You know you can only be in Berkeley when you spy on the streets of downtown Berkeley totally nude men on foot and on bicycle casually going about their business. These are students from UC Berkeley (otherwise known as CAL). Obviously (everything in this case is very obvious) they are protesting a proposal put before the Berkeley City Council to ban nudity from the streets of Berkeley. Well, CAL students must always have something to protest; otherwise it wouldn't be Berkeley, now would it? This nudity thing was started some time ago by a student who decided (for whatever reason) that he wanted to attend classes in the buff. When some voiced a protest, other students decided to take up his cause and stand by him--in the nude. Well, it looks like the City Council may just pass that nudity ban, and it will be interesting to see what happens after that. Will we have nude sit-ins on the streets of Berkeley? Ouch! Boy, will that hurt when the cops come to drag them away!
As I walk along the streets of Berkeley I have to wonder where lies the attraction of this city. Maybe it's because I'm a displaced person, but then I've been told that most of the people here are displaced, or misplaced, as the case may be. There appear to be many misplaced, or just plain lost, people here. Strange as it may seem the foremost thought which comes to mind as I walk the streets of Berkeley is not anything very academic, or esoteric, or political, or any thoughts that walking the streets of Berkeley should arouse, but only what a dirty city it is. I don't quite know why it is--does it have anything to do with the budget cuts in California? But dirt-wise Berkeley is a miniature version of New York City without the skyscrapers.
There is a wild look to Berkeley because of the gardens. No English gardens here, but rather, everywhere you walk a variety of flowers and plants grow helter-skelter, all socializing in a let-the-weeds-grow-too atmosphere. Consequently, there is a variety of plants, flowers, and weeds living in apparently glorious, albeit ragged, harmony. Berkeley obviously is not a Reston, Virginia or a Columbia, Maryland. When the Berkeley houses were being built, community planning was not even a gleam in someone's eye. Mixed-use was definitely the ``in'' thing. Eclectically scattered on the same block are California-style stucco one-story bungalows and three-story Victorian-style houses with wood siding, apartment houses with four or more units, and very small senior citizen rest homes scattered everywhere. Strange, but true. Many of the buildings are very old, having been built around the turn of the century. I was in one yesterday that had the original paneling and molding and what looked like converted gas lamps all around; it was quite elegant. But it also had what looked like the original bath and kitchen, and that was far from elegant.
Some of the houses proudly display protest signs of one kind or another; but in most cases the signs are very old and denounce an undertaking which has long been resolved. But many Berkeley citizens do seem to be stuck somewhere in the past. I can understand that.
(June 28, 1993) Saw my second semi-nude person roaming the streets of Berkeley. This time it was a female and she was wearing a backpack and black shorts. No one paid her any mind, possibly because she was walking along the infamous Telegraph Avenue. There is nothing but strangeness on that street.
© 1996
