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A night of stories was the idea, and a lot of people seemed to have it Friday night as an eclectic group of writers, scholars and performers assembled for a panel discussion at the Julia Morgan Theater. 

Part of the Berkeley Arts Festival, the Berkeley Stories event was organized to benefit the David Brower Center, an environmental and art center recently proposed and partially approved by the city. 

As people edged slowly through the doorway into the dimmed theater, smiling at the few spare seats, a steady hum was rising.  

As panel moderator Malcolm Margolin of Heyday Books began his introduction, the event title received his quick and candid attention.  

“There’s something a little bit self-indulgent or self-congratulatory or almost embarrassing about devoting an evening to Berkeley stories,” Margolin said. “You know: ‘Aren’t we unique?’ and ‘Aren’t we wonderful?’ or something like that.  

“Yet on the other hand, it’s something that I really feel strongly we have to do. That this sense that Berkeley is unique,” he said, “is something that really had better be made articulate.” 

The panel members all lived in Berkeley at some time or another. Usually they arrived as part of the strange migration to the Bay Area that began in the late ‘50s and stretched out into the ‘70s. Most have been here since. 

But to call it a ‘panel discussion’ isn’t right. It was a chat. Or a tete-a-tete. It was informal, intimate. 

Before beginning his story, artist Leonard Pitt wondered if the audience might reach the mass critical to the resolution of a serious question.  

“Does anyone here remember Wilkinson’s Restaurant on Shattuck Avenue?” he asked. 

To some nods and yesses, he responded excitedly.  

“You do?” he said. “I’ve not been able to find anybody who remembered that place, and I thought I couldn’t pass up this evening with all of you here.”  

Determined, Pitt cut into the roaring laughter.  

“It was on Shattuck on the east side of the street. Can anyone remember exactly what block it was on? Between Center and Allston, or between Center and...?” 

“Between University and the next street south,” a woman in the audience yelled. 

“Really?” he responded, seeming surprised. “On the last block?” 

“Yeah,” she replied, irrefutably. 

Sometimes, instead of a question that needed answering, it was just a brief confirmation passed between friends.  

“I got a place, by the way, on Dwight Way,” said poet Al Young. “And I don’t know how many of you remember Al Baker, I think his name was. He ran a cigar store?”  

To the audience shouts he responded, “You remember him,” and went on.  

“Al said, ‘I own a property on Dwight Way, and there’s an empty place in there,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you just go over there until further notice?’  

“I didn’t know he was gonna sell the place,” Young laughs. 

Sometimes there was simply the feeling of doors being opened. 

“Then meeting Maxine,” said actor Earl Kingston of panel member and author Maxine Hong Kingston, “of course she was the Berkeley co-ed of my dreams.” 

This intimacy gave way to many kinds of stories, many of which related to each other in strange ways. 

“You’re going to hear about a lot of connections tonight,” author Ernest Callenback said, “some of which we [panel members] don’t know about either. 

A panel- member would tell a story and it would later come out that the story’s subject had contributed to a publication or acted in a film that another panel member had been involved in. And these were only the connections that occurred within the panel. 

“I want to finish by telling you another paranoid story,” Callenbach said. “We’re going to probably fall into patterns here this evening.” 

Callenbach told a story about the day the editors of the Canyon Cinema News, a periodical calendar of underground film events, discovered that they had some unexpected subscribers. 

“We received a check from the CIA library,” Callenbach said. “Worse of all the check was not for [the usual subscription price] of $3, it was for $2.40. They had given themselves a discount.  

“Now, after a few more beers, we decided we would play a little game. We made up a cryptogram and it said, ‘CIA cheapskates take unwarranted discounts and do not pay full price.’”  

They sent the CIA its last issue with this note.  

“About 10 days later a check comes in the mail for [the difference],” Callenbach said. 

Later, political-scientist Jeff Lustig confirmed Callenbach’s belief that there would be some content overlap.  

“Being on a panel is like being in the surf or something, with the different currents,” Lustig said, “I keep getting pulled off what I was thinking of saying. 

“Ernest Callenbach mentioned Canyon [Cinema] and paranoia,” Lustig said, which made him think of a related anecdote about his friend Bob Turpin. 

“We were driving in from Canyon to Berkeley,” Lustig said, “telling some jokes or something, and his 7-year-old daughter said, ‘Daddy, what’s paranoia?’ because the word kept cropping up. And he very pertly said, ‘Paranoia, honey, is when you think there’s more people after you than there really are.’”