EBP-DA | Berkeley 1994: Paradise Lost Or Did the Drugs Just Finally Wear Off?
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-----i EBP-DA | www.eastbaypunkda.com Berkeley 1994: Paradise Lost or Did The Drugs Just Finally Wear Off? And in fact he let me think, or rather ing another Berkeley that no longer exists, a tricked me into thinking that I was getting away Berkeley that perhaps no longer can exist. with it. Barely breathing and at that the same I wonder about such things when I see the time trying to appear so nonchalant that if he hangdog expressions of the beggars, the hol turned around it would look as though I just low-eyed longings of those who seek nothing Sometimes I wonder whatever became of happened to be walking by, I crept to within more elaborate than oblivion, the stooped Flam. He was the first good friend I made in two or three feet of him, until I could clearly shoulder despair of the dazed refugees whose Berkeley that summer of 1968, a veritable see the page he was perusing. home is a downtown doorway, the defiant, beanpole of a boy, with impossibly thick and I couldn't understand a word of it, howev forced exuberance of the career drunkards, the bushy hair that billowed out from his emaciated er. It was all in Latin. I let out a sigh of exas obliquely prying glances of the professional face in the shape of an enormous lightbulb. peration, simultaneously intending it to be a predators. Was it always like this? Did the He seldom if ever ventured out of his signal for Flam to turn around and greet me. youthful hordes who flooded the streets of room at the back of the basement until well But it was if he never heard a thing. He had to Berkeley in the 1960s, the influx of newcomers after sunset. Invariably dressed, regardless of be deaf or in a trance, I thought, as I cleared my that included harmless eccentrics like Flam and the weather, in a preposterous ankle-length throat a couple times, tired now of this game. future members of the bourgeoisie like myself overcoat, and sporting an ornately carved walk Still he refused to turn around, and only look anything like this to the established citi ing stick, he would disappear wordlessly into my own stubbornness prevented from simply zenry of tl10se days? the night. Few of us were ever up when he grabbing hold of his shoulder and shaking him I know that we ourselves never gave a sec returned, but once or twice I saw him slipping until he agreed to acknowledge that I was there. ond, or perhaps even first thought to how the stealthily back to his lair just before the first So we stood and sat, in a quirky. absurd stale working people and homeowners and taxpayers rays of morning sunlight came crashing down mate, for at least another five minutes, until he felt on seeing their streets and plazas turned from the Berkeley hills. said in the quietest of voices and still without into a countercultural theme park. If we had It was a month or two before I was to learn looking up, "Do you read Latin?" reflected upon it at all, I suspect we would have where Flam went on these all-night jaunts, and Of course I didn't. I was a 20 year-old assumed that they should feel fortunate to live in order to do that I had to follow him without dropout with an attitude who hadn't even in a place where history was being made or at his knowing. Or so I thought. It was one of looked at a book in months. I wasn't here in least rewritten. Never having had a front yard those impossibly soft and foggy nights in late Berkeley for the education or the culture; I was of my own, I couldn't imagine why someone July. Not warm, not cold, just perfect. the way here because it was the end of the road. There would be disturbed to find a stranger or three Berkeley can be when we least expect it. wasn't anywhere else left in America for some asleep in his. When an elderly Japanese man I was barefoot, as I often was in those one like me. My situation was precisely the on Grant Street threatened to shoot us for pick days, and I could walk without a sound. I could reverse of the Frank Sinatra tune; if I couldn't ing roses from his garden, we feigned shock see Flam a block or two ahead of me, not so make it here, I couldn't make it anywhere. and outrage at the tyranny of private property, much walking as scurrying. He led me on a Flam was an entirely different story. He and smugly congratulated ourselves for being long expedition, up one side of the street and looked ten times more like a freak than me, but his moral superiors by virtue of ownmg noth down the other, looking completely purposeful he might have been perfectly happy living in a ing. the entire time, as though he were following a monastery in Kansas City. He was reading the Self-centered and sometimes simply self minutely detailed itinerary, even though I could complete works of Thomas Aquinas in the orig ish as we were, it didn't occur to us that the tell he was making it up as he went along. inal Latin, and before that he'd plowed through people of Berkeley were being unusually toler Finally. after an hour's worth of back St. Augustine as well. He was almost entirely ant, which is odd, considering that so many of tracking and shuffling about that must have self-taught, too; he'd never set foot inside of a us were escapees from towns and cities that covered three or four miles, he stopped at the college or university. would never have dreamed of allowing such a comer of Bancroft and Grant, only a few blocks If I think about Flam these days, it's usual multicolored ragtag mass of misfits to lounge from where this odyssey had started. He ly when I'm wandering the streets of Berkeley about in its public spaces. With the passing looked all around, up at the sky. down at the and passing the strange array of bizarre, won years, as Berkeley became more of a home and street, before sitting down on the curb beneath drous, and sometimes repulsive characters who, less of a playground to me. I realized how for a streetlamp. Hiding behind a bush a half block like me seem inevitably drawn to tl1islast resort tunate · I had been to find this place, and later away, I watched as he pulled a thick stack of of a town, this best of all possible worlds, this still, began to genuinely cherish this city for its books from his pack, chose one, and began to hodgepodge of unrealistic expectations and willingness to take a chance on someone like read. uncertain demands, this constant illusion of me. When I arrived here, I was by any reason I was new enough in Berkeley that the not-quite-paradise that, for want of a better able standard, a bum with no money and little if simplest things seemed amazing and the oddest word, I've come to call home. any future. A quarter century on. I'm what things were meant to be taken for granted. It I find myself asking what it is about this they call a respectable citizen. I play my part in seemed the most natural thing in the world to place that causes characters like Flam and the local economy and have a contributing role sneak up on Flam, to tiptoe so closely to him myself, different in so many regards, yet united in the local culture. Once I was drawn here by that I'd be able to look over his shoulder and by our common strangeness, to gravitate here, the Berkeley mystique; now I help to create it. see what he was reading. Thinking about it to sometimes even thrive and prosper here, Young people still flock here from all over logically, that would hardly be possible; the when all the rest of the world seems determined the country, some in search of the long-van street was so quiet that he was sure to hear me. to drive us into exile. And then I find myself ished community of the 60s. others looking to But as I drew nearer and nearer, he showed no asking if I am thinking about the same Berkeley become part of the new 90s counterculture sign of being aware of my presence. I see today, or whether I am only fondly recall- being made famous by the Gilman Street bands 2 EBP-DA | www.eastbaypunkda.com and magazines like this one. Naturally I have a to support the latest imperial adventure. district Shopping malls in adjoining suburbs certain sympathy for them in light of my own At the same time, I'm not so naive as to can provide the goods and services no longer experiences; at the same time I wonder what think that the Downtown Berkeley Association available downtown, but they can not provide sort of Berkeley they're finding , what sort of has only the best interests of the city at heart. what every city needs if it is to be a true city: a future they're likely to encounter here. Perhaps Some of its members are small. struggling mer- living, beating heart.