Category: Berkeley

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Berkeley After Dark: Fourth Street

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Kate and I dropped into Brennan’s last night–the undead version that has opened in Berkeley’s old Southern Pacific train station across the parking lot from the old location. The old location was razed to make way for a massive block of condominiums, the top floors of which will have an intimate view of traffic on the University Avenue overpass. Maybe the condos atop the former Brennan’s site will experience some unquiet moments as tipsy patrons from ages past try to find their way to the old bar. If so, it will be the most lively after-dark activity in the neighborhood.

The new Brennan’s has one or two things going for it. The station is a beautiful Mission-style building and the bar’s proprietors went to great lengths to recreate a replica of the old, barnlike dining room in their new, more confined space. The place features Brennan’s familiar inexpensive meat-and-mashed potatoes menu, served from steam tables along a cafeteria line. It’s got beaucoups high-def big-screen TVs for sports fans, and the bar still has the best Irish coffees anywhere.*

But for myriad reasons, Brennan’s night-time business has died. Last night, we walked in about 10:30, an hour when you might expect to find a bar still revving up. There were about half a dozen people in the place. From what I’ve heard about the profit margin in bar alchohol sales, the gradual disappearance of that trade has got to have eaten into the owners’ income from the place. But they seem content to just let it continue dwindling. The Saturday night bartender is a taciturn sort, maybe given to sad contemplation of the absence of customers and consequent dearth of tips. In the two or three times I’ve done business with him, he gives the impression of rendering service glumly and a little unwillingly; the only act I saw him perform with any alacrity was switching off the “open” sign and most of the bar lights at 11 p.m. on the dot. He did not have to chase us out–we got the message.

We sat and talked in the car for awhile. The rain that had been falling on and off all evening started again as we started up the car. I stopped around the corner from Brennan’s to take a picture of the Spenger’s sign in the rain. Haven’t eaten there for ages, though we used to get takeout chowder from there regularly. Acquaintances who have partaken of Spenger’s fare have suggested that the sign may be the restaurant’s best offering.

*Statement not based on actual research.

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Journal of Self-Promotion: Water

As part of my job as a news editor at KQED, I’ve become a sort of part-time water watcher. In that capacity, I’ve done a couple of maps and a couple of posts for KQED’s Climate Watch blog. The latest post just went up yesterday: Everything You Know (About Water) Is Wrong. It’s a short writeup on a new report from the Public Policy Institute of California called “California Water Myths.” The institute is mostly trying to remind us opinionated Californians that we have a lot of misconceptions about how much water we have and how it’s used.

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Dramatic Proof: It’s Cold

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It was cold enough in the Bay Area Tuesday that we saw the rare phenomenon of visible midday respiration (translation: you could see your breath in broad daylight). After dark, the temperature fell into the 30s again here in Berkeley (into the lower 20s farther from the bay, and below zero up in the Sierra Nevada–but that’s not our neighborhood). Last night, we saw billowing clouds of Midwest-style breath steam just like the one captured above in a dramatic candid photograph.

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Berkeley Frost: Spicule Watch

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As related in earlier winters , sometimes Berkeley gets cold enough that frost settles over the town. Well, settle isn’t really the right word, since the frost crystals actually grows in what appears to the layperson to be a magical process of sublimation. The crystals are called spicules, which resemble little spikes or hairs when they form on a cold surface.

Speaking of our weather, one of our local TV weatherfolk, KTVU’s Bill Martin, referred to it as “Chicago cold” last night. And not once but twice he advised viewers that they’d want to take action to make sure plants, pets and “the elderly” were protected from the weather’s effects. The elderly? We brought our own resident grandparent in from the unheated shed in the backyard.

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Berkeley Autumn

tree120109.jpgBy our effete bayside standards, tonight counts as a cold night. The temperature is dropping into the 30s here and below freezing in places farther from the water. For the next couple of days, anyway, we won’t be getting out of the 40s here. The scene above is from several days ago. The high was probably in the low 60s, perhaps the last day of a prolonged beautiful dry warm autumn. It already seems like that season is over.  

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Twenty-Four

For Kate:

A cloudy December First. We had an appointment up in the hills. Parents were there, and a few friends. I made a big Russian macaroni casserole–Garrison Keillor would call it a hot dish–and I arrived a little late. As the first rain slanted in, streaked the windows, obscured the bay and the town below, you looked into the gray light: calm, absorbed, reflective, maybe visiting scenes of years to come. I saw then, still see looking back into that room from so far away, love, just love.

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Farewell November

Several nights ago, I wrote a short thing about Thanksgiving. Who was here (our kids and their inamorata), what we did (cooked, hang out, ate, took time out to watch the space station and space shuttle chase each other), what other significance the day had for me (Thursday, the 26th, would have been my mom’s 80th birthday). But then, just as I got ready to post those reflections, my little blog word-processor ate my homework. Damn! On other occasions, I have sat and tried to recapture the fine stylings I’m sure have been crashed out of existence. This time, I didn’t have it in me. It was getting late. I was not in my finest fettle. I’ve made an undertaking not to stay up until all hours committing the moment’s musings to posterity (I may have to make room for writing in the morning, usually taken up by sundry and diverse necessities such as The New York Times crossword). I went to bed, and haven’t really tried to write since. It wasn’t until tonight that I noticed I’ve let a whole week elapse since last I wrote here.

So for tonight, just this: I’ll get back to Mom’s 80th sometime soon. As to the rest: Farewell to a warm, dry November. December awaits, just eight minutes ahead.

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Fly-By

We’ve been having a string of clear evenings in the Bay Area, perfect for watching the nightly fly-by of the International Space Station and the shuttle Atlantis. When the shuttle and the station are docked, they appear as a single, bright star moving from (roughly) west to east. The Atlantis undocked early this morning and rapidly moved away from the station. This evening one of the ships appeared in the northwest, then the other–the space station trailed by the shuttle, I think. From San Francisco, they seemed to move nearly straight overhead, then rapidly vanished into the Earth’s shadow when they were still high above the horizon.

It always surprises me a little not to see others out staring at these objects as they pass over, or that passers-by don’t ask what I’m looking at. A big-city rule, I guess: avoid the harmless-looking guy staring into the sky just in case he’s a lunatic. One time, a co-worker happened upon me watching the space station go over a nearby park. “What happened?” she asked. “Did a bird shit on you?” I told her about the space station and pointed at it. She glanced toward the sky, gave me a look that said she didn’t quite believe anything like that was up there at the moment, and moved on.

Tonight in Berkeley, meantime: Kate knew the twin apparitions of space station and shuttle would become visible at 6:22. She called several neighbors to alert them. While I watched from the lower western edge of Potrero Hill, she had nearly a dozen people out in the street here in our neighborhood for the three-minute show. That’s just one of the things I love about this block: that people will come out to see a night-time sky display–lunar eclipses, comets, meteor showers, whatever’s on tap–and just hang out for a few minutes.

There’s another double-viewing Thanksgiving night. Check your local listings on NASA’s Satellite Sightings Information page.

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Who Are These Goons?

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A handbill posted on a lightpole at 16th and South Van Ness. The list of suspicious circumstances got me.

Have you recently experienced any of the following:

  • “Lost” mail? “Wrong numbers”?
  • Dust bunnies? Flies on the windowsill ? Dead moths?
  • Tooth aches? Interrupted sleep? Invalid passwords?
  • Rearranged possessions? (Your belongings not where you left them?)
  • Mismatched socks? Zippers not working properly?
  • Odd damage or small stains around your house?
  • Theft and sabotage of your food or kitchenware? Appliances behaving strangely?
  • Cabinet and drawer handles held on by screws repeatedly loosened ARTIFICIALLY?
  • Opened caps on items such as deodorant & food containers being retightened excessively?
  • Do you hear sirens? Customers in a store filing into line just as you’re about to check out?
  • Itching?

A reader notes (thanks, reader!) that it’s worth visiting the site of The Jejune Institute, noted on the poster as the suspected perpetrator of this harassment. (And if you’re thirsting for further Jejune knowledge, see the Yelp reviews.)

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Journal of Self-Promotion

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Friday morning, I heard on KCBS, the local all-news AM station, that some students had “taken over” Wheeler Hall, a building on the UC-Berkeley campus. As I wrote our morning news team a note about that, the phone rang. It was one of the morning news team asking whether I could go out and cover the Wheeler Hall story. I said I would.  

When I went out to get in the car, I realized I had a flat tire. I thought of riding my bike, but knew it would be hard to find a secure place to lock it up. As I walked back inside the house to ponder my next move — if I walked or took the bus or BART, I’d miss the air time for the upcoming newscast — I heard the neighbors’ dog barking outside. One of the neighbors in question works for the university–in the news office, actually. I ran outside hoping I could catch a ride to campus with him. I did.

I showed up outside Wheeler to find yellow police tape around the building — it might have taken a quarter mile of tape to do put up that line — and several dozen students with banners who had parked themselves across the main north-south path through campus. In a few minutes, I’d sized up what was happening and had lined up a young woman who said she was one of the protest organizers. She wouldn’t give her name, but said it was OK to call her Jane Doe or Emma Goldman. Yeah, she really said that. We put her on the air. I was on, too–both for one of the newscasts and our longer “Forum” discussion show. One observation: I say “um” and “ahhhhh” a lot.

Here are the links to the audio of these immortal radio (and associated) appearances:

The California Report: UC Students Protest Fee Hike

Forum: Students Occupy UC Berkeley Building

Photo slide show: Wheeler Hall protest

And in other self-promotion news: November 22 marks this blog’s sixth anniversary.