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Sitting back in a well-used recliner with root beer in one hand, chips in the other and Roger Rabbit bounding across the TV screen in front of him, Walker Scripps smiled and posed a question. 

“This is protest?” asked Scripps, who happened across the 10th-consecutive Saturday night movie at the Underhill parking lot. “You should have been with us in Chicago in ’68.” 

While swarms of “Blue Meanies” are unlikely to overrun the Underhill and beat the stuffing out of every man, woman and child in sight a la Chicago 1968, setting up a slew of couches around a home entertainment center and throwing a party in a parking lot is, legally, somewhat questionable. 

“Originally they gave us a really heavy trip; a whole bunch of cops came in, surrounded us and told us to leave or we’d be arrested,” said longtime bicycle activist Jason Meggs. “But this is the 10th one and it seems they’ve finally decided to let us be there. Now (the police) come by and say ‘hey, how’s it going?’ and ask what movies are showing tonight.” 

Transforming the contested Underhill parking lot into an open-air cinema occurred to Meggs – one of Berkeley’s most active activists – after Boalt Hall student Rick Young was forcibly ejected from the lot for the last time, ending a nearly month-long sit-in. Young – who is now legally barred from setting foot on the Underhill parking lot – was protesting the University’s plan to erect a multi-story parking structure on the site instead of student housing. 

Toward the end of his stay, Young and friends even did their best imitations of furious Detroit autoworkers, smashing a car to bits in an anti-auto demonstration. By holding the weekly movie night, Meggs was aiming for a lower-key approach. .  

“What if we had the opposite of a drive-in movie – a Bike-In, Skate-In, Walk-In movie?” said Meggs, who conjured up the idea after coming across the famed photograph of hundreds of drive-in movie-goers watching Charlton Heston’s Moses part the Red Sea. “I wanted to lighten it up so it wouldn’t be a really dry protest, make it fun. It certainly has been.” 

Sometimes dawdling past dawn watching flicks and chatting, Meggs estimates as many as 70 people have showed up in one night. At least 30 stopped by on Saturday.  

“It’s sort of a mix: There’s a good political message but it’s fun and entertaining for people,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who dropped in Saturday night for his “seventh or eighth” movie night. “Usually politics is super-serious. But it’s sort of fun to have a political protest, camp-out, watch movies, eat junk food and meet a lot of interesting people.” 

While, democratically enough, movie-goers vote on what films to watch, Meggs tries to balance pro-bicycle documentaries with popular films, usually “cheesy Americana” touching on car culture. Past films have included “Stripes,” “Neighbors,” “The Terminator,” “Grease,” and “Dr. Strangelove,” which, Meggs hastens to add, “is not exactly cheesy Americana.” 

Yet while it is fun and games, it isn’t all fun and games. No one is losing sight of why the movies are being shown in a controversial parking lot.  

“I lived in the dorms for two years, paying $850-900 a month for a room about the size of three parking spots,” says UC Berkeley junior electrical engineering and computer sciences major Ryan Salsbury, who, along with Young, was ejected from the lot (but was not charged). 

“That’s unreasonably expensive, and the UC housing plan is only going to make it worse. I’m definitely in favor of putting housing on this lot instead of parking.” 

Meggs predicts thornier demonstrations in the Underhill once students get back into town.  

“When the students come back, this campaign is going to take on a different, probably much more intense, form,” said Meggs. “We’re going to have a lot of students very upset that the University is not taking their housing crisis seriously. People may live (in the Underhill) to draw attention to the housing crunch.”