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After weeks of street and walkway closures, and toxic, stinking fumes, this weekend's Telegraph Holiday (street) Fair, a twenty-six year tradition, breathed life into a moribund business district. 

Stinking fumes were courtesy of the Sequoia Apartments fire, at Haste and Telegraph, the worst Berkeley fire since 1991's hills fire, and reminiscent of the 1985 Berkeley Inn fire. 

After breathing life into a moribund business district, the fair almost choked, when the event's organizer, Janet Klein, learned Friday that city officials might have to close two blocks of Telegraph during next-week's fair—a crippling blow. 

Losing a half-block of booths to Sequoia-site fences was harmful enough, but losing two blocks, that was killer, Klein told me Sunday. 

How could the fair be disrupted? Turns out that on-going city toxicity tests could soon clear the debris for removal. According to Klein, the demolition team is spending $7,000 daily for removal equipment, and is eager to begin debris removal. 

If debris removal had begun, it would have closed two Telegraph blocks for safety reasons, hobbling the fair, according to Klein, who is being briefed regularly by city officials. The four-block, two hundred booth sub-township, would have been chopped off at the middle. 

But the ghost of the Sequoia, which had been haunting the fair, went up in smoke again; the fair survives its latest threat. I was interviewing Klein when she got word the Fair was spared. The city's permit governing debris removal, apparently prevents contractors from interfering with regularly-scheduled public events. 

At least that is everyone's understanding for now, because, as Klein puts it, "no one, not us, the city, or the building owners, or the demolition team, knows what's going on." 

Klein gave the city high marks in supporting the fair, by "expediting," the opening of Telegraph sooner than anyone expected. 

And then the sun shone through a lingering, Smokey haze, bathing the fair in gold, as the first week neared its close. 

The fair was on a roll—for the time being. 

"The public has no idea how complex the fair is," Klein said. 

Eddie Munroe, who organized the fair in the eighties, said that by the time he quit, the fair had already become "complex." You get the idea that is not good. 

Klein said that organizing a fair used to be "easy-peasy, before economic down-turns effected our artists incomes. We lost many regulars, but picked up a lot of craftsmen without business licenses, who pay more for their booths. We have to go to their workshops, sometimes far away, to make sure they are doing their own work, a requirement, if we are to observe our permits." 

Klein spoke to me from her crafts booth, which sports a red-cross. Her small booth is the event's first aid station. "I had to be trained to use some of the first aid equipment I have here," she said. 

"We have more regulations all the time," Klein said. 

Klein is assisted by a staff of 12, one of whom, "the cookie girl," is charged with cookie distribution to vendors throughout the day. 

Disabilities rights regulations require that ramps be placed up and down the four-block fair; one staffer coordinates that, according to Klein. The ramps are stored in two local businesses. 

According to Munroe, who designed the first ramps when he was event organizer, the ramps also serve to provide access to local businesses from spaces between booths. 

One of Klein's biggest tasks is as marshal of Dodge, a sheriff of sorts, who is to the fair as the captain to his ship—ultimate authority over artists and craftsmen, not known for their establishmentarianism. 

Vendors cried foul Saturday, as barricades in front of Intermezzo and Raleigh's cost them their pre-paid spots. When they were relocated to Haste, then pushed East by food stands, tempers flared, and matters were not improved when some Haste street vendors reported lost sales, on one of the biggest profit days of the fair. 

Klein says that other Haste vendors did just fine. 

Street vendors always seem to have complaints, according to Eddie Munroe, who should know. He founded and helmed the fair from 1984-1992. 

According to a Haste-Street vendor, who said his sales were down "we're all adults; we should be able to get along. It's all politics. We'll work it out Sunday." 

And work it out they did Sunday, when the disgruntled vendors were awarded Telegraph locations in the early morning "lottery" for booth position. 

And they did get cookies all day. 

On to next weekend. 

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Ted Friedman, who often reports for the Planet from South-side, never knew how much his holiday street fair meant to him until "they" tried to take it away.