The Editor's Back Fence

UPDATE: Good News! According to the Caffe Trieste's website: "THE CAFFE HAS TO REMAIN CLOSED FOR SOME REPAIRS AND REMODELING, PROBABLY UNTIL SATURDAY, JULY 21. ALL PERFORMANCES THROUGH JULY 21 ARE CANCELLED."

Last week I discovered that two of my favorite restaurants, Addie's Pizza Pie on Adeline (an offshoot of Sweet Adeline's Bakery, still there) and Caffe Trieste at Dwight and San Pablo, had suddenly closed. We were at the Trieste (a franchise of San Francisco's famous cafe) not more than a week ago--and yesterday it was gone. closed for repairs. Addie's, sad to say, seems to be closed for good.  

Nothing could illustrate more clearly that city officials who blame sidewalk sitters for Berkeley's business woes are fooling themselves and potentially the voters, if they really put a sitting ban on the November ballot. I've never seen a sidewalk sitter, or even a standing spare changer, at either restaurant. Times are tough all over, but it's both immoral and ineffectual to claim that poor folks are the cause instead of the consequence of the problems downtown or on Telegraph, let alone on San Pablo or Adeline.