug, self-satisfied ideologues among ourselves, but at the end of the day Berkeley radicals have reason to feel smug and self-satisfied. It’s their vision of the world being promoted as the ideal by the media and the schools, their preferred policies being implemented by federal and (many) state and city governments, their not-so-normal norms gaining cultural ascendency. I can think of a number of reasons why this would be so but the biggest reason, in my view, is the unwillingness of most prominent, mainstream Republican politicians, activists, and pundits to take a definitive and uncompromising stand against them, to call them out, publicly and often, for the loathsome, traitorous Marxist socialist weasels they are, to draw a line and say ‘This far and no further.’
Perhaps many constituting Republican leadership are holding back because they’re wary of exciting tensions, worry increasing political polarization might take on a certain momentum and lead to God knows where or what, a fear ingrained in our national DNA since the Civil War. Seems to me that particular fear isn’t shared by the hardcore, old-school Saul Alinsky disciples now leading the Democratic Party.
As an aside, do any of you think any of these people believe in fair play and the American Way? They’re going to cheat come November, cheat big, the Chicago Way writ large, and unless it’s an unstoppable Romney landslide, a Reagan/Mondale-like blowout that can’t be realistically contested, we’re going to lose.
No more nice, please.
How about this for a bumper sticker:
US Out of California!
Are the Vigina Warriors ws.inning the war? I’d think so because they have all of the power, the power to turn mortal straight men to babbling idiots.
“Metal Shop Theater” is not the reason why America lost its manufacturing base. Come on.
America lost its manufacturing base because of 40 years of “free market” economic policies and free trade agreements that insure more profitability for a firm that outsources its manufacturing to someplace where they can pay workers less and don’t have to abide by environmental and workplace safety regulations.
That’s it, plain and simple. Metal Shop Theater may be ridiculous and pointless, but it isn’t the reason that America’s good middle class manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and to claim so is just transparently idiotic and clearly blinded by ideology. That blame lies squarely at the feet of cutthroat, unregulated hyper-corporate and trickle down economic policies having replaced the well regulated, mixed economy that served thus country so well from the end of WW2 to the early 70s.
“That blame lies squarely at the feet of cutthroat, unregulated hyper-corporate and trickle down economic policies”
Thanks for stoping by to point out how we’re “blinded by ideology”. We promise to work on that.
Memories of Berkeley:
Bald old hippie still wearing a hippie head band over his bald head. And his remaining 7 hairs in a pony tail.
The nurses at Alta Bates out front protesting for better patient care.
Crazy homeless guy on 4th st. Feeling up some guys girlfriend while he just stood there grinning.
OTH, Cambridge MA had 3 different commie bookshops. Top that. (RCP, SWP and some crazy old Stalinist)
Uh, the most ironical thing about the bekrly manhole cover, right after the part about the closed up metal-shop, is that now all those things are cast in China. Bekrly is the chinese spelling.
I say this as a big fan:
I take exception to your concern for the privacy of faces and license plates in PUBLIC places. Consulting a dictionary under PUBLIC may add some clarity here.
Why not blank out the store names and car logos, as well?
The next logical step: refusing to quote the public statements of fools and liars, out of concern for their possible embarrassment.
I did this just out of courtesy, not due to some law or dictionary definition.
As much as I much disagree with or make fun of thee people’s opinions, they are not participating in a public protest in which they seek out publicity. That’s why I don’t blur out faces of people at protests in my photos. But in this instance they were just going about their daily lives; yes, in the case of the Q.U.I.T member for example, wearing the t-shirt is a sort of one-woman mini-protest, so we could argue that she was seeking out publicity for her views. But I just made the personal decision that to be polite, I would not focus on these people as individuals, but rather as “types.” I.e. “These are the KIND of people you might meet in Berkeley,” rather than “This specific person is a buffoon.”
This is in no way the same thing as not quoting the statements of public figures. I do understand that the Left wants to go down that slippery slope and to prevent people from using progressive politcians’ own words against them, but I have no intention of going that far in my self-censorship.
Dear Zombie,
I loved this article! Made me smile and laugh! I now live across the Bay in San Mateo, but very much enjoy the occassional day-trip to the college town where I spent my 20′s…and you did a great photo op shoot of what is entertaining about Berkeley.
There is no better entertainment value in the entire Bay Area than a daytrip to Berkeley. The people-watching and slogan-reading are free, interesting weird stuff for sale by the Telegraph Ave street vendors, unique foods for lunch at good prices (Top Dog, cheese board,etc) you are more or less guaranteed to overhear some lunatic lefty conversation among the people around you who actually BELEIVE the b.s. coming out of their mouths (“we are accepting of all diverse world views here in the People’s Republic) and best of all, you just walk/drive/bike across the Bekeley city border when you get tired of it….just like you can walk out of the San Francisco Zoo whenever you get tired of watching the monkeys flinging their feces around!!!
Having lived in Berkeley for six years, there is a HUGE difference between the students and professors…and everybody else. Walk down telegraph avenue and the difference is obvious at 50 feet. You don’t get to be a student or prof at UC Berkeley without demonstrated track record of drive and achievement and access to money. The students and profs have all their teeth, recent clothes, and you look into their eyes and someone is “home”…not so much for the other Berkeley residents.
Zombie, I have a good friend who is a wills probate and disability attorney in private practice in Berkeley, and even he is disgusted with the majority of his clients. He says” the number 1 goal of the vast majority of Berkeley residents is to secure for themselves a minimal monthly check that ensures that they never have to get a paid job of any sort for the rest of their lives.” Federal long-term disability, SSI, an inheritence of some sort, an insurance settlement, a divorce settlement, a special needs trust fund, marry someone from a family who has money, etc etc Of course this is human nature, but it is off-the-scale in Berkeley. Santa Cruz is the same way…sort of a smaller-sized Berkeley also full of over-educated and emotionally dysfunctional people trying to find something or somebody to leech off.
Of course not ALL of the Berkeley population is this way, it’s just that the percentage of people with this “objective” as their explicit “life goal” is much higher than say, in Fremont, Walnut Creek, san Jose, etc.
Anyway, great post….and amusing commentary !!!!
,
If this is ‘normal’ what’s it like when the fruitloops are really flyin’???
Yo, zomb! Seen the site described here?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/13/1119809/–It-s-Supposed-to-Be-a-Library-Not-a-Dump
Occupy Oakland has set up a “people’s library” at 1449 Miller Ave. Fruitvale.
I haven’t seen it in person, but I heard about it.
The reason most of the libraries in poor neighborhoods have closed down is because NOBODY EVER USED THEM, except bums looking up porn on the free computers and kids doing “research” (i.e. copying) for their reports about Martin Luther King.
Occupy’s self-congratulatory “library” will be completely ignored by the “community” and none of the books about “social justice” will ever be checked out except by the Occupiers themselves, for appearances’s sake.
As with all their “actions,” it’s just a child-like “play” version of the real thing. Starved for media attention, they’ll drift away, as they always do.
As usual, Berkeley living DOWN to its reputation for flakiness and anarchy. Leftover hippies, beatniks, peace-niks and various other -niks … a great place to avoid.
As a Berkeley resident, this post is making assumptions (though the nutty hippy comments are pretty accurate.)
I need to address the million dollar house with the 99% sign on it. Everyone I know either bought their house when houses weren’t a million dollars here, or they rent. So claiming the residents living in this particular home is hypocritical is unfair. And just because they may own a pricey property doesn’t mean they earn over 150k a year.
Also, the fact the metal shop of Willard school was closed down in ’78 due to budget restrictions and reopened as a theater shows the commitment and ideas of the community years later. The metal shop was NOT closed down specifically to make way for drama. Please do proper research before making asinine comments. Parents & students cleaned it out and changed it into a useful space. Due to the continuing budget cuts of the CA education system, metal and wood shop will most likely be a thing of the very far future which is sad, but at least the space is being used for something. At least this town is interesting and kind. Not a population of racist, religious sociopaths.
The house with the 99% sign was way way way up in the hills in a very ritzy, pricey neighborhood. I did check and that block is full of $1 million+ homes. Also, there are very few, if any, rentals in the area. It’s pretty dead certain the residents were wealthy, especially compared to the average redneck in flyover country.
I never claimed that the metal shop was closed down for the purpose of making a theater out of the space. It must have been commenters who jumped to that inaccurate conclusion. I was just pointing out that the priorities have changed, and for whatever reason, it was considered important in the “old days” to have a metal shop, and nowadays it’s considered more important to have a theater. The usage speaks for itself. If metal shop was still more important, then the community and teachers would have banded together to reopen the space as…a metal shop. But instead they prioritized theater.