Though a week has passed since corporate executives announced the upcoming closing of the downtown Berkeley Eddie Bauer store, the reasons for the move still aren’t clear—at least to the public. 

One thing is certain: The high-end clothing retailer’s corporate parent is mired in financial difficulties. 

And whatever the reasons, the Shattuck and Allston Way storefront will soon be vacant, joining the ranks of other empty storefronts along one of Berkeley’s main commercial arteries. 

While a downtown merchant representative is confident that will be filled, the city economic development head says there’s no guarantee of with what, and a local real estate broker is equally unsure as to when. 

Shortly following the end of the holiday buying season, the national office of Eddie Bauer retail clothiers announced the closing of 29 stores as part its reorganization effort following the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy by its parent company, Chicago-based Spiegel Group. All of the targeted stores, including the Berkeley location, are not expected to remain open past mid-March. 

Bauer has only been in operation for five years at its downtown location, which was owned for many years by the Havens Trust. The store’s opening caused considerable controversy at that time, particularly from groups and agencies such as the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association and the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, because it was preceded by the near-demolition of the 1890-era building, which for many years housed the popular Edy’s Restaurant. 

Lisa Erickson, a national spokesperson for Eddie Bauer Stores, said the closure is “part of the company strategy to reshape our portfolio and to place stores in the right locations.” 

Although she said that the majority of Bauer stores were located in malls and that the average square footage of the targeted stores were somewhat larger than the average Bauer store (at approximately 7,000 square feet, the Berkeley store is slightly larger than average), Erickson refused to speculate as to whether these factors contributed to the decisions to close the particular stores. “As far as why that store was closed and not another, I don’t have that information,” she said. 

While Executive Director Deborah Badhia of the Downtown Business Association (DBA) said that her organization was “very sorry to lose Eddie Bauer as a retailer,” she doesn’t foresee a lot of trouble finding a suitable replacement. 

Shattuck and Allston Way is “a prime retail corner,” she explained. “The City of Berkeley has between 10,000 and 15,000 people in the downtown area each day, and UC Berkeley has a daytime population of 45,000 in close proximity to the area. The Berkeley BART station [a block away] releases 10,000 people a day. It’s the second busiest in the East Bay. And the bus drops off 7,000 people a day within a block of that corner. I can’t imagine there won’t be somebody locating there.” 

Thomas Meyers, Berkeley’s Acting Manager of Economic Development, said that while both his office and the merchants association would be working with the property owner to find a “suitable replacement,” it would be entirely up to the owners as to what they might find suitable.  

“From what I’m hearing from both the community and from the business association, Berkeley is in need of more clothing store outlets, and we would like to see if we could work with the property owner to try and get another clothing store in there,” Myers said. 

“But that part of downtown Berkeley is zoned for general retail, and so the owners not limited in that respect. The property owners are going to evaluate the best option for them, which in all cases is not necessarily the best option for the city or for the commercial district. We think it will be easier to do a transition from Eddie Bauer to some other clothing store because of the improvements already made in the building [when the Bauer store was originally opened]. But the property owner has a mortgage payment to make. They’ve got to make enough money. So it’s a tricky balance.” 

John Gordon, owner and broker of Berkeley’s Gordon Commercial Real Estate Services which represented the property owners when the Bauer store came in five years ago, called downtown Berkeley “a strong market,” but that may not translate into a quick turnaround for a new tenant. 

“I think the revitalization of downtown Berkeley is what attracted Eddie Bauer to downtown in the first place,” Gordon said. “And if you look at where downtown is now versus where it was seven years ago when we started on that transaction, its so much better off.” He added however, that he didn’t “know how long it will take. You just have to find the right tenant and the right mix for this location. There are potential tenants looking at downtown. But these things take time.”  

Gordon says that while he has had conversations with the property owner, he does not yet know if he will have a hand in bringing in the new tenant. 

Gordon did have good news for another empty downtown retail location, saying that a new retail outlet will soon be announced for the recently-vacated Huston’s Shoe Store on Shattuck Avenue and Kittredge Street. Gordon said that a lease has already been signed for the property.

TUESDAY, JAN. 6 

American Red Cross Blood Services volunteer orientation from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at 6230 Claremeont Ave., Oakland. Volunteers are needed to support the more than 40 blood drives held each month. Advance sign-up required, 594-5165. 

Dick Penniman’s Avalanche Safety Lecture from 6 to 9 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Fee is $20. 527-4140. For information on additional avalanche safety courses see snowbridge.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 7 

Junior Skywatchers Club We’ll take a closer look at the earth’s moon through binoculars, and make moon calendars for the New Year. From 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org  

Meetup for Howard Dean at 7 p.m. at three Berkeley locations: Au Coquelet, 2000 University Avenue; Raleigh's (Generation Dean youth meeting), 2438 Telegraph Avenue; Sweet Basil Thai Restaurant, 1736 Solano Avenue. Free. Wheelchair accessible. 843-8724. 

Bicycle Friendly Berkeley Coalition Volunteer Night Come help fold newsletters, enter prospective members names into our database, from 6 to 8 p.m. at 1336C Channing. 549-7433. vc@bfbc2.org 

Walk with the Berkeley Path Wanderers Meet at Live Oak Park, Walnut and Berryman, at 10 a.m. 981-5367. 

Prose Writers Workshop We're a serious but lively bunch whose focus is on issues of craft. Meets 7 to 9 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut, at Rose. For information call 524-3034. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Amnesty International Berkeley Community Group meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1606 Bonita Ave., at Cedar St. Join fellow human rights activists to help promote social justice one individual at a time. 872-0768. 

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. Drop in to file complaints, assistance available. For information call 548-0425. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Hide-A-Way Café, 6430 Telegraph Ave. For information call Fred Garvey, 925-682-1111, ext. 164. 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-0237. 

THURSDAY, JAN. 8 

The Ecocity Sessions with Richard Register A six- week course meets Tues. evenings introducing ecocity theory. Cost is $150. For information call Kirsten Miller at 419-0850. kleighmi@flash.net 

“Senior Services and the Philosophy of Geriatrics” with Ellen Bloomfield, Emeryville Senior Center, Aisha Boykin, Albany Center, and Lisa Ploss, City of Berkeley, from noon to 2 p.m. at the Albany Public Library, Edith Stone Room,1247 Marin Ave. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters. 843-8824. 

Snowshoeing Workshop for Women at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

East Bay Mac User Group meets on the second Thursday of the month from 6 to 9 p.m. in the 3rd floor Community Room, Berkeley Central Library, 2090 Kittredge St. http://ebmug.org 

FRIDAY, JAN. 9 

Celebrate the Dream commemorating the 75th Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with Martin Luther King III, son of the legendary civil rights leader, Allen Temple Men’s Choir, the Greater St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church’s mass choir, and Dorothy Morrison signing “Oh Happy Day,” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall. www.oaklandnet.com/celebrations 

Shorinji Kempo Martial Arts Demonstration at 8 p.m. at Emeryville Taiko Dojo, 1601-A 63rd. St., Emeryville. 815-0607. www.emeryvilleshorinji.org 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Peter Dumont, co-founder, Star Alliance, on “Comprehensive Approach to Peace.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $11.50 - $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020. 

Literary Friends meets at the North Berkeley Senior Center at 1:15 p.m. to discuss Vermeer’s art and tmes, and review “girl in Hyacinth Blue” and Girl with a Pearl Earring.” 232-1351. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com, 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231. 

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 7:15 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Players at all levels are welcome. 652-5324. 

SATURDAY, JAN. 10 

“T’ween and Teen Adolescent Girls: Where Do They They Fit In?” Workshop sponsored by Bay Area Children First, from 1 to 3 p.m. at 1400 Shattuck Ave., Suite 7. Fee is $25. For information call 883-9312. 

Cerrito Creek Work Party Help remove blackberries and plant trees on Cerrito Creek north of Albany Hill. Meet at 10 a.m. at the Pacific East Mall, 3288 Pierce St., El Cerrito. For more information, email f5creeks@aol.com 

Broom or Brush? Help us remove invasive species to encourage native plants to flourish. Learn to identify common plants in our study area. Parents of Garden Club kids particularly invited to participate. Call to reserve tools and gloves. From 2 to 4 p.m. in Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. For information call 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org  

Kids Garden Club: Plant Protection It’s getting cold out there and the plants need our help. We'll learn about plant defenses, and revitalize our scarecrow. Registration required. From 2 to 4 p.m. in Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $3. For information call 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org 

Winter Pruning and Maintenance A class on the critical January tasks of tree and shrub pruning. At 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Overeaters Anonymous will host a Newcomers Information Day from 1 to 3 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. For more information call 923-9491. 

Shamanic Journeying Meditation using earth’s power centers, plant and mineral energies, Native American medicines, and concepts and principles from different meditation traditions around the globe, at 9 a.m. Free. For information and directions call 525-1272. 

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. The class is taught by Rosie Linsky, who at age 72, has practiced yoga for over 40 years. Open to non-members of the club for $8 per class. For further information and to register, call Karen Ray at 848-7800. 

Pet Adoptions, sponsored by Home at Last, from noon to 5 p.m., Hearst and 4th St. 548-9223. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, JAN. 11 

Tibetan Buddhism, Bob Byrne on “The Final Words of Longchenpa” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, JAN. 12 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Women’s Cancer Resource Center, volunteer training, every second Monday of the month, from 6 to 8 p.m. at 5741 Telegraph Ave. To sign up call Emily at 601-4040, ext. 109. emily@wcrc.org 

ONGOING 

Albany Berkeley Girls Softball League offers an exciting opportunity for East Bay girls in grades 1-8 to learn softball, make friends and have fun! Registration starts in January; the season runs March 6 through June 5. For information call 869-4277. www.abgsl.org 

Vista Community College Classes in Computer Software begins Jan. 15. Enrollment is open through Jan. 24. Register on-line at www.peralta.cc.ca.us or at 2020 Milvia St., or call 981-2863. 

Creating Economic Opportunities for Women offers trrining programs for immigrant and refugee women. Orientations held during January, at 655 International Blvd., 2nd flr. Call 879-2949. 

Acting and Storytelling Classes for Seniors, offered by Stagebridge. Wednesdays and Fridays, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. at Arts First Oakland, 2501 Harrison St., close to BART and AC Transit. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

Free Smoke Detectors for City residents and UC Berkeley students who live off-campus. Applications are available from the Environment, Health & Safety office of UC Berkeley, at any Berkeley Fire Station, or at the Fire Admin. Office located at 2100 MLK, Jr. Way. 981-5585.  

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., Jan. 5, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Solid Waste Management Commission Special Meeting, Wed. Jan. 7, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. Becky Dowdakin, 981-6357. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/solidwaste 

Commission on the Status of Women meets Wed., Jan. 7, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruby Primus, 981-5106. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/women 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Jan. 8, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/environmentaladvisory 

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Jan. 8, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jeff Egeberg, 981-6406. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/publicworks 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Jan. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley.ca. 

us/commissions/peaceandjustice 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Sharon Hudson’s analysis of the Permitting and Development report (“City Report Fails to Cite Pro-Developer Staff,” Daily Planet, Dec. 19–22) is right on the money: Berkeley planning decisions on large projects are made with virtually no public input. As an immediate neighbor of Patrick Kennedy’s recently completed Acton Courtyard project at 1395 University Ave., I was privileged to experience the “process” first-hand.  

I started in the early 1990s, when I wasted several days attending public meetings on the University Ave. “plan.” The Acton – University intersection was a specific focus, but when the time came for development, city staff tossed out the public input like so much garbage. By the time hearings were held by the Zoning Board, essentially all decisions about the project had been made behind closed doors. Board members addressed Kennedy’s representatives by their first names, while treating neighbors like criminals.  

Kennedy’s hold on city government became apparent as soon as construction started. Oliver & Co, the contractors for most of Kennedy’s projects, took over the neighborhood like the US army took Baghdad. They ignored all restrictions on working hours imposed by the use permit, starting work at 7 a.m. and working all day Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. Their heavy equipment became a constant menace, circling the block every 15 minutes or so for months.  

When several of us complained and demanded a meeting, Kennedy’s and Oliver’s representatives feigned surprise at the working hour restrictions and denied that any restrictions could possibly apply to them. Kennedy’s manager sneered that he would “get the rules changed.” Translation: “We own the Planning staff right down to their socks.” 

Our phone calls, faxes, and letters to the Planning Department, to our Councilpuppet Margaret Breland, and to the Newspaper-Snatcher-in-Chief, went unanswered. About 20 of us signed a petition for redress, and we filed formal complaints. No one from Planning and none of our political “leaders” responded. We didn’t even get a courtesy call telling us to get lost. The only person courteous enough to listen was Joan MacQuarrie, the Chief Building Official, who imposed some temporary restrictions even though it is not part of her job to do so. This experience suggests to me that use permit conditions are meaningless, at least if your name is Kennedy.  

Contrast this with the fate of mere mortals who want to build something. If you are a homeowner who wants to add a room, you will face a gauntlet of hostility from Planning staff from the very start. As a contractor, I participated on a project where a single neighbor with a grudge delayed construction for a year, costing the owners $30,000 or more, even though the proposed new home met every zoning rule and required no variance of any kind. Acton Courtyard, on the other hand, violates virtually all zoning rules, including those on density, height, setbacks, and parking— not to mention that the city gave its darling developer the $1 mil parcel of land for free. Or maybe they just forgot to charge him, like they forgot to collect taxes on his other properties. 

In spite of my negative experience, I am by no means against higher-density development, and neither are most of my neighbors. I don’t even think the final result at Acton Courtyard is so awful (I speak for myself only here), although its harsh impact on the neighborhood could have been mitigated considerably if Planning staff had been open to real public input.  

Unfortunately, I don’t see any chance that things will change anytime soon unless there is dramatic change in political leadership. The present Berkeley establishment seems to be mired in the property-is-theft, government-knows-all model that gave us such monuments as East Berlin. If Berkeley is to develop humanely, we need new leaders who will embrace the incomparable energies and talents of its inhabitants—not just the few who can afford to buy the system. Failing this, I propose we update the name of the world’s most progressive college town; you know, Kennedyville has a nice ring to it. 

Paul Rude

OAKLAND—Walking unsteadily across a city rooftop, 26-year-old Wilson Barriga Posada holds an eight-foot radio tower in his arms.  

He wields it like a clunky, high-tech javelin, planting it near the edge of the roof so that he can dangle wires to his sound system on the sidewalk. Posada’s plan for the day: a do-it-yourself FM radio music broadcast, in Spanish. His target audience: the heavily Latino Fruitvale section of Oakland.  

His musical format is the underground, DJ-driven “sonido” style, which adds dashes of techno and hip-hop to a foundation based on tropical rhythms like cumbia and salsa. Posada says sonido is “authentic” and popular with Latinos, but virtually non-existent on commercial Spanish-language radio. 

“Pirate” radio, or microradio, as its advocates prefer, has strong roots in Northern California. Free Radio Berkeley, the region’s most well-known microradio venture, was founded in 1993 by radio activist Stephen Dunifer and ceased operating in 1998 after a legal battle with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Other micro-power broadcasters, such as San Francisco Liberation Radio, have battled to stay on-air.  

Posada, a former Free Radio Berkeley DJ, says that in the 1990s he saw a need for Spanish-language microradio to bring the movement’s ethos to a more diverse audience.  

“The fact is that the so-called minority, now majority, communities that are here in California, the people that really need these (microradio) projects to be working for them ... we weren’t connecting with them,” he says.  

In April 2003, Posada launched Radio Sonidera 102.5 FM in Fruitvale, with help from Dunifer and other microradio activists. 

For now, he broadcasts on weekends only. Posada sets up behind a mobile taquería in a parking lot, or sometimes from the bed of a battered pickup that his off-and-on technical adviser, Ruben Tomar, uses to wheel around the equipment. 

On a recent Saturday, Posada, who wears his hair buzzed with a bushy rat-tail sprouting from the back, broadcast in Fruitvale’s shopping district in front of a café. Sympathetic owners let him plant the antenna on the roof. Posada says he doesn’t mind the risk such visibility entails. 

Latino families gathered around to watch. Microphone in hand, Posada intermittently shouted out his station’s frequency, handed out flyers to passersby and took requests via cell phone. Meanwhile, he shuffled CDs in and out of a boom box on a wobbly table. 

“Bueno, bueno, bueno,” he’d say between songs. “Seguimos aquí en la 102.5 FM, en Fruitvale.” 

Posada grew up in a working class family in Mexico City. His parents were migrants from two poor interior states, Guanajuato and Michoacan. Posada immigrated to the United States by himself at the age of 20—searching, he says, for the latest in music, radio and media knowledge. He drifted through various infatuations—salsa, punk, hip-hop, until he found sonido, which allowed him to combine it all. 

Like the spontaneous music of the original Jamaican reggae DJs of the 1970s, the process of making la música sonidera is an intrinsic part of its identity. It is created by charismatic DJs, the sonideros, such as Posada’s mentor, famed veteran DJ Ramón Rojo—Sonido La Changa. The sonideros perform in Mexican cities, especially in Mexico City’s teeming colonias, as peripheral neighborhoods are known, and increasingly in U.S. cities.  

Posada says much of his playlist is recordings of sonideros’ concerts. The DJs interact with the audience as they speak over tunes, rhyming, cracking jokes or intoning fans’ names. A danceable cumbia or salsa track is mixed with other sounds, everything from electronica to rap. On-air, Posada himself plays the role of sonidero. 

The concerts are often burned onto CDs as they are performed. After the show, the CDs are sold “like tortillas, except more expensive,” Posada says. In turn, the recordings are copied and re-copied by fans.  

The quick digital dissemination of the music, in a musical subculture that has little use for copyrights, means sonideros can even facilitate transnational communication. A DJ in Mexico will often give a “shout out” to an audience member’s relative living in Los Angeles or another U.S. city. As he lays down the tracks, the DJ will sometimes say, appropriating an expression often used in a derogatory way: “This one’s going out mojado-style, (wetback-style), across the border.” 

“This music is not depending on commercial conduits to spread itself,” says Posada, though some FM stations in Mexico City and L.A. are beginning to produce a slicker version of the sonido style. Both sonido music and microradio, he says, “are on the margins of commercial music culture.”  

Tomar, Posada’s occasional adviser, estimates that with 20-watt capacity and no-frills equipment, Radio Sonidera potentially reaches 60,000 people.  

That’s no threat to Spanish-language media conglomerates like Univision, which has three FM frequencies in the area, but it’s definitely an alternative—at least during the limited times when it is on-air.  

The FCC has cracked down on microradio stations this year, especially in the San Francisco area. Meanwhile, this summer’s FCC-approved rule changes in media ownership, activists say, will make it harder for community-based radio stations to secure a slice of the FM dial. 

Posada wants to expand to include daily morning and evening broadcasts. “If I succeed in what I am trying to do, then that’s a political statement of a kind—that people like me won’t be smothered and disappear in anonymity.” 

Marcelo Ballve is a writer and editor for Pacific News Service.

TUESDAY, JAN. 6 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Juan Diego Flórez, tenor, at 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56, available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Tribute to Babtunde Olatunje with Arsenio Kounde at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Dayna Stephens House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. A weekly showcase of ensembles from the Berkeley Jazzschool 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 7 

CHILDREN 

Preschool Storytime, a program introducing books and music to promote early literacy skills, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library West Branch, 1125 University Ave. 981-6270. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Nazelah Jamison and Karen Ladson at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7,  

$5 with student i.d. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chad Hinman and Cat Kinsey perform modern folk at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$10, no one turned away for lack of funds. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Whiskey Brothers performs oldtime bluegrass at 9 p.m. at at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

I.C.E. Conceptual Music Series, a collaboration with drummer Andrew Wilshusen, at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Famous Last Words, folk/rock, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, JAN. 8 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players, “The Death of Meyerhold,” through Jan. 23 at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Thurs.-Sat. performances at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12-$18, available from 925-798-1300. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Christopher Baker, author of “Moon Handbook: Cuba” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Travel Shop and Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave. at Rose, 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“A Little Night Music” with the New Century Chamber Orchestra at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. For ticket information call 415-392-4400. www.ncco.org 

Punk Show with Tempo at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley located at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Donation of $3-$5 requested, no one turned away. Wheelchair accessible. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

The Jeb Brady Band, acoustic americana, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Stunt Monkey, Fountain Street Theater Band, Spinning Jennies at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Keni El Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Mas Cabeza performs Latin jazz and modern Cuban rhythms at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, JAN. 9  

CHILDREN 

Caldicott Stories at 10:30 a.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-3635. 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Go Figure,” figurative art by Deann Acton, James Gayles, Jean Graham, Heather Robinson, and Elizabeth Romero. Reception with the artists from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery, 5471 Telegraph Ave. 601-4040, ext. 111. www.wcrc.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High’s Dance Production at 8 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Allston and MLK. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for adults, available at the door. Come early, shows sell out! 644-6120. 

Slammin, an all-body band, at 8 p.m., at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13 in advance, $15 at the door. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Yennayer Berber New Year Celebration with Les Numides at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $10-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

The Vowel Movement, a beatbox showcase hosted by Andrew Chaikin and Tim Barsky, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Real Sippin’ Whiskeys, Todd Novak of the Cowlicks at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Brian Melvin at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

CartoonJazz, Jeff Sanford’s 13-piece band plays the music of Raymond Scott, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mood Food at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Sterling Dervish performs acoustic rock & roll at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SATURDAY, JAN. 10 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña Music Together at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

FILM 

“Delicatessen,” a film about futuristic France, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley located at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Donation of $3-$5 requested, no one turned away. Wheelchair accessible. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High’s Dance Production at 8 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Allston and MLK. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for adults, availabel at the door. Come early, shows sell out! 644-6120. 

“Music for the Epiphany: Seeking Light in a Time of Darkness” Renaissance, Baroque and later music to celebrate the feasts from Advent through Candelaria performed by Coro Hispano de San Francisco and Conjunto Nuevo Mundo at 8 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Tickets are $15-$20 available from 415-431-4234. www.corohispano.org 

Healing Muses presents ”Mirth and Good Cheer - Medieval, Renaissance and Celtic Music for Midwinter and the Changing of the Seasons,” at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Cost is $15-$18. All proceeds benefit the hospital music program. Advance reservations recommended. Wheelchair accessible. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

Peter Zak, pianist, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10-$12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com  

Great Night of Soul Poetry, Dale and Dan Zola’s celebration of the spoken word, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Aux Cajunals at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson with Patti Whitehurst at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Triple Play, jazz trio, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Montuno Groove at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Nino Moschella and Linn Brown at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Sliding scale donation $8-$15. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.com 

Mushroom, Jan Norberg at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

The Pit of Fashion Orchestra, conducted by Peter Barshay, at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Sharp Knife, Chased and Smashed, This is My Fist!, Holy Ghost Revival at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Matt Berkeley Group performs jazz and funk at 9 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SUNDAY, JAN. 11 

EXIBITION OPENINGS 

Berkeley Art Center Annual Member’s Showcase, reception at 2 p.m. Exhibition runs to Feb. 14, Wed.-Sun., noon to 5 p.m. 644-6893. 

FILM 

“La Passante” at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Donation $2. 848-0237.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Kay Ryan and Elena Karina Byrne at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Max Byrd reads from his new novel “Shooting the Sun” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Organ Recital by Paul M. Ellison, performing works of Tomkins, Zipoli, Pärt, Brahms, and Bach, at 6:10 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way at Ellsworth. Donation. 845-0888. 

Chamber Music Sundaes San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends, perform Mozart, Grieg and Andriasov at 3:15 p.m. at St John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $7-$18, available at the door. 415-584-5946. 

Healing Muses presents ”Mirth and Good Cheer - Medieval, Renaissance and Celtic Music for Midwinter and the Changing of the Seasons,” at 4 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Cost is $15-$18. All Proceeds Advance reservations recommended. Wheelchair accessible. 524-5661. www.healingmuses.org 

Ta Ke Ti Na Workshop with Zorina Wolf from 3 to 6 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $35. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Biodiesel and Bluegrass A Musical Benefit for Grassroots Sustainable Energy, at 1 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Sliding scale donation of $5-$15, children under 10 free. Childcare provided. Proceeds to benefit the grassroots shadow convention for the National Biodiesel Board conference in February. Sponsored by Berkeley Biodiesel Collective. 658-2899. www.berkeleybiodiesel.org 

Marcos Silva Quartet, Brazilian music at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com  

John McCutcheon, Appachian folk roots, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $19.50 in advance, $20.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, JAN. 12 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jane Anne Staw discusses “Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer’s Block” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Poetry Express, featuring Jan Steckel, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

Mikel Dunham, photographer and thankgha painter, will show slides from his new book “Samye: A Pilgrimage to the Birthplace of Tibetan Buddhism” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Earplay Reveals the Unheard, with three classical works based on poetry at 8 p.m. at Yerba Buena Center, 701 Mission St., SF. Tickets are $12-$18 and are available from 415-978-2787. 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Sharon Hudson’s analysis of the Permitting and Development report (“City Report Fails to Cite Pro-Developer Staff,” Daily Planet, Dec. 19–22) is right on the money: Berkeley planning decisions on large projects are made with virtually no public input. As an immediate neighbor of Patrick Kennedy’s recently completed Acton Courtyard project at 1395 University Ave., I was privileged to experience the “process” first-hand.  

I started in the early 1990s, when I wasted several days attending public meetings on the University Ave. “plan.” The Acton – University intersection was a specific focus, but when the time came for development, city staff tossed out the public input like so much garbage. By the time hearings were held by the Zoning Board, essentially all decisions about the project had been made behind closed doors. Board members addressed Kennedy’s representatives by their first names, while treating neighbors like criminals.  

Kennedy’s hold on city government became apparent as soon as construction started. Oliver & Co, the contractors for most of Kennedy’s projects, took over the neighborhood like the US army took Baghdad. They ignored all restrictions on working hours imposed by the use permit, starting work at 7 a.m. and working all day Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. Their heavy equipment became a constant menace, circling the block every 15 minutes or so for months.  

When several of us complained and demanded a meeting, Kennedy’s and Oliver’s representatives feigned surprise at the working hour restrictions and denied that any restrictions could possibly apply to them. Kennedy’s manager sneered that he would “get the rules changed.” Translation: “We own the Planning staff right down to their socks.” 

Our phone calls, faxes, and letters to the Planning Department, to our Councilpuppet Margaret Breland, and to the Newspaper-Snatcher-in-Chief, went unanswered. About 20 of us signed a petition for redress, and we filed formal complaints. No one from Planning and none of our political “leaders” responded. We didn’t even get a courtesy call telling us to get lost. The only person courteous enough to listen was Joan MacQuarrie, the Chief Building Official, who imposed some temporary restrictions even though it is not part of her job to do so. This experience suggests to me that use permit conditions are meaningless, at least if your name is Kennedy.  

Contrast this with the fate of mere mortals who want to build something. If you are a homeowner who wants to add a room, you will face a gauntlet of hostility from Planning staff from the very start. As a contractor, I participated on a project where a single neighbor with a grudge delayed construction for a year, costing the owners $30,000 or more, even though the proposed new home met every zoning rule and required no variance of any kind. Acton Courtyard, on the other hand, violates virtually all zoning rules, including those on density, height, setbacks, and parking— not to mention that the city gave its darling developer the $1 mil parcel of land for free. Or maybe they just forgot to charge him, like they forgot to collect taxes on his other properties. 

In spite of my negative experience, I am by no means against higher-density development, and neither are most of my neighbors. I don’t even think the final result at Acton Courtyard is so awful (I speak for myself only here), although its harsh impact on the neighborhood could have been mitigated considerably if Planning staff had been open to real public input.  

Unfortunately, I don’t see any chance that things will change anytime soon unless there is dramatic change in political leadership. The present Berkeley establishment seems to be mired in the property-is-theft, government-knows-all model that gave us such monuments as East Berlin. If Berkeley is to develop humanely, we need new leaders who will embrace the incomparable energies and talents of its inhabitants—not just the few who can afford to buy the system. Failing this, I propose we update the name of the world’s most progressive college town; you know, Kennedyville has a nice ring to it. 

Paul Rude

A compromise designed to increase public parking spaces at Library Gardens—a massive housing development slated to replace a downtown parking garage—appears to have stalled, and the project is now set to go before the city’s Zoning Adjustment Board with just 11 spaces set aside for the public. 

Negotiations between the project developer TransAction Companies and the Berkeley-Albany YMCA on construction of an underground public parking lot broke down last week over how much the YMCA should contribute to the project and how many parking spaces and hours should be devoted to them. 

“We provided them with what we thought was a generous offer and we’re disappointed in their response,” said TransAction Senior Vice President John DeClerq. 

The 176-unit development—the largest ever planned for the city center—would rise just west of the library at the site of the 362-space Kittredge Street garage. The project has drawn opposition from downtown merchants who fear the loss of the garage’s parking spaces will keep people away from the downtown’s chief attractions—the YMCA, library and movie theaters that bring in visitors who patron other downtown shops. 

To head off a fight at Thursday’s ZAB hearing and prevent future appeals, DeClerq last month proposed teaming up with the YMCA to build one level of parking below the development that would provide 124 extra parking spaces, seventy-five percent of which would be available to Y members during peak hours of 6-10 a.m. daily and 4-7 p.m. on weekdays. The public would have rights to the entire lot during other times of the day. 

The Downtown Berkeley Association(DBA)—a merchant group on which DeClerq serves on the executive board and is about to become its treasurer—announced last month they would withdraw their opposition to the project if DeClerq and the Y could strike a deal. 

But the Y rejected TransAction’s initial offer, which called for it to pay $5,000 per month on a 30-year lease to secure parking for its members and chip in $1 million over ten years for construction of a lot the city has estimated would cost between $ 6.8 and $10 million.  

DeClerq in turn rejected a counteroffer issued by the Y Friday calling it “significantly less than we had hoped.” 

The Y offered to pay $500,000 up front, with no future monthly payments and no 30-year lease. Their proposal also called for rights to all of the added parking spaces throughout the day except for a window from 1-4 p.m. when the lot would be available for the public, DeClerq said. 

The Y had been paying $5,000 per month for its members to park for free at the Kittredge garage until DeClerq terminated the deal in November in preparation for beginning construction. 

Failure to reach an agreement before the Thursday ZAB meeting would complicate negotiations, but not kill the deal, said YMCA CEO Larry Bush. “I see that as an instrumental point, but we’re going to pursue this all the way through,” he said. Bush refused to discuss the terms of the Y’s counteroffer. 

Without a deal in place, DeClerq said he’ll present ZAB with his current proposal providing 116 parking spaces, all but 11 reserved for residents of the complex. That plan meets all city development requirements, has the support of the planning department and is expected to pass the ZAB. 

A win at the ZAB level wouldn’t necessarily give TransAction a green light for the development. 

DeClerq predicted the Y would appeal to City Council any ZAB ruling favorable to TransAction and wage other delaying tactics to forestall construction, scheduled to start this spring. 

A lengthy delay could cost Transaction millions in carrying costs on the garage and lead to higher construction prices, said a source close to the negotiations. 

“Both sides are playing chicken,” the source added. “DeClerq knows he can build the project, but he doesn’t want it delayed. The two sides are struggling to work out a compromise and neither wants to blink first.” 

Bush refused to speculate if he would appeal a ZAB ruling to council. 

When first proposed in 2000, Library Gardens was the darling of downtown developments. In addition to the 176 units of one- and two-bedroom apartments—projected to house about 300 tenants—and the five retail shops still included in the design, the project also called for two levels of underground parking, replacing all of the spaces lost from the Kittredge lot. 

But despite unanimous approval from both the ZAB and Council, DeClerq pulled the plug on the project in 2002, complaining that the costs to build underground parking—roughly $45,000 per spot—made the development unfeasible. 

When he reintroduced the project in late 2002 without the promised parking the DBA turned on it, arguing that the plan threatened the viability of anchor tenants served by the lot that they estimated serves 3,000-5,000 visitors daily.

The late Fred Lupke spent a great deal of his time and energy in the last two years of his life opposing the Library Gardens development, primarily because of the negative effect he knew it would have on the Berkeley Public Library, an institution he loved and used all the time.  

Fred appealed the first version of Library Gardens because of the effect the massing of the proposed building would have on the public library, by blocking light and views from our windows and inhibiting pedestrian access from the high school, among other reasons. But the effects of the first version of Library Gardens were relatively benign compared to the “revised version” that is going to the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board for a public hearing on Thursday, Jan. 8, at 7 p.m. in the Council Chambers at Old City Hall. 

After prevailing over Fred’s appeal and winning approval for a massive 176-unit, five-story housing development just to the west of the Berkeley Public Library on the site of the existing Kittredge (former Hink’s) parking garage, the developer pulled a massive bait-and-switch fraud, just as Fred feared he would. While the first version of Library Gardens had some negative effects on the library, it at least proposed to replace all of the 362 public parking presently located at 2020 Kittredge in a new two-level underground parking garage beneath the housing development. But after winning approval for the housing development, the developer, John DeClerq of the Transaction Corporation, “discovered” that the underground parking would cost too much to build. In early 2003, he came back to the city with a “revised version” that contains only 116 parking spaces, 110 of which are city-required parking for the 176 housing units and 3,000 square feet of ground floor retail space. The version going before the Zoning Adjustments Board this Thursday contains a total of only six parking spaces for the use of the public to replace the 362 that are there now, though in recent days (perhaps with the intent of reducing and dividing the opposition), DeClerq has started to suggest that he might be willing to provide more if someone else provides a million dollars or so to subsidize them.  

The fact that the housing component of the development is exactly the same size and design as that already approved means, in effect, that the only issue the ZAB will be considering this Thursday is whether the developer can eliminate the underground parking garage. Of course, as could be expected, this is very unpopular with every institution in the downtown: the library, the Downtown Berkeley Association, the Arts District, individual small businesses, and the Berkeley YMCA, all of whose patrons have used the Kittredge parking garage very heavily. All of these institutions submitted comments against the Draft Subsequent Environmental Impact Report for the Library Gardens Project conclusion that removal of the parking would not cause significant environmental impacts.  

Nevertheless, in a country that values private property rights, many people even in the downtown are halfway persuaded of DeClerq’s argument that he and his partners should not be required to maintain or replace the public parking if they say they cannot afford to do so. Should not the owner of a parking garage be allowed to go out of business and develop his property for some other use? After all, with one major exception, the parking in the Kittredge parking garage isn’t actually required by use permits for downtown businesses. If it is mostly just parking for members of the public, should not the “public” (maybe the City of Berkeley) be required to replace it, if it needs to be replaced, not the owner of the Kittredge parking garage? It is this argument that I want to comment on here.  

DeClerq and partners say that, as private property owners, they have no responsibility to provide parking for the public and other businesses. What this argument overlooks is that the Transaction Corporation, the heart of the partnership that is proposing Library Gardens, has owned and still owns, downtown properties that have a close inherent relationship to, and dependence on, parking in the Kittredge (Hink’s) parking garage. In 1987, the Transaction Corporation purchased the entire block that included the Shattuck Hotel and the closed Hink’s Department store. The latter was then undergoing redevelopment as the Shattuck Cinemas, Mel’s Diner, other businesses. Now, as everyone who has lived in Berkeley as long as I have probably knows, the Kittredge parking garage had been built in 1947 by the Hink’s family to serve the patrons of their department store and other businesses in property the family owned. True, no use permit actually required this parking because zoning that applied to the downtown at that time was too rudimentary to consider the issue. But the fact is that the Hink’s (Kittredge) garage served specific properties by meeting their parking demand, and did not simply serve some undifferentiated “general public.” People who stayed at the Shattuck Hotel were directed to park at Hink’s and not elsewhere. People who shopped in the department store got to park in the Hink’s parking garage.  

Now, when the Transaction Corporation bought the Hink’s block, and a few years later also bought the parking garage from the Hink’s Family Trust, they took over the established parking relationship between the garage and their commercial property. Obviously, they profited from it both by having parking available for the businesses in the property they owned, and in being able to charge the patrons of these businesses to park in their garage. In my view, this makes the fact that the parking was not a “legal” requirement in use permits essentially irrelevant.  

In any case, the use permit for one major downtown property that the Transaction Corporation used to own, and probably still owns in part, does specifically require provision of parking in the Kittredge parking garage. The use permit issued on Jan. 20, 1987 for the 1,249-seat Shattuck Cinemas complex requires: 

To avoid parking impacts in the evening, the applicant should be conditioned to extend the valet service in the Hinks lot to include the evening operation. Notices should be posted in the theater lobby indicating that parking is available in Hinks. Newspapers and other printed advertising should include a notice that parking is available.  

Soon after issuance of this permit, the Transaction Corporation bought the Hink’s development that included the movie theater and therefore assumed the obligation of providing the use permit’s required valet parking in the Hink’s lot. . 

Now, of course, the Transaction Corporation wants us to forget all of this, and they’ve steadily taken steps to break off and bury the relationship between the businesses in their commercial property and their parking garage. First, they sold off the Shattuck Hotel as a commercial condominium. Next, they sold the portion of the Hink’s building that contains the Shattuck Cinemas to a new partnership, though it is rumored that they retain some ownership of the new entity. I wonder whether it was a condition of the “sale” that the new owners not protest loss of parking in the Kittredge parking garage? 

So after taking profits out by selling these properties, the Transaction Partners happily go on to develop the parking garage as a large housing development. Of course, all the businesses in the properties that depended on the Hink’s parking garage still exist and still create a demand for parking in the downtown. But the Transaction Partners pretend that meeting this demand isn’t their responsibility. It is the responsibility of the “public” —which means that you and I are expected to pay for it!  

To complete this miserable racket, the Transaction Partners are now apparently offering to replace some of the parking they are proposing to demolish, but only if someone gives them a subsidy of a million dollars or so to build one level of underground parking. (No details are available since DeClerq only recently proposed this in the Downtown Berkeley Association.) Of course, the Transaction Partners have nothing to lose and a lot to gain from making this “offer.” Even if no one can afford it, the very fact they’ve made the offer demonstrates their “concern” about the parking situation in the Downtown and helps to reduce opposition to their project. It also creates a dilemma for some large institutions like the YMCA that may be tempted to negotiate for some parking for their members rather than opposing the project outright. (It is kind of hard to do both.) And the Board of Trustees of the Berkeley Public Library, who previously opposed Library Gardens have now decided that they are “neutral” on the project, in return for an offer from DeClerq to guarantee parking in Library Gardens for the two categories of patrons who are most egregiously harmed by lack of parking near the library: disabled people and mothers with their children who are attending “story hour.” But these are small categories who will maybe occupy the six public parking spaces in Library Gardens, and DeClerq hasn’t disclosed what these parkers will be expected to pay… 

As for me, I’ll be down at the City Council Chambers on Thursday night, as I know Fred Lupke would have been, asking the ZAB to deny a use permit for Library Gardens on the grounds of its detriment to the public library, the YMCA and every institution in the Downtown.  

Jane Scantlebury has worked as a reference librarian in the Berkeley Public Library since 1986. She is a shop steward in her union, SEIU 535. She was a friend of the late Fred Lupke.

Austrian immigrant Arnold Schwarzenegger’s victory in the recent recall election is one the highest profile immigrant success stories in California’s history. Yet immigrant success has been an important contributor to the state’s economic and cultural vitality since long before Schwarzenegger ascension. 

The stories of three restauranteurs from Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Mexico on a short stretch of Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue personify the dreams and contributions that thousands of immigrants have made to California.  

Kiet Truong, 33, Vietnamese, owner, Unicorn, 2533 Telegraph Ave. 841-8098, www.unicorndining.com. 

Truong arrived in the United States in 1979 when he was nine years old. His ethnic Chinese family fled Vietnam to escape political persecution. As a child, he loved science and math. His interests led him to pursue a computer engineering degree. Until three years ago, he worked as a systems engineer. Then, along with many other technical workers in the Bay Area, he lost his job during the dot-com collapse. 

Seeing how tenuous it is to work for others, Truong resolved to become an entrepreneur. He grew up with a love for fine food thanks to his mother’s great cooking. When he got the entrepreneurial bug, his mother was working at Oakland’s Le Cheval Vietnamese restaurant. She agreed to come to work for Truong. 

In September 2001, with financial assistance from his brother, Truong signed a lease for his Telegraph Avenue location in a spot that had seen a numerous restaurants come and go with none of them succeeding.  

Following 9/11, restaurants throughout the Bay Area felt an immediate negative impact on sales. “What could I do? I had just opened Unicorn, and I knew it would be tough. Working 12 to 15 hours per day six days a week, I’ve managed to survive when seven out of 10 restaurants that opened in 2002 have already closed.” 

Truong attributes his success to his unique cuisine and ambiance. Unicorn specializes in dishes from the Chao Zhou province of southern China, where influences of Vietnam and Malaysia show up in the spiky flavors of curry, tamarind, mint, and lemongrass. Meanwhile, the ambiance is California contemporary-chic with a pleasingly arty decor. The unique look, which Truong designed and built, is so well executed that it is already spawning copycat versions around Berkeley.  

Roman Zewde, 45, owner, Fin Fine, 2556 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley. 883-0167. 

When she worked in the catering department at International House on the UC Berkeley campus, Zewde dreamed of opening a restaurant as popular as her mother’s in Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia. But, it took her years to save up the money and get the experience she needed. 

Twelve years after arriving in the United States, Zewde realized her dream in June 2001 when she opened Fin Fine, a restaurant specializing in Ethiopian cuisine. Zewde works in the kitchen six days a week preparing traditional Ethiopian cuisine with an emphasis on seafood dishes that are hard to find at other Ethiopian restaurants in the Bay Area. 

Zewde believes in making everything from scratch including injera that is flat bread made from a dense grain called teff. The bread, which is always served cold, covers the entire dish and all the food is placed on top of it. Injera tastes best at the end of the meal, after it has soaked up all the good juices. However, rolls of it come to the table where one tears it into smaller pieces that are used to scoop up vegetable stews or slow-cooked meats. 

“It’s a dream come to true to own my own restaurant in America. And, I’m proud that people come from San Francisco, San Jose, and Sacramento to eat the food I make,” said Zewde. 

Mario Tejada, 73, owner, Mario’s La Fiesta, 2444 Telegraph Ave. 848-2588. 

In 1954, Mario Tejada immigrated to the United States from Guanajuato, Mexico. As soon as Tejada became a citizen, the United States military drafted him, and he served in Korea until 1956. 

In 1959, Tejada saw a classified ad for a sandwich shop for sale on Telegraph Avenue. Seeking a change from his carpenter’s job, he managed to purchase the shop and used his carpentry skills to convert it into a Mexican restaurant. 

“The secret to my success was introducing real Mexican food to Americans. We were one of the first restaurants in the Bay Area to serve chile verde and chile colorado. Also, we weren’t afraid to give people real hot sauce instead of the watery stuff that people were served in other places,” said Tejada. 

“Our business got another big boost in the early ‘70s when we introduced the super burrito to the East Bay. People just couldn’t get enough of our fat burritos stuffed with meat, beans, rice, sour cream, guacamole, and salsa,” added Tejada. 

Mario’s has been open for so long that Tejada has seen many customers come back years later with children and grandchildren. “We have great regulars who live and work in the area. It’s like they are part of our family,” concluded Tejada.  

Showing equal amounts of disdain for, impatience with, and incredulity at the arguments of Berkeley activist-attorney Rick Young, Alameda County Superior Court Judge James Richman late last week denied Young’s petition to amend or delete the ballot arguments against Berkeley’s Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) measure. 

The judge’s expedited ruling, held after a half-hour hearing in Oakland court, means that the anti-IRV arguments signed by City Councilmembers Gordon Wozniak, Maudelle Shirek, and Betty Olds will appear as originally written on next March’s Berkeley ballot. The referendum will be listed as Measure I. 

In papers filed with the court, Young charged that “both the Argument Against and the Rebuttal to the Argument In Favor of Measure I contain statements that are false, misleading or inconsistent with the requirements of” California electoral law. California courts in the past have not allowed arguments for or against measures on the ballot which have been shown to be false or misleading. 

Young’s assertion was supported by Berkeley City Councilmember Dona Spring, a strong IRV supporter, who was not present at the hearing, but told the Daily Planet in a telephone interview that “there were three major untruths and a lot of red herrings” in the anti-IRV ballot arguments.  

Among other items from the ballot arguments,” Young cited statements that “IRV systems are currently not legal in California,” “in most forms of IRV all votes are not counted,” and “IRV costs more.” All of these ballot argument statements, Young asserted, were either false or misleading. 

But Young withered under close questioning by Judge Richman, who chastised the attorney for asking the court to, in the judge’s words, “throw out ballot arguments without providing any proof that the arguments were false. Do you think that this is how elections should work, in your heart of hearts?” 

Richman told Young that “what you ought to do is go out during the election, go into the coffee klatches in Berkeley, and tell people that Mr. Wozniak is wrong in his arguments, and why. You shouldn’t be asking the court to do this.” 

In his argument, Young made several references to an opinion on Instant Runoff Voting by “Secretary of State Bill Lockyer,” prompting Berkeley attorney Fred Feller to say at one point, “There has been only one untrue statement established at this hearing, and that is that Bill Lockyer is not now, nor has he ever been, Secretary of State.” Lockyer is state Attorney General. Feller represented Wozniak and Berkeley Transportation Commission chairperson Dean Metzger, an anti-IRV ballot argument signator. 

Asked by the judge if he wanted to add anything to the discussion, Deputy City Attorney Zack Cowan smiled, held up his hands, and said, “I’m just here to watch.” Cowan represented City Clerk Sherry M. Kelly. 

Young conceded that he was not properly prepared for the hearing, stating, “I’ve only been an attorney for two years, I’ve never done this kind of thing before [filed against a ballot argument], a friend of mine was put in the psych ward, and I was sick this weekend.” 

In the courthouse hallway following the judge’s terse ruling of “petition for writ of mandate denied,” Young said he still considered the failed lawsuit a victory. 

“Gordon [Wozniak] got the message,” he said. “It’s not okay to mislead the public. And if you try to do that, you’ll find yourself in court.” He also said he would like to debate the issue with the Councilmember before voters go to the polls in March “if I have time to prepare.” 

Wozniak said he did, in fact, receive a message, but not necessarily the one intended by Young. “Some of the people who signed the ballot arguments were getting served by Mr. Young at six in the morning, with papers that said they might be liable for court costs,” the Councilmember said. “One person came to me as a result and wanted to take her name off of the ballot arguments. This was an attempt at intimidation. It’s a free speech issue. It’s the kind of tactic that doesn’t belong in Berkeley.” 

The anti-IRV ballot arguments were also signed by Metzger, 2002-03 ASUC President Jesse Gabriel, Berkeley Police Review Commission chair William White, Panoramic Hill Association President Janice Thomas, Community Environmental Advisory Commission chair Sara MacKusick, and Berkeley business executive Helen Meyer. Young’s petition listed City Clerk Kelly as a respondent and the nine listed signators as “real parties in interest.” 

Wozniak was the only named party who appeared in court during the hearing, and Young referred almost exclusively to the Councilmember in making his arguments to the court. The petition, legal arguments, and the judge’s decision all had to be rushed through to meet a noon, Friday deadline for any changes to be made to the ballot statements. 

Instant Runoff Voting eliminates runoffs by allowing voters to rank candidates in a 1-2-3 order on the first ballot of an election. Under most runoff election systems, if no candidate wins a majority of the votes on the first ballot, voters must come back to the polls for a second time to choose between the top two vote-getters.  

Under IRV, however, the last-place candidate is eliminated and the “second choice” votes of those who voted for the eliminated candidate are passed on to the remaining candidates. The process is continued—eliminating the bottom candidates and passing on their next choice votes—until one candidate eventually gets a majority. 

IRV made the March Berkeley ballot after a vote of Berkeley City Council. If passed, the runoff system would not go into effect until certain conditions are in place, including the development of election software that would allow it to be consolidated with a general Alameda County election. 

IRV has been approved for implementation in San Francisco, San Leandro, Santa Clara counties, and in limited instances in Oakland, but has not yet been used in any election in the Bay Area.

NEIGHBORHOOD ANTENNAE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read “a group of residents in Berkeley has been fighting to stop Sprint antennas near their residential area.” 

They are right. Many people throughout the world are in trouble and moving because of antennas in their neighborhood. 

The facts are there already, it’s not because they are anxious or worried, they move because their bodies are severely ill as a result of chronic exposure to pulsed e.m.-fields directly or indirectly (by interference) produced by low levels of microwave radiation. 

This is not my opinion, this is not to be discussed. It is real life and it is happening everywhere where antennas are installed near people. 

Please be sensible and keep the antennas away from the Berkeley neighborhood. 

Frans van Velden Msc 

The Hague, NL 

• 

PHALLOCENTRISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While I often enjoy reading Zac Unger’s irreverent take on life in Berkeley, I was a bit alarmed by the phallocentrism in his recent column about baby names (“What’s in a Name?, Daily Planet, Jan. 2-5). I understand that choosing an appropirate name for a child is an important decision for a young family, but why deride the name “Alex” merely because more women are adopting it? And suggesting that a man named Alex should change his name to “Peter, Rod or Lance”—must all men be brainwashed by their testosterone? I think Mr. Unger should stick to talking about Hummers in the future and avoid subjects that might offend your female readers. 

Toby Millman 

North Oakland 

• 

LIBRARY GARDENS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m writing as a board member of Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation (BEST). Our group would like to see the Library Gardens project become “car-free housing”. 

BEST notes that only 59 residential parking spaces are required for the number of units developer DeClerq is proposing to build. Yet, he is planning 105 residential parking spaces. This is not only more parking than is required; it’s also more parking than in any other housing project approved for construction in downtown in the last 10 years. 

Car-free housing means that residents have the option of signing a lease agreeing that they would not own a car, and therefore not require a parking space. The spaces for car-free units could then be made available as public parking. Library Gardens is an ideal location for car-free living; it’s downtown, in walking distance of everything, one block from BART and served abundantly by buses. The project could well exemplify transit oriented development. 

Car-free housing projects have been very successful in Europe and in San Francisco. 

Library Gardens is another opportunity for Berkeley to show some progressive leadership in transportation and housing policy. BEST suggests that a car-free project would be a win-win solution. The parking that is built could all go for shoppers, theater and movie-goers, and other short-term visitors. There are environmental benefits too, because car-free residents would not add to traffic or to air pollution. 

City CarShare is active in Berkeley, so car-less residents who have occasional need for a car could have access to one. 

City employees now get an ECOPASS for using public transit, The school district and Peralta College can do the same, rather than spend money on more parking spaces which will just make congestion worse. 

Car congestion doesn’t just happen; it is caused by public policy that deliberately encourages cars over transit. 

Steve Geller 

• 

AN OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After Paul Glusman did everything possible to alert the city officials to the imminent danger of this elm tree which has been “falling down in sections” (“Berkeley Officialdom Ignores an Impending Danger, Daily Planet, Jan. 2-5), the $1,800 he spent to repair the damage to his car may have gone a long way in hiring a company himself, or with neighbors, to remove the tree. It seems an obvious alternative to the many months of risking human life or injury. Being an attorney, he could probably even find a way for our compassionate city to reimburse this cost. Also, with his other frustration, if he didn’t wish to sweep up the “glass fragments all over the sidewalk” on Bancroft Way, downtown, himself, there are any number of persons who would have been happy to be paid to do so.  

Gerta Farber  

• 

CALCULATING THE DIFFERENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

During her broadcast on Dec. 16, Diane Sawyer asked President Bush about the still-not-found WMDs in Iraq. “What’s the difference?” Bush, responded, “the possibility [was] that [Saddam Hussein] could acquire weapons.”   

  Mr. Bush, the difference between a hypothetical “could” acquire weapons versus a genuine “has” the weapons is approximately 400 American lives lost, 4,000 Iraqi civilians killed, and 400 thousand million American taxpayer dollars wasted.   

  It is unconscionable that the president, the chief steward of the public’s trust, would deceive us so gravely. Even worse if the well-coordinated lies from the administration were actually a colossal, incompetent miscalculation.   

  While political pundits yammer about Bush’s re-election, citizens are calling for his impeachment and incarceration. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

Veteran Berkeley technology reporter Henry Norr has reached a settlement with the San Francisco Chronicle, which suspended him last April, ostensibly for participating in protests before the Iraq invasion started. 

Norr agreed not to disclose the financial specifics, but the amount was substantial enough that he’s planning to do only free-lance writing for a while. The Chronicle will continue to pay his retirement and health benefits.  

Norr fans, especially East Bay techies, turned the firing into a major cause celebre, setting up a website, whereishenrynorr.com, and replacing the cover sheets on Chronicle coin boxes around Berkeley’s Bart station and elsewhere with ‘Where is Henry Norr?’ posters. They also organized a demonstration on his behalf at one of Executive Editor Bronstein’s public appearances, and called for circulation and advertising boycotts.  

The Chronicle’s Monday story about the settlement claims that “Norr’s termination occurred as a result of events arising out of his role in anti-war protests against the current war in Iraq.” Norr concedes that his Iraq opposition, including his arrest in San Francisco, played a part in his eventual firing, but he thinks there’s more to the story. His statement, published in Monday’s Chronicle article, says that “because I didn’t violate the ethics policy the Chronicle had in place at the time, it is clear I was fired because of my political views—my opposition to the war in Iraq and Israel’s occupation of Palestine.” 

In an interview with the Daily Planet Monday, Norr went on to say that “I can’t prove it, but I have a strong suspicion that one of the main reasons I was fired is because of my support for Palestine.”  

Norr’s July 2002 column about a billion-dollar Israeli Intel plant built on land guaranteed to Palestinians in a 1948 treaty was the subject of a heated campaign by pro-Israel groups, and he incurred further criticism for a vacation trip to the Occupied Territories with the International Solidarity Movement. 

He himself is Jewish by background, though not religious, and he answers accusations that he’s anti-Semitic with the quip that “anti-Semites used to be people that hated Jews, but now they’re people that Jews hate.” 

Chronicle Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal told the Planet he couldn’t comment on Norr’s charges because he wasn’t around when the Intel story appeared. He joined the paper in October of 2002. 

Phil Bronstein and Deputy Editor Narda Zacchino, who were there, are both out of town, and Chronicle “Reader’s Representative” Dick Rogers told the Planet he knew nothing more about the issue than he’d read in Monday’s article about the settlement. 

Verbatim publication of Norr’s statement was a major sweetener of the deal for him. 

He said that the Chronicle retained the right to do a final edit on his words, but “in fact they didn’t make changes, though they added their part. My [Newspaper] Guild lawyers were blown away—they’d never heard of such a thing.” 

Under the union contract between the Chronicle and the Media Guild, unresolved grievances go to binding arbitration. In November 2003, Norr went to Palestine to participate again in the International Solidarity Movement. When he returned, he learned through the Guild’s lawyers that management was eager to settle instead of going through with the case. 

“Basically,” he said, “they offered me some money, my pension and other retirement benefits (which I would otherwise have lost), and publication of an article like the one that appeared today.” 

He told the Planet that the Chronicle promised him an unpleasant future at the paper even if he won. “They implicitly threatened that even if they were ordered to reinstate me, they’d never let me write for the paper again—they’d make me a copy editor or a mailboy or something—and the lawyers advised that there wouldn’t be much I could do about that, because determining the actual work assignment is considered a management prerogative. All in all, that wasn't a very attractive scenario,” he said. 

The downside, he noted, aside from not getting his job back, is that he has to withdraw the complaint he filed with the state labor commission, which means he doesn’t get to challenge the illegality of his firing. 

The Chronicle article quoted managing editor Rosenthal as denying that the paper had violated any laws. Norr wondered whether Rosenthal had ever read sections 1101-1106 of the California Labor Code, which states, Norr says, with no qualifications and no exemptions for journalists or anyone else, that “No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy ...controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees” and “No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.” 

Norr had one final comment on the statement attributed to Rosenthal in the article that appeared today: “On the question of the appearance of conflict of interest, it's astonishing to me that he uses that as a justification for preventing an antiwar demonstrator from covering personal technology, yet apparently sees no problem in having a Sacramento bureau chief whose wife is Arnold Schwarzenegger's deputy chief of staff, and was previously a flack for Maria Shriver.”

More than 130 people opened their hearts and their wallets during an emotional fundraiser for the earthquake-devastated city of Bam at a jam-packed Santa Fe Bistro Sunday night. 

The event, sponsored by Berkeley’s Persian Center, raised an astounding $70,000, which will go to create critically needed housing for as many as 70 Bam families. 

During the event, Relief International President Dr. Farshad Rastergar announced that an anonymous donor put up $20,000 in matching funds to build housing. Those funds were quickly matched and then Persian Center Boardmember Shahin Tabrizi added another $5,000 to be matched. 

Organizers asked for a minimum donation of $100 at the door, but to help meet the matching funds, many guests donated $1,000. David Behring, president of Wheelchair International, announced that his nonprofit organization is shipping to Iran four containers loaded with 280 wheelchairs each to help the thousands who were seriously injured. 

“For a last minute event, the response has been overwhelming,” said Persian Center President Niloofar Nouri. “People were so moved, that the Santa Fe Bistro waiters and waitresses who volunteered their time at the event were writing checks along with the doctors and lawyers.” 

Guests, many who broke into tears during a slide show that graphically depicted the devastation, were treated to dinner, which was co-sponsored by Berkeley developer Soheyl Modarressi in honor of his late father Seyed Hossein Modarressi and Sante Fe Bistro owner Ahmad Behjati.  

The 6.7 earthquake struck the city shortly after 5 a.m. on Dec. 26, killing more than 35,000 people, injuring thousands more and leaving untold numbers homeless in the middle of a freezing cold winter. According to some estimates, nearly 70 percent of the city’s mostly mud-brick structures collapsed in the quake.  

Several of the 18 Berkeley residents and city employees who traveled to Bam last April during a humanitarian mission for Wheelchair International, held back tears while they spoke of the overwhelming kindness of the Bam residents whose fates are now unknown. 

There was the man who offered a ride to an American stranger who had just arrived at Bam’s bus depot, the school teacher who was eager to take time explaining the town’s remarkable history and the woman who served tea and date cookies to travelers in the city’s venerable 2,000-year-old citadel with its ancient parapets, corner towers and lancet windows. 

Former Councilmember Polly Armstrong said she was amazed at how Bam teenagers were steeped in their country’s poetry and history as if those subjects were part of the landscape. 

“It was amazing,” she said. “When was the last time you heard an American teenager recite a favorite poet?” 

City of Berkeley information technology employee Dona LaSala remembered a young boy who was thrilled with the small gift of a post card “just because it was from an American.” 

Berkeley Neighborhood Liaison Michael Caplan remembered the dozens of friendly children who ran up to the Americans to use their one English phrase, “Happy birthday!” 

Later, during a slide show of the devastated and transformed city, many guests wiped away tears as they took in pictures of dust-covered old people staring incomprehensibly at the rubble, a man walking among the debris with a lifeless, mud-covered child draped over each shoulder and the dozens of canvas-wrapped bodies laid side by side in mass graves. 

Nouri said the magnitude of the destruction will likely mean that relief efforts will be ongoing for at least the next year and perhaps longer. She said that a listing of upcoming fund raising events will be maintained on the Persian Center’s website, www.persiancenter.org. 

The Persian Center is collecting new medical supplies and looking for volunteers. The center is located 2029 Durant St. For drop-off information, call 848-0264. 

For information about donating money, blood or other supplies visit the National Iranian American Council at www.niacouncil.org/iranquake.asp or Relief International at www.ri.org. 

Checks payable to “Iran Quake Relief/ Relief” can be mailed to: Relief International, 1575 Westwood Blvd. #201 Los Angeles, CA 90024. (800) 573-3332.

Shattered Glass at Amoeba 

A customer took offense when he was accused of switching tags on CDs at Amoeba Music Friday, and on being ordered to leave the Telegraph Avenue shop, he wrapped up his hand and punched his fist through a store window. The vandal then fled north on foot, eluding store security, but not the police who detained him on Durant Avenue. Thomas Williams, 20, of Fairfield was arrested for vandalism and an outstanding arrest warrant. 

Telegraph Robbery 

A man walked into a Telegraph Avenue tattoo parlor late Tuesday night, grabbed money from an unattended cash register and raced out the door. A clerk called police, and after their search ended when UC police arrested Rodney Walker, 19, of Oakland for burglary and a probation violation. 

Nonprofit Trashed 

Burglars stole a 200-pound safe and ransacked the offices of a Berkeley nonprofit during the Christmas holiday, tipping over desks, ripping out phones and rifling through file cabinets, stopping only to enjoy some holiday maraschino cherries and ginger ale left in the refrigerator, employees said. 

“It was just a mess,” reports Juliette Majot, executive director of the International Rivers Network, a nonprofit that works to halt dam projects in undeveloped countries. 

The biggest loss, however, was the 3’ x 3’ safe filled with holiday donation checks that burglars hauled out of the 1847 Berkeley Way office over the holiday weekend. 

Majot estimated IRN lost about $2,000 in donation checks, though she expects contributors to replenish the funds. No cash was stored in the safe, and the burglars opted to leave behind computers. 

By Monday employees had gathered up the empty soda bottles and cherry jar from the floor and otherwise restored order to their office and remained determined to push on. 

“This makes you appreciate what you have and how easy it is to lose,” Majot said. “We’ll just have to buy a new safe and bolt this one to the ground.”  

Flower Pots Tossed 

A resident of the 2000 block of Ward Street called police Tuesday afternoon to complain that an acquaintance was throwing objects at her house and vandalizing her flower pots. The victim refused to press charges against the purported vandal and police said they couldn’t confirm if anyone was actually throwing flower pots or other objects. 

Armed Robbery 

A gunman robbed a Berkeley teenager as he walked along the 1300 block of Virginia Street late Tuesday afternoon, stealing the youth’s wallet before he fled east towards the North Berkeley Bart station. 

In one ill-chosen, offhand remark on New Year’s Day, President Bush undercut the immediate possibility of improved relations with Iran, savaging the efforts of his own State Department.  

It seemed that Washington was at last doing something positive for American-Iranian relations in the wake of the terrible human tragedy of the earthquake in Bam, Iran. The State Department was poised to sponsor a blue-ribbon humanitarian visit by relief experts headed by former Red Cross director, now U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.).  

In his remarks on the Bam tragedy, President Bush first praised his own administration for its compassion. Then he knocked the Iranians on the head. “The Iranian government must listen to the voices of those who long for freedom, must turn over Al Qaeda (members) that are in their custody and must abandon their nuclear weapons program,” Bush said.  

The Iranians thanked the United States for its concern, and then rejected the humanitarian visit, saying that such an event was “premature.”  

There is no doubt that President Bush’s remarks were the prime reason for the rejection of the humanitarian visit when one examines the reactions of Iranian officials as reported by London’s Financial Times and other press sources on Jan. 5. The Iranians immediately became suspicious that the U.S. visit was a political ploy.  

“Political issues must be examined and resolved in their own place, for which there are conditions,” said Kamal Kharrazi, the foreign minister addressing the decision to reject the visit.  

Hamid Reza Asefi, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, noted that Washington was speaking with “different voices.” He reiterated on Jan. 4 that Iran was open to talks based on “mutual respect,” but insisted the United States should not “tell Iran what to do,” referring clearly to the president’s remarks.  

In the wake of the Bam earthquake, the U.S. government provided relief aid, and more important, the ineffective economic sanctions against Iran that have been in place for nearly two decades were lifted for 90 days to allow financial aid to be transmitted to the Iranian disaster victims. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in an interview published in the Washington Post on Dec. 30, said that Iran’s recent actions had been “encouraging” and that the United States was open to “the possibility of dialogue at an appropriate point in the future.”  

But the neo-conservatives in Washington could not let well enough alone. As it lifted the ban on economic activities, the Bush administration issued a series of disclaimers pointing out that the sanctions were lifted temporarily for purely humanitarian purposes, with no implications for change of policy.  

In his remarks, Bush’s three “conditions” for improved relations reflect specious and inaccurate characterizations of Iran. The first, his charge to “listen to the voices of those who long for freedom,” is astonishingly vague. Most Americans do not realize that Iran has open and fair elections. The Iranian constitution, which gives inordinate power to conservative clerics, is now seen as flawed by many Iranian citizens. However, the nation follows its precepts assiduously.  

Elections for the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, will take place this year, and the nation will choose a new president next year. These events will be telling. Many Iranians are disappointed with the efforts of “reformists” such as President Khatami (who can not succeed himself). They plan to boycott the elections to deny the clerical establishment legitimacy if reform candidates are not allowed to run. Thus the Iranian people are likely to find their own solutions to their problems with representative government.  

Next, Bush’s call for Iran to give up members of Al Qaeda is a baseless charge. It presumes that these people exist. Iran repatriated Al Qaeda members fleeing from Afghanistan shortly after the American invasion, and there is no proof at all that there are any others of any consequence still in Iran. Merely to charge Iran with releasing these ephemeral people is to maintain the demonizing charge that Iran is the “chief sponsor of terrorism” in the world. In fact, Iranian officials have absolutely no reason to protect Al Qaeda members: They are utterly opposed to both the Taliban and Al Qaeda on both religious and political grounds.  

The last charge in the Bush message is equally specious. Iran has now complied fully with every international protocol for its nuclear development program, including additional international inspections. There is now no nation in better official compliance with international safeguards against weapons development than Iran.  

When Washington accuses Iranian leaders over and over of things they haven’t done, or are in the process of correcting, they simply retaliate with equally specious accusations. Iran’s leaders receive Bush’s statements as a clear indication that there is no way to deal with U.S. leaders on a rational basis. Everything gets set back to square one.  

President Bush desperately needs a verbal caretaker, such as former White House advisor Karen Hughes, at all times. When a U.S. president speaks, even in a casual manner, the world listens. Offhand remarks on sensitive issues risk doing irreparable damage.  

PNS contributor William O. Beeman teaches anthropology and directs Middle East Studies at Brown University. He is author of the forthcoming book, Double Demons: Cultural Impediments to U.S.-Iranian Understanding.

“What brought you to the United States?” I asked Irit as she stood in my kitchen, drinking a Diet Coke. My nephew Bryce ran into the room laughing, grabbed onto the back of my knees and hid from my neighbor, five-year-old Clyesha, who was chasing him while holding a new doll swathed in a pink blanket. Clyesha had on pajamas decorated with green and red dancing reindeers. On her feet was a pair of fuzzy bedroom slippers. 

Bryce shrieked as he ran out of the room and Clyesha followed, sliding on the hardwood floor and disappearing around the corner. My mother tapped me on the shoulder and asked where I kept the peppercorns. I pointed to a cupboard on the other side of the room. My father struggled nearby, cursing under his breath as he attempted to carve the turkey. “This knife is dull,” I heard him growl. My sister-in-law, Yuka, stood at the stove and stirred the gravy with a wooden spoon while sipping a glass of white wine. Harvey sat in the living room chatting with my husband, Ralph. Lynn and Rachel mixed the salad dressing and asked if I had serving utensils. “Over there,” I said, nodding to the drawer that my brother was rifling through, searching for an olive pitter.  

I turned my attention back to Irit. “Why not come to the United States?” she asked, answering my question with a question. “Doesn’t everyone want to come here?”  

“I don’t know,” I said, moving out of my brother-in-law’s way as he carried a bowl of Brussels sprouts into the dining room. “I’ve never lived anywhere, but here. I don’t know what it’s like to leave family and friends behind and move to a foreign country.”  

“Well,” said Irit, “think of it this way.” She moved closer to me as Hans pushed through the crowded kitchen, looking for something to wipe up a spill in the dining room. “Don’t worry,” he said as he passed by again, a wad of paper towels in his hands. “I’ve got it under control.” 

“You know what it is like when someone gives you an onion and says that it is sweet?” asked Irit, grabbing my attention once more.  

“I guess so,” I answered. 

“Do you want another drink?” shouted Teddy Franklin as he squeezed by me. “I’m making one for your mother. She still can’t find those damn peppercorns.”  

“Yes,” I said and handed him my glass. I turned back to Irit. “Go on,” I nodded, “I’m listening.”  

“When someone gives you an onion,” she repeated, “and says that it is sweet, you believe them, yes?”  

“Yes,” I answered, more firmly this time, but just then Andrea walked into the room and I got distracted by her black leather dress with the slit up the side.  

“I’m here,” yelled Andrea.  

“We can see that,” said Teddy Franklin, handing me my freshened drink. “Now where’d your Momma go?” he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer.  

I turned my attention back to Irit. “Okay,” I said, “about those onions.”  

“Yes,” said Irit. Her husband Clint came up behind her and asked, “Where are the photos of Juji and Niju? Harvey wants to see them.”  

“Upstairs in my coat pocket,” she answered and turned back to me. “Where was I?” she asked.  

“The onions,” I prompted.  

“Ahh, the onions. They are sweet, but then someone gives you an orange and says, ‘Try this,’ and you do and it is much sweeter than the onion. It is much sweeter than anything you have ever tasted and you know then what you have been missing all those years when all you had were onions. You see?” she asked, peering over her glasses. “That is why I came to the United States from Israel and stayed. That is why Clint left Romania. Perhaps it is why Hans came from Nicaragua and Yuka from Japan. We all like onions, but oranges are sweeter.”  

“Time to eat,” shouted my father as he carried the big platter of turkey into the dining room.  

“Don’t forget the stuffing,” instructed my mother as she followed after my Dad. “Next time you go to the store, you need to buy peppercorns,” she whispered into my ear as she passed by.  

“Here’s the gravy,” said Yuka.  

“Here’s the olives,” said my brother.  

“We’ve got the salad,” said Lynn and Rachel in unison.  

“I’m not hungry,” said Andrea. “I’ll just eat some pie with ya’all later.”  

“I’m starved,” said Hans.  

“Here’s a photo of our dogs,” said Clint to no one in particular.  

“The Brussels sprouts are cold,” said my brother-in-law. 

“Let’s eat,” shouted Ralph.

An Alameda County Superior Court judge has ordered a quick turnaround in the Beretta unsafe pistol lawsuit, with jury selection in a new trial to begin in Oakland this week. 

The suit by the family of Kenzo Dix against the Maryland gunmaker ended in a hung jury late last December. A jury ruled in favor of Beretta five years ago in the same case, but that verdict was thrown out by a California Appeals Court. 

The lawsuit stems from the accidental Berkeley shooting death of the 15-year-old Dix by his then-14-year-old friend Michael Soe. Dix’ parents have claimed that the shooting resulted in part from a defective safety design of a Beretta pistol. 

—J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

Whether you’re dining out on piping hot naan or sampling masala paste for your homemade Indian dish, wherever you live in the Bay Area, it’s all but assured that almost every ingredient made a pit stop at a saffron-scented warehouse in West Berkeley. 

Twenty years after it was founded to keep beer flowing at what was then the Bay Area’s 16 Indian Restaurants, Vik Distributors—the parent company of West Berkeley’s famous chaat house—has emerged as chief supplier to over 250 Bay Area Indian restaurants and grocery stores. 

“People don’t need to pack food in their suitcases anymore,” said Vinod Chopra, the company’s president who arrived in Berkeley from Bombay in 1982 to find the supply of Taj Mahal beer at the San Francisco restaurant where his brother worked spotty at best. 

A marketer of pharmaceuticals in his native country, Chopra set out the following year to apply professional distribution practices to the nascent Indian beer market, winning an exclusive contract to supply the brews to Indian restaurants in every Bay Area county. 

Chopra quickly expanded into the food business, importing such Indian staples as rice, lentils and an array of spices for his restaurant accounts.  

Though tamarind, cardamom and coriander are synonymous with India, stringent government quality standards have kept many Indian products from crossing U.S. borders, forcing Chopra to scour the globe for “Indian food.”  

He gets his tamarind from Thailand and green cardamom from Guatemala, but hopes that, as India continues to modernize, its products will pass muster with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA also has longstanding bans on Indian mangoes and chikoos—a kiwi like fruit—much to the dismay of Indian shoppers. 

Chopra said his business has merely added variety to a Berkeley Indian food market that’s been bustling for decades. Before the rise of Silicon Valley shifted the community’s center of gravity south, Berkeley was the hub of Northern California Indian culture—with immigrants coming from as far as Sacramento to buy groceries, clothes, jewelry and electric converters for their 220-volt appliances. 

“Before the tech boom, many Indians gravitated to Berkeley either as professors or students at the university,” Chopra said. “Now it’s mostly the old timers with tough habits to break who come here to shop.” 

Despite the decline of jobs in Silicon Valley and visas for Indian tech workers, Chopra said the food business remains stable. Most threatening he said, is not the drop in new immigrants but the rising popularity of Indian spices that has attracted national brands like Schilling into what was once the exclusive territory of Indian merchants. 

The bigger brands buy at cheaper prices, but once Chopra gets the food to his warehouse, expenses are minimal. “We’re like the Costco for Indian restaurants,” he said. “Other companies might buy it for less, but their packaging and distribution costs are higher.” 

From his warehouse Chopra can deliver virtually anything an Indian restaurant could possibly want—food, tandoori ovens, even statues of Ganesh, a Hindu deity.  

What doesn’t go to local restaurants heads to grocery stores, including Vik’s own shop in West Berkeley.  

Among customers sifting through aisles of Indian curry paste, ginger paste and toothpaste, satisfaction with the selection depended on where in India the customer hails from. For those from the north or west—where Chopra grew up—the selection in Berkeley rivals that of home. “You get more things here than you get in India,” said Varsha Salan. “Here we can have food from all over India. There, only the food from our region was available.” 

But for Subha Sirnivasan, an immigrant from South India, Berkeley doesn’t have all the delicacies of her childhood. “You can get the common things here, but for a lot of South Indian groceries I have to go to Sunnyvale.” 

Though Chopra said he doesn’t plan on expanding his selection anytime soon, he’s recently returned to his roots, becoming the exclusive importer of Sula, the first Indian wine brought to the U.S. 

The wine has found a home at restaurants known for spicy food including The Slanted Door in San Francisco, but Chopra so far hasn’t bothered to sample his latest offering. 

“I’m purely a scotch man,” he said.

Growing up in Calcutta, high holidays meant not turkey or ham, but fish.  

Fish with spinach, fish curry, fried fish, fish egg chutney and the piece de resistance, fish-head curry.  

When my parents first moved to England in the ‘50s, my mother pretended to the fishmonger that she had a cat, so she could take fish heads home for a curry. Today, I can go to my local Asian supermarket in San Francisco and buy fish with heads and tails, not to mention Thai basil, basmati rice and frozen durian. Immigration once meant re-creating a left-behind life out of poor substitutes. Now, with the real McCoy available at the corner store in our global village, it’s hard sometimes to believe that we have to give up anything at all.  

For traditional Hindus, crossing the “kala pani,” or black water, that separated India from the West once meant a loss of caste. Whether they lost their caste or not, the price the first immigrants paid was severe. Punjabi farmers who came to the fields of California in the early 1900s were not allowed to bring wives. Many ended up marrying Mexican-American women and watched their children, with names like Isobel Garcia Singh, grow up more Catholic than Sikh.  

My parents went to London by ship. The extended family came to see them off, for there was no telling when they would make the long journey back. Traveling across places they’d only seen on maps, such as the Suez Canal and Bay of Biscay, and violently seasick in their cramped economy cabin, they arrived to a cold, unwelcoming England. Not only were there no fish heads for a leisurely Sunday afternoon curry, but every spice that was once common and familiar had to be hoarded for special occasions.  

Soon they learned how to substitute—which fish resembled their beloved hilsa, how to make a dessert of sandesh out of ricotta cheese. As they marveled, “Isn’t it almost like the real thing?” at the back of their minds there was always a lingering sense of loss. It spurred them to ride three buses and a train to see some visiting artist from India performing in England.  

When I arrived in the Midwest over a decade ago, I too, like my mother a generation before, learned to make do. Fueled no doubt by the memories of her own voyage west, she had tucked between my shirts and underwear, a year’s worth of carefully labeled turmeric, cumin and coriander. In a little notebook she had written down basic recipes for simple curries that might evoke a taste of home.  

But home was lost. I might have cumin and coriander, but what about the more exotic panchphoran and posto? I didn’t even know what to call them in English. Home had become a slim blue airmail letter that often took three weeks to get to Illinois from Calcutta.  

Nobody needs that anymore. News from home comes daily via e-mail. I can walk into an Indian cash and carry in Sunnyvale and get my Ayurvedic hair oil at nine o’clock at night. I can order customized CDs of my favorite Bengali songs online. Bollywood blockbusters release here at the same time as they do in India.  

That is how it should be. Immigration these days means giving up less and less. People still risk their lives to cross into America across scorching deserts or sealed in cargo containers. For most of us, however, immigration is now more banal, about plane tickets and visas. But what does it mean when, thanks to the marvels of technology, immigration is no longer the sloughing off of one’s skin it once was? Our journeys are no longer forged so much in loss and re-invention. Now they’re imbued with the cockiness of seizing the best of both worlds.  

The next generation of immigrants will not need to sift through their lives wondering what to pack and what to shed. But they will also never learn to value the country they left and the one they come to in the way my parents did. My mother’s fish curry once symbolized the loss of one home and invention of another. Mine is merely a good copy, its ingredients picked up casually from the freezer of an India Mart in Sunnyvale. It is only when you re-create your curry out of lies to the fishmonger and stand-in spices, when the news of death in the family comes weeks too late in a dog-eared letter, that you really reflect on the price of immigration and why you choose to do it.  

Sandip Roy is host of “Upfront,” the Pacific News Service weekly radio program on KALW-FM, San Francisco.  

President Bush likes to say diversity is America’s greatest strength. But when it comes to schools seeking a passing grade under the landmark education law he championed, a diverse student body can be a school district’s greatest liability, according to a study released by Berkeley-based Policy Analysis for California Education. 

“Washington policy makers are earnestly trying to identify mediocre schools,” said study co-author John Novak, a statistician at the University of Southern California. “Yet, we discovered hundreds of middle-class schools that the feds began to penalize this fall, schools that are only guilty of enrolling diverse children.” 

The study found that schools with multiple student subgroups are more likely to trigger the minefield of sanctions buried in the 2002 No Child Left Behind law—even though their students scored about as well on standardized tests as students in less diverse schools. 

This year, three-fourths of Berkeley schools and nearly half of all California schools failed to make “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) mandated by the law, potentially triggering a series of penalties under the Bush legislation. 

No Child Left Behind requires California schools to test 95 percent of their students and show that 16 percent of students test proficient in math and 13.6 percent in reading. Standards must rise incrementally until all students are required to achieve proficiency by 2014. 

Additionally, all statistically significant subgroups—including ethnic and racial groups, English-learners, the socio-economically disadvantaged, and learning disabled—must meet federal standards. If any statistically significant group—tallied as 15 percent of a school’s population—fails, the school as a whole fails. 

Under these criteria, 12 of Berkeley’s 16 schools failed to make AYP this year. All but one of the schools—Rosa Parks—met performance goals, but they fell short on the 95 percent participation requirement. State law allows parents to opt out of standardized tests, making the quota tough to meet. 

Though Berkeley wasn’t included in the study, local results among elementary schools support the researchers’ findings. 

Of four Berkeley schools that count five statistically significant subgroups—White, African American, Latino, English Learner and Socio-economic Disadvantaged—three, Washington, Cragmont and Rosa Parks, have been labeled failing under No Child Left Behind. None of the six schools that count either two or three subgroups have yet faced federal sanctions. 

Designed to raise achievement levels for all students, especially those belonging to ethnic groups that have traditionally lagged on standardized tests, the law has unintentionally directed its bevy of stigmatizing penalties at schools serving the populations lawmakers are trying to help, the study concludes. 

Among schools that enroll fewer than 25 percent of students from poor families, 80 percent of schools with two subgroups met their AYP, compared to 53 percent for schools with six subgroups. Poor students were defined as qualifying for federal Title 1 money—roughly a family income of $24,000. 

Among poorer schools where between 50 and 75 percent of students are disadvantaged, 74 percent of schools with two subgroups met AYP, compared to 21 percent for schools with six subgroups. 

Even more damning, standardized test scores among schools in the same economic bracket are nearly identical—even though diverse schools face longer odds in meeting federal standards. For schools with between 50 to 75 percent of their students disadvantaged, the odds of meeting their AYP dropped by 16 percent between schools with three versus five subgroups—even though their cumulative scores were equal. 

“Good intentions have gone awry,” said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor of education and public policy and co-author of the study. “It’s simply more difficult to flip a silver dollar and get three tails in a row than to get one.”  

Adding to the confusion, Fuller said, is that California measures school performance based on annual standardized test performance growth, not benchmarks. Of the roughly 3,000 California schools that failed to make AYP this year, Fuller said, just under 2,100 of the schools received passing grades under the state standards. 

“A lot of principals feel cynical towards the federal system, because it gives them a contradictory message,” Fuller said. 

In Berkeley, for instance, academic performance at Washington Elementary has improved 40 basis points since 2000—from 689 to 729 according to state calculations. However, the school was labeled failing under No Child Left Behind after low-income students failed to meet goals for two years followed by the school failing to hit the 95 percent test attendance benchmark this year. 

Now in year two of program improvement required under federal law, not only must Washington Elementary inform parents about its status and offer them a chance to transfer, but they must divert much of their Title 1 money to provide extra academic tutoring. Penalties increase through year five, when the district would have to change the governance of the school. 

Fuller criticized the federal government’s “all stick and no carrot” approach. “The question is, are the feds just stigmatizing schools that have more subgroups even though they are equally effective?” 

He recommended rewarding schools that show overall progress, while noting when some subgroups fail to meet standards. He also urged state education boards to lobby for permission to devise their own methods for closing achievement gaps, including a simpler set of student subgroups. 

Fuller noted that schools with high concentrations of Latino students often suffer a triple whammy because many Latino students are simultaneously counted as Latino, English-learners, and socio-economically disadvantaged. 

“We’re not questioning the Bush administration’s admirable goals,” he said. “But our findings do suggest that the new federal rules are yielding unintended and demoralizing effects inside many local schools.”

SATURDAY, JAN. 3 

Tilden Nature Area New Year Open House Drop in to the Visitor Center and sip some warm cider to take the chill off. Walk through the “Story of Wildcat Creek Watershed” and see how the water cycle comes to life. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org  

Sick Plant Clinic UC Botanical Garden experts diagnose your plant woes the first Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. www.mip.berkeley.edu/garden 

MONDAY, JAN. 5 

The Oakland/East Bay Chapter of the National Organization for Women meets the first Monday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. The speaker at our January meeting will discuss Death with Dignity--End of Life Choices. 287-8948. 

Berkeley Biodiesel Cooperative Orientation at 7:30 p.m. Call for location. 594-4000 x777. berkeleybiodiesel@yahoo.com 

Berkeley Ecological and Safe Transportation Planning Meeting at 6 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd Floor, 2090 Kittredge St. imgreen03@comcast.net  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, JAN. 6 

American Red Cross Blood Services volunteer orientation from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at 6230 Claremeont Ave., Oakland. Volunteers are needed to support the more than 40 blood drives held each month. Advance sign-up required, 594-5165. 

Dick Penniman’s Avalanche Safety Lecture from 6 to 9 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Fee is $20. 527-4140. For information on additional avalanche safety courses see snowbridge.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 7 

Junior Skywatchers Club We’ll take a closer look at the earth’s moon through binoculars, and make moon calendars for the New Year. From 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. tnarea@ebparks.org  

Bicycle Friendly Berkeley Coalition Volunteer Night Come help fold newsletters, enter prospective members names into our database, and From 6 to 8 p.m. at 1336C Channing. 549-7433. vc@bfbc2.org 

Walk with the Berkeley Path Wanderers Meet at Live Oak Park, Walnut and Berryman, at 10 a.m. 981-5367. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Sta- 

tion, corner of Shattuck and Center. Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Amnesty International Berkeley Community Group meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 1606 Bonita Ave., at Cedar St. Join fellow human rights activists to help promote social justice one individual at a time. 872-0768. 

Berkeley CopWatch open office hours 7 to 9 p.m. Drop in to file complaints, assistance available. For information call 548-0425. 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Hide-A-Way Café, 6430 Telegraph Ave. For information call Fred Garvey, 925-682-1111, ext. 164. 

Free Feldenkrais ATM Classes for adults 55 and older at 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut at Rose. For information call 848-0237. 

THURSDAY, JAN. 8 

The Ecocity Sessions with Richard Register A six- week course meets Tues. evenings introducing ecocity theory. Cost is $150. For information call Kirsten Miller 419-0850. kleighmi@flash.net 

“Senior Services and the Philosophy of Geriatrics” with Ellen Bloomfield, Emeryville Senior Center, Aisha Boykin, Albany Center, and Lisa Ploss, City of Berkeley, from noon to 2 p.m. at the Albany Public Library, Edith Stone Room,1247 Marin Ave. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters. 843-8824. 

Snowshoeing Workshop for Women at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

East Bay Mac User Group meets on the second Thursday of the month from 6 to 9 p.m. in the 3rd floor Community Room, Berkeley Central Library, 2090 Kittredge St. http://ebmug.org

FRIDAY, JAN. 2 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Moh Alileche with Les Amis Dancers at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Savant Guard at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Danny Caron at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Cheap Suit Serenaders, roots music from the golden age of jazz, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50 in advance, $20.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Enemies, Modern Machines, Black Rice, S.H.A.T., Angry for Life at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SATURDAY, JAN. 3 

FILM 

“Network,” about a TV network that exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor’s raving and revelations about the media at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley located at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Donation of $3-$5. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Bay Area Poets Coalition holds an open reading, 3 to 5 p.m., West Branch Berkeley Public Library, 1125 University Ave. Free. For information, call 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dubwize and Firme perform Reggae-Latin at 9:30 p.m., with DJ Spliff Skankin at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Oak, Ash & Thorn, a cappella with a British Isles flavor, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50 advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Wayne Wallace Quartet at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Tree Leyburn, singer-songwriter at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

D’Amphibians, Flowtilla at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Himsa, To See You Broken, Assailant, Light This City at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Guarneri Jazz Quartert at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donations of $8-$15 suggested. 649-8744. www.thejazzhouse.org 

SUNDAY, JAN. 4 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Thomas Cleary and Bannie Chow at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Love Theater Fundraiser for Koran Jenkins at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7-$12 sliding scale. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Rosalie Sorrels at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Domingo de Rumba Participatory event at 3:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

MONDAY, JAN. 5 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Soli Deo Gloria will hold auditions for J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion under the direction of Allen Simon. Experienced singers are encouraged to apply. Audition and rehearsals will be held Monday evenings at Trinity Lutheran Church in Alameda, 1323 Central and Morton. To schedule an appointment, call 650-424-1242. www.sdgloria.org 

The Toasters at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $4.  

848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

TUESDAY, JAN. 6 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Juan Diego Flórez, tenor, at 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56, available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Tribute to Babtunde Olatunje with Arsenio Kounde at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Dayna Stephens House Jam at 8 p.m. at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744.  

www.thejazzhouse.com 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 7 

CHILDREN 

Preschool Storytime, introducing books and music to promote early literacy skills, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library West Branch, 1125 University Ave. 981-6270. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chad Hinman and Cat Kinsey perform modern folk at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$10. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Whiskey Brothers performs oldtime bluegrass at 9 p.m. at at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

THURSDAY, JAN. 8 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players, “The Death of Meyerhold,” through Jan 23 at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Thurs.-Sat. performances at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12-$18, available from 925-798-1300. 704-8210. www.shotgunplayers.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Christopher Baker, author of “Moon Handbook: Cuba” at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave at Rose, 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“A Little Night Music” with the New Century Chamber Orchestra at 8 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. For ticket information call 415-392-4400. www.ncco.org 

Punk Show with Tempo at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley located at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Donation of $3-$5 requested, no one turned away. Wheelchair accessible. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

Stunt Monkey, Fountain Street Theater Band, Spinning Jennies at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com 

The Jeb Brady Band, acoustic americana, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $15.50 in advance, $16.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Keni El Lebrijano, flamenco guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

San Francisco Mdicine Ball at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

www.beckettsirishpub.com

EYESORE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think it is as important to exclaim “a job well done!” as it is to decry one not getting done. I have a happy ending to report regarding the “Neighborhood Eyesore” (Letters, Daily Planet, Dec. 2-4) On Dec. 23 all of the debris, mobile home, and occupants were removed from the property in the 2800 block of San Pablo Avenue by the city of Berkeley. I have personally thanked the city officials who worked most closely with this case by phone and e-mail, but I also wanted to just say a formal thank you to the Zoning Enforcement Team, Zoning Adjustments Board, and to the many other people whom I do not know but played a part in this work. 

Our neighborhood response has been ecstatic! It is rewarding to know that when many people work together that a problem can be solved. 

Nancy Ellis  

• 

CLARIFICATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Dec. 16-18 edition of the Daily Planet had a quote from me regarding the possibility of UC losing the LBNL management contract. I would like to add the clarification that the quote represents a personal opinion. Although I am a lab employee, I do not represent lab management or lab employees. 

I would like to further note that the headline, “Bush Put Lab Future in Doubt,” is easy to misinterpret. It is the future of UC’s contract with the lab that is in doubt, not the lab and its activities. 

Robert Clear 

• 

WATERSHED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a Green Party member, I read with great interest Rob Wren’s incisive analysis of San Francisco’s Dec. 9 mayoral runoff election (“Absentees Proved Crucial in Newsom Victory,” Daily Planet, Dec. 19-22). 

In the aftermath of Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez’s impressive vote total (nearly 48 percent), Gonzalez’s accomplishment potentially bodes well for San Francisco becoming a city with two competitive political parties—rather than a single party with an entrenched political establishment. 

The San Francisco Democratic Party establishment associated with former mayor Willie Brown and several San Francisco-based corporations—PG&E, ChevronTexaco, Gap and Bechtel—has been rudely jolted. 

Without exaggeration, Dec. 9 was an electoral watershed. As Wren indicated in his article, a voter alliance of Greens, independents and progressive Democrats nearly toppled Willie Brown’s candidate. Significantly, Gonzalez won the most votes that were actually cast on election day (receiving over 10,000 more votes than Newsom).  

As President of the Board of Supervisors, Matt Gonzalez will operate with a solid progressive Board majority enabling him to exercise, in effect, parallel political authority and influence to that of Mayor-elect Newsom.  

I would add that Gonzalez’s Dec. 9 election result was foreshadowed by Green Party candidate Peter Camejo’s historic second place finish during the 2002 gubernatorial election when Camejo received the highest San Francisco third party vote percentage since the early part of the 20th Century. 

Chris Kavanagh 

• 

IRV DEBATE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was concerned to read that Councilmember Gordon Wozniak is against rank-ordered voting for the March ballot in Berkeley, also called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). 

Surprisingly, Councilmember Wozniack’s top reason to block IRV seems to be: “There are no forms of IRV that are presently certified in the State of California.” Interesting. I’m wondering if he is aware that the current software version for the voting machines used in his own county were probably not certified by the State of California for the recall election. A recent audit of 17 random counties in the state turned up not a single county using software which was certified for the recall election. Since Wozniack is taking time to dismantle a potential for IRV, rather than exposing the voting software already being used in his own county, I must assume he is unaware of this disturbing fact. 

Why would a City Councilmember be so interested in the lack of certification for a system not yet in existence, but has nothing to say about the current uncertified system we are using today? 

For more information on the lack of certification of the Diebold software used in the recall, and other interesting facts not examined by either our City Councilmembers or our local corporate news outlets (such as former felons being on the payroll of Diebold, or that the Diebold system was voted “Worst Technology” for 2003 by Fortune Magazine), please see: www.blackboxvoting.org and www.blackboxvoting.com. 

I remain hopeful that councilmembers will re-focus their energies on issues which are already here, such as the highly disturbing dilemma of e-voting, rather than ones which are months away which hold the potential for increasing, rather than decreasing, voter participation, as have been shown in IRV systems used around the world www.fairvote.org/irv/faq.htm). 

Thankfully, the Berkeley Daily Planet has already shown the courage and integrity to expose information on the silent dilemma of electronic voting. 

Victoria Ashley 

Oakland 

• 

NO HALLMARK MOMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As I look at all the trash cans on my street overflowing with the boxes and wrappings of the holidays, the manifest greed that we teach our children (yes, even in Berkeley), I felt compelled to write to you about a column by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor (“Exemplary Actions From Thurmond’s Children,” Daily Planet, Dec. 19-22). I include it in the general heading, “Lies We Tell Our Children.” Or perhaps, “Pursuit of the Hallmark Moments.” 

We all now know that Strom Thurmond, when he was a 20-year-old college student, impregnated a 15-year-old house servant in 1924, and that the child born of that union is Ms. Essie Mae Washington Williams. Surely we are all sophisticated enough as to the racial history of the deep South to know that in 1924, a black female teenager in the employ of a rich white family had little choice in sexual matters. Indeed, it is undisputed that this was, if not forcible rape, at least statutory rape. It is also undisputed that the black community and Mr. Thurmond’s staff have known of Ms. Washington-Williams’ existence for many years or surely should have known of it. It simply was not a secret. Indeed, Allen-Taylor states he first heard Ms. Williams’ name more than 20 years ago. 

So I was distressed to read the following words in the Planet, describing the Thurmond family response: “‘I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams and I am free.’ Free, presumably, from a longtime burden of secrecy. But equally classy was the response from the late Sen. Thurmond’s white descendants. Asked if Ms. Washington-Williams’ claim was true, a spokesperson for Thurmond’s white children answered, simply, yes...‘We hope this acknowledgment will bring closure for Ms. Williams.’” 

No, this simple “yes” is not a classy response. There is nothing classy about this response. This is a 50-years-too-late response. A simple “no” was not an option, although the Jefferson descendants keep trying. It is not classy to admit to what is easily provable here in an era of DNA. It might have gone some distance if the white family had made an apology to the entire Washington-Williams family, who endured the racial and racist history both epitomized and personified in Strom Thurmond. 

This is all a little like asking us to think Mr. Pataki is a wonderful man, a new friend of the ACLU, because he pardoned Lenny Bruce for legal acts for which he was charged. That pardon may be a Hallmark moment for some, but not for Lenny, who was persecuted into an early death. 

No, our economy will not be saved by the greed we teach our children in December. No, a simple “yes” to the inevitable is not classy. No, it’s not all OK now that Lenny was right. 

Anna de Leon 

• 

THE CULPRIT IS... 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks to Sharon Hudson for her incisive commentaries in Berkeley Daily Planet. In the Dec. 19-22 issue, she correctly writes about some of the staff of the Planning Department that “... Berkeley’s current zoning code and planning process would work pretty well if staff enacted them properly and in good faith.” I certainly agree with this statement. 

In the past year, I attended most of the public hearings before the City Council. In most cases, residents were appealing to the council unfair decisions made by the Zoning Board or the Planning Department in favor of corporations or developers. As I looked further into some cases, I reached the conclusion that the culprit was usually the Planning Department that by violating city laws, ordinances, and codes tried to deceive residents. 

In public hearings, residents usually present solid pieces evidence that show the Planning Department has acted against the law. These pieces of evidence are 

mostly documents prepared by the city offices and are available to the public, such as staff reports or action calendars. However, the Planning Department invariably tries to defend its misdeeds or to marginalize the evidence by deceitful rhetoric. 

I have reached the following conclusions: 1) if the Planning Department and the Zoning Board act lawfully, inform residents on time, and do not work against them, there would be fewer public hearings; 2) once a wrongful process starts and an unfair decision is made, appeal by residents is inevitable. The process of appealing and public hearing becomes like a nightmare for residents. This process is costly and unproductive for both residents and the city; 3) naturally, the ordeal make some members of the community believe “that the Planning Department staff is too closely allied with applicants. In particular, some are concerned that staff appear to act as advocate for a project rather than as impartial analysts;” to quote from Husdon’s commentary. 

To avoid problems and perhaps save money, the city should purge the staff members who are too closely allied with applicants and act as advocate for a project. 

Mina Davenport 

• 

TENNIS COURTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was sorry to read in the Daily Planet that Berkeley Unified School District has plans to construct a building on the site of the Berkeley High tennis courts, and I beg them to reconsider. Young people are more successful in school when they look forward to attending. Many enjoy participating in athletics. The school district should encourage them by providing the best possible athletic facilities. 

Greg Kalkanis 

• 

THE DIFFERENCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

During her broadcast on Dec. 16, Diane Sawyer asked President Bush about the still-not-found WMDs in Iraq. “What’s the difference?” Bush, responded, “the possibility [was] that [Saddam Hussein] could acquire weapons.”  

Mr. Bush, the difference between a hypothetical “could” acquire weapons versus a genuine “has” the weapons is approximately 400 American lives lost, 4,000 Iraqi civilians killed, and $ 400 thousand million American taxpayer dollars wasted.  

It is unconscionable that the President, the chief steward of the public’s trust, would deceive us so gravely. Even worse if the well-coordinated lies from the Administration were actually a colossal, incompetent miscalculation.  

While political pundits yammer about Bush’s re-election, citizens are calling for his impeachment and incarceration. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

CAL BASKETBALL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Cal women’s basketball team is off to a great start! The Golden Bears concluded the non-conference season with a 7-2 record, their best start since the 1992-93 season. 

They need and deserve more community and university support. 

Expose your children and friends to a great group of athletes at a great university. 

We recently visited Eugene, Ore. and saw what great community support the University of Oregon Women’s Basketball receive—several thousand men, women, and children arrived in busloads for their game. 

Let us show what we can do in Berkeley. 

Daniel Horodysky

“David Ireland: The Way Things Are” gives an in-depth look at the work of one of the West Coast’s foremost artists. Although his work has been seen at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum, as well as in Rome, Zurich, Madrid and Kyoto, this is the first retrospective for the 77-year-old multi-talented artist. 

Born in Bellingham, Washington, Ireland came to Oakland and got his early training at the California College of Arts and Crafts, where emergent leading Bay Area artists—Robert Arneson, Robert Bechtele, Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira and Peter Voulkos— were enrolled at the same time. Ireland was exposed to many divergent ideas and took his degree in industrial arts and printmaking and worked as Oliveira’a assistant for a time. After a stint in the Army, he worked as an illustrator and traveled around Europe and Africa. 

From the mid-1960s to the early ‘70s, when the cultural revolution and political action was happening here, David Ireland led safaris in Africa. In his forties, however, he decided to become an artist and went back to school at the San Francisco Art Institute. 

Now his colleagues were the Bay Area Conceptualists and Installation Artists—Tom Marioni, Paul Kos, Terry Fox and Howard Fried among others. Ireland himself became a most resourceful and original artist to which this large exhibition testifies. 

Following in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp and under the spell of John Cage, he made very simple objects from the most ordinary materials. Of greatest importance was his study of Zen, and a 1975 trip to India was liberating in abandoning rules and ideologies and accepting things “the way they are.” In the show we find pieces of wall, a rubber shoe, a collection of brooms set at an angle, a rubber band collection, chairs set on top of each other, a gigantic chair made of drywall and 16 feet high, an old three-legged chair and a “Duchamp Tree” made of chopped pieces of alder wood. There are many things in this show which we would overlook if they were not in museum context. 

But it was time to move away from making objects, even if they didn’t look like art pieces. After restoring the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco to its original state prior to Tom Marioni’s occupancy, he went to work on a house on Capp Street, which had once belonged to a ship captain. In what was to become Ireland’s signature work, he spent two years stripping it of just about everything, including wallpaper, paint, baseboards, moldings, etc. 

As an artist he re-formed the material into a work of minimal simplicity. In 1980 he proceeded similarly when he converted former army barracks above the Pacific Ocean into what was to become the Headlands Center for the Arts, a place for residencies for exploratory artists. Ireland stripped dreary rooms of eight layers of wall paint, plaster and linoleum flooring and floated the dingy places with light. Together with the architect Mark Mack he designed and made the furniture for the place. 

The exhibition shows photographs of these buildings, but the most intriguing part of the show is called “Angel-Go-Around” (1996). It consists of a large collection of garden statues, nymphs, venuses, Michelangelo David’s—often the same figure in duplicate or triplicate, which are arranged in a circle. Above them, supported from the gallery’s ceiling, a motorized angel sweeps in circular flight over the statues, as if protecting the figures on the floor. What had once been art, and had become debased in kitsch, can now be experienced by the viewer on his/her own terms, relating to his/her own previous experience. 

The exhibition will be at the Oakland Museum of California through March 14.

Members of Berkeley’s Persian community met this week to organize a Sunday evening dinner to raise cash and collect medical supplies for relief efforts in ancient city of Bam, Iran, where Friday’s 6.7 earthquake left at least 30,000 dead and thousands more injured and homeless.  

According to Red Cross estimates, the death toll could reach 50,000 by the time rescue teams reach all of the hundreds of small villages in the region. 

Members of Berkeley’s Persian Center are holding their Sunday fund-raiser at the Santa Fe Bistro, 2142 Center St., between 5 and 8 p.m. Guests are asked for a minimum donation of $100. 

“We are looking for new medicines such as antiseptics, antibiotics and pain relievers,” said Persian Center President Niloofar Nouri. “Everything that we collect will be sent to Iran immediately by Cyrus Travel which is volunteering transportation of medicines and doctors.” 

She said relief officials are discouraging donations of clothing and blankets because of the difficulty in shipping bulky supplies. “It is much more efficient to give money because so many of the things that are needed can be purchased in Iran,” Nouri said. 

Local Iranian businessman Soheyl Modarressi and Ahmad Behjati, proprietor of Santa Fe Bistro, are sponsoring Sunday’s fund-raiser. 

News of the earthquake had personal meaning for the 18 Berkeley residents who visited Bam during a humanitarian mission of the Wheelchair Foundation last April.  

While delivering donated wheelchairs to the regional capital of Kerman—about 150 miles north of Bam—the group, including former Berkeley Councilmember Polly Armstrong, Nouri, Modarressi and several city employees, took a side trip to tour the winding passageways and crumbling ramparts of the now-demolished 2,000-year-old citadel at Bam. 

“It was truly an amazing place,” said Armstrong. “It was one of the friendliest places I’ve ever visited. The people were so eager to visit with us.” 

Slides from their visit will be shown at the Santa Fe Bistro fund raising event. 

Modarressi said the Bam region “was already quite poor without the earthquake. It will take years for the city to recover.” 

The earthquake struck just before dawn while thousands of Bam residents were still sleeping or just rising, devastating the ancient city internationally known for its date trees and the 2,000-year-old citadel. According to recent  

estimates, at least 70 percent of the city’s buildings collapsed. 

The widespread devastation is largely due to the construction of the buildings, nearly all made of mud-brick and not seismically reinforced. 

Many of the deaths occurred when people were either crushed by falling debris or smothered by crumbling brick and mud. It is deep winter in Bam and others lost their lives when immediate rescue efforts were hampered by the extreme cold.  

The Persian Center, 2029 Durant St., is now collecting new medical supplies and looking for volunteers. For drop-off times for medical gear, call 848-0264. 

For information about donating money, blood or other supplies, see the website of the National Iranian American Council: www.niacouncil.org/iranquake.asp.

If someone were to, say, set up a catapult in the Berkeley Hills and lob a rock down on the streets of the city every few months, the police in Berkeley would do their best to arrest that person before someone was killed. Yet, a situation with a similar risk to life and property exists on one of our streets, and the city has been repeatedly notified of it but will do nothing about it at all (or next to nothing, but I'll get to that.) There is an old, diseased elm tree standing on Tacoma Avenue near the corner of Colusa. The tree is falling down in sections. Every few months it drops a branch. Some of the branches fall from a height of perhaps 50 feet. It happened a year ago, the branch only hit asphalt, and the city came out and cleared the branch out of the street. Luckily, nobody was injured. Then on Oct. 25, it happened again. This time the branch crushed the hood and fenders of an automobile (as it happens, my automobile.) The force was so great that when the hood was pushed down upon the engine block by the impact of the branch, a bolt punched right through the hood. The damage cost more than $1,800 to repair. If the branch had hit a person instead of an inanimate object, that person would have been grievously injured or killed. 

This happened just before Halloween and I was concerned that more branches would fall from the tree and hurt a child out trick-or-treating. I wrote to the Parks and Waterfront. I received no reply. I then wrote to the mayor, the city manager, and my City Councilperson. Again, there was no reply. I wrote again, and was told, on Nov. 3, that something would be done about it. And, in fact, something was done about it. Someone from the City of Berkeley came out, inspected the tree, pulled out a brush and can of paint and painted a bright red spot on it. And, a month and a half later, there the tree stands, all decorated for the holidays with its bright red spot. I may be slow, but I fail to see how painting a bright red spot on a dangerous tree (and we have obtained the opinion of an arborist that the tree is dangerous) lessens the danger, but then, I am not a professional on such matters. I do know that on Thanksgiving Day, during a high wind, another branch fell off the tree., and still another branch has fallen in the last couple of weeks. Luckily, no one was standing under it.  

That tree, by the way, stands two houses up the street from the Thousand Oaks School. Every day children and their parents park under it and walk down the street to the school, no doubt stopping to admire how wonderful the tree looks with its bright red spot. If we are very lucky, no child, or adult for that matter, will be killed by a falling branch. Yet, the government of Berkeley appears unconcerned: After all, at some point all the branches will have fallen, and maybe nobody will be injured. Perhaps they will do something about the tree after they have increased the parcel tax, or have hired a few more officious and rude bureaucrats to bumble around in the Planning Department making sure that nobody who changes a business address can do so without investing three hours of their time filling out countless forms asking how much alcohol a law office plans to serve and the like. The provision of services other cities would consider to be basic—such as making sure that children can get to school without danger of having their skulls crushed—seems too mundane for the well-paid employees of the City of Berkeley to deal with. 

Another example of the nobody cares attitude in the city is the block of Bancroft Way just west of Shattuck Avenue. This block is downtown and receives a lot of foot traffic. It also is maybe three blocks from City Hall. Police patrol there all the time. Berkeley High kids pass by on their way to school. Library employees use the entrance to gain access to their work. Sometime in September or October a miscreant decided to break one or more windows of cars parked on that block. Scads of pieces of broken glass covered the sidewalk. Those broken glass fragments were still there at the end of November, when I took off for a couple of weeks and left town. On coming back to town I wondered aloud whether my return would still see those glass fragments all over that sidewalk. I was not disappointed. The sidewalk is still covered with glass. Unless I am mistaken, the glass from the car windows has been joined by new glass from broken bottles. It seems that if the city allows glass to accumulate on its sidewalks, with no efforts to clean it, permission is tacitly given to others to smash glass onto the sidewalks. I'm sure this impresses Berkeley visitors to the area, those who, for instance come in to attend movies or plays downtown, or parents who are visiting their students. Again, perhaps this is too lowly a job to force on our highly efficient and well-paid city bureaucrats. 

But lately it occurs to me that I may be wrong. There may be a purpose here. The city may be allowing the broken glass to accumulate in an effort to keep homeless people from sleeping on the sidewalks, although that would seem to be politically highly incorrect. 

Paul Glusman is a Berkeley attorney.

Though a state Administrative Law Judge upheld the finding that a well-known Berkeley construction company “willfully” exposed both workers and the public to asbestos during a Hayward building demolition last year, a lawyer for the company is hailing the decision as a partial victory. 

The lawyer for Kimes Morris Construction—jointly owned by Berkeley builders Andrew Kimes and James Morris—says that the Cal-OSHA judge’s ruling actually favors the builders in some respects because he specifically found no evidence of an “intentional” violation. 

Fred Walter of the occupational health and safety law experts Walter Law Firm of Healdsburg, said that “while the ruling is against the employer [Kimes Morris], actually it is a vindication of the argument the employer [Kimes Morris] was making all along.” 

Cal-OSHA Associate Industrial Hygienist Garrett Brown, who brought the original charges against the firm, greeted Walter’s assertion of victory with a succinct “Ha!” The Oakland-based inspector added, “I don’t see how he [the Kimes Morris attorney] could say that. The only issue under contention was whether the classification of “willful” would be sustained or not, and that’s what the judge sustained. It goes on their record as a willful violation. Their [Kimes Morris’] contention was that it wasn’t a willful violation. They conceded they had violated the law, but they said it was not done willfully. [Cal-OSHA] felt otherwise, and on the basis of the three day hearing, so did the Administrative Law Judge.” 

The hearing was held in Oakland in early October. 

In a ruling issued last week, Judge Manuel M. Melgoza fined Kimes Morris $10,000 for the single charge remaining before him. Cal-OSHA inspectors had originally cited the company for 17 violations stemming from the Hayward demolition project, assessing fines of nearly $36,000. Kimes Morris appealed all of the citations to Cal-OSHA’s Appeals Board, later dropping all but the single “willful” citation appeal after negotiations with Cal-OSHA. 

The judge’s ruling, along with some adjustments to the charges by Cal-OSHA, reduced Kimes Morris’ total fine to $20,800. 

The citations and the hearing stemmed from a December, 2001-January, 2002 incident during Kimes Morris Company’s renovations of a Hayward commercial building co-owned by the company. After Kimes Morris employees were discovered dumping unprotected asbestos waste into an open bin behind the building, Cal-OSHA temporarily suspended the demolition. 

Among the 17 citations later listed against Kimes Morris were the fact that cancer-causing asbestos fibers were being loosed into the air and workers were handling the material without proper protection. Many of the workers involved were Latino immigrant laborers. 

In its defense, Kimes Morris said they were unaware that asbestos was present on the site and unfamiliar with the regulations governing asbestos removal. Kimes Morris officials say that they are primarily constructors of buildings, and have been involved in only one other major demolition project—the Artech Building in Berkeley. That project also involved asbestos removal, but the removal was subcontracted out to another company by Kimes Morris. 

To show what he said indicated the company’s moral—if not legal—lack of blame, Kimes Morris’ attorney Walter noted a sentence near the end of Judge Melgoza’s decision, which read: “The record does not warrant a finding that [Kimes Morris] intentionally exposed employees to a known asbestos hazard, but that is not required to prove the willful classification.” 

“Given the nature of the allegations made by Garrett Brown and other people at Cal-OSHA in Oakland,” Walter said, “I thought that this paragraph was especially valuable, even though we lost the case. The judge said that there is no evidence of any intent to expose employees to asbestos with some sort of cruel and callous disregard of their safety. That’s not necessary to prove OSHA’s definition of willful.” 

While Walter contended that willful ought to mean intentional in all instances, he added that “it’s coming to mean something different when you deal with state agencies that write their own definitions.” 

But Cal-OSHA inspector Brown said the judge’s rejection of the Kimes Morris appeal is all that matters. He notes that the Hayward asbestos citations were the fourth time Cal-OSHA has been called in to inspect Kimes Morris building projects in the past three years. The first three inspections resulted in “serious” citations, which he described as violations of safety procedures that have the “substantial possibility of serious injury or death.” 

Besides the $20,000 fine, Brown said, there might be other consequences for the company. “It might have some affect on their Workers Compensation insurance premiums if their workers comp carrier learns that they were cited by Cal-OSHA for willfully violating the law. It might make it more difficult for them to win bids if they have a record.” 

Brown added that someone might take note of the number of citations against a single company in a short a period of time. “That’s unusual,” he said. “It doesn’t happen very often.”

As our new governor makes the state’s fiscal crisis worse by cutting the vehicle license fee, and as he reneges on promises not to cut education, don’t blame me or my fellow Berkeleyans.  

Berkeley residents can fairly say that they had nothing to do with bringing about the current sorry state of affairs. Or at least they had less to do with it than residents of any other city in the state. 

The shopping mall-based voter revolt in California that removed a recently re-elected governor and replaced him with an oversized actor with a long history of groping women found few recruits here in Berkeley. 

In case you don’t already know it, be advised that people in Berkeley are quite different from people in most of the rest of this state when it comes to politics. If you need proof for this, you need look no further than the results of the recent recall election. (See Table 1, right.) 

Berkeley is the only city in the state where Arnold Schwarzenegger came in third, losing not only to Cruz Bustamante, the self-appointed Democratic replacement candidate for now-former Gov. Gray Davis, but also to Green Party candidate Peter Camejo.  

Almost 89 percent of Berkeley’s voters voted against recalling Gray Davis, the highest percentage of no votes in the whole state. Left-of-center strongholds like San Francisco and Santa Cruz also rejected the recall by large margins, but nobody wanted to keep Davis in office more than Berkeley’s voters. 

Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante managed to get only 31.5 percent vote statewide, but 74 percent voted for him in Berkeley, his best showing in the state. 

Davis did remarkably well in the recall in Berkeley in light of his weaker performance in the November 2002 general election. In the 2002 election, Davis got 65.8 percent in Berkeley to 25.8 percent for Peter Camejo and 7.0 percent for Republican candidate Bill Simon.  

In recent elections, Green Party candidates have done relatively well in elections where a segment of progressive voters have concluded that they could safely vote for a Green over a more moderate or conservative Democrat without throwing the election to a Republican. (See Table 2, right.) 

Davis had a solid lead over Simon in the polls leading up to the 2002 election, while polls prior to the recall showed the recall and Schwarzenegger ahead. 

For an another example of strategic voting by left-leaning Berkeley voters, consider the 2000 U.S. Senate election. Conservative Democrat Diane Feinstein, who recently helped pass Republican Medicare privatization legislation, lost a considerable number of votes to Green candidate Medea Benjamin when she ran for re-election in November 2000. Her GOP opponent Tom Campbell was behind in the polls and lost by a big margin. 

It’s not surprising that Republican candidates for state and national office consistently run behind Green candidates in Berkeley. Only 6.9 percent of Berkeley’s voters are registered Republicans, while 7.1 percent are registered Greens. Sixty-three percent are registered Democrats.  

In Berkeley, Republicans are as much a “third party” as Greens. Democrats outnumber Greens and Republicans combined by more than 4 to 1. 

The recall lost and Bustamante won by landslide margins in every precinct in Berkeley. In fact to call the results a landslide would be an understatement. The closest thing to good news for Republicans came from precinct 320, located above Claremont Avenue, where a little more than 20 percent voted for the recall and for Schwarzenegger. 

While Bustamante beat Schwarzenegger by better than 8-1 citywide, a mega-landslide, he won by a more ordinary 3-1 landslide in precinct 320. The area above Claremont has the highest average income in the city. 

The only other precinct where the recall garnered even 20 percent support was in one student precinct south of the UC campus where many fraternities and sororities are located. 

Looking at the results of the October election, it’s possible to identify the most progressive, anti-Republican area of the city.  

In the precincts west of Shattuck Avenue and east of Sacramento Street, between Bancroft Way and Ashby Avenue, Schwarzenegger got 5 percent or less of the votes cast. Green Party candidate Peter Camejo did well in areas with the highest percentages of tenants both south of campus and downtown, where he got 10-14 percent. 

The recall lost in all the state’s big cities except San Diego. It passed because of strong support in the San Joaquin Valley and other agricultural areas, and in the newer sprawl suburbs. In Alameda County, the recall failed everywhere but in the East County communities of Livermore, Pleasanton and Dublin, the part of the county with the highest proportion of new housing development.  

In the City of Los Angeles, the recall lost by a solid margin, but outlying and more suburban areas of Los Angeles County voted solidly for the recall. 

Sutter County, northeast of Sacramento, was where the recall was most popular. 77 percent voted yes. Yuba City, the biggest community in Sutter County, has the dubious distinction have having been rated the worst place to live in the United States by Rand McNally. 

If a researcher were to take a closer look at where Schwarzenegger and the recall did well, I bet he or she would find a correlation with the following: 

• Areas with limited public transit and high car dependency. 

• Areas where Wal Mart accounts for a higher percentage of local retail sales. 

• Areas with lots of newer “dumb growth,” sprawl single-family housing developments. 

• Areas where a high percentage of restaurants are chain restaurants.

Transbay BART commuters still smarting over the new 10 percent fare hikes can take solace at some good news: Starting next month, timed transfers return to the 12th Street/Oakland and MacArthur stations. 

Last year, BART’s $1.5 billion extension to San Francisco International Airport and parts of San Mateo County came at an unexpected price to Berkeley riders: cancellation of the timed transfers to the Pittsburg/Bay Point line, which had cut transbay travel time by seven to 15 minutes. 

Now as BART reshuffles its ailing airport service, it’s restoring the transfers in a move estimated to save the agency $2 million, said spokesperson Mike Healy. 

“It’ll be an enhancement for Berkeley,” he said. “A lot of people complained about the current schedule.”  

Beginning Feb. 9, all Pittsburg/Bay Point trains will travel directly to SFO. Rush hour Berkeley trains will head to Millbrae and then to the airport. With direct service to SFO cut on the Dublin/Pleasanton line, those trains will turn around at Daly City. BART also axed a seldom-used shuttle linking Millbrae to SFO. 

The new schedule is aimed to support SamTrans, which must pay BART’s estimated $15- $18 million operating budget deficit on its San Mateo service. 

When SFO service began in January, BART picked the Dublin/Pleasanton line to give direct service to SFO, projecting that it would serve the bulk of airport customers—simultaneously throwing off timed transfers between the Richmond and Pittsburg/Bay Point lines. 

Healy said subsequent rider surveys indicate that riders on the Richmond and Pittsburg/Bay Point lines commute to SFO most frequently, triggering the service change. 

Before last year’s schedule change Berkeley riders could take any Fremont train south and transfer at MacArthur, where a San Francisco train would be waiting on the platform. In San Francisco, Berkeley passengers could board Pittsburg/Bay Point trains and transfer to a waiting Richmond-bound train at the 12th Street/Oakland station. 

Healy said that despite the service reductions implemented in 2003, ridership on the Richmond line has held steady. 

—Matthew Artz

At exactly midnight on Christmas Eve, somebody took out the main cable box on our street with small arms fire, I think, perhaps as an East Oakland-type of commentary on the continually descending quality of Comcast’s programming. We tend to be blunt and plain-spoken out this way. 

Anyway, I’m sure the cable went out at exactly midnight, whatever the cause. They sent three repair trucks out 10 hours later, searching the utility poles for evidence of damage, and while two of them were up there on the booms, the third one dropped by the house and asked if we might want to upgrade our service to digital. I declined. I’ll wait ‘til they include the radar attachment that detects incoming fire. 

I am also sure that the cable blackout was immediately preceded by five rounds, fired in rapid succession. 9 millimeter, maybe? I forgot to ask the neighborhood children, who are becoming expert in detecting caliber and model. Gunshots are not as common in our part of the world as they are in, say, the Sunni Triangle, but we get our share. Mostly, by way of response, we apply the footstep principle. If you hear gunshots, you must stand very still and quiet and listen for footsteps running on the pavement outside. If you hear no rapid footsteps, you can let out your breath and go about your business, and surmise that this was only someone shooting at the cable box, or Mars retreating, or one of the raccoons rummaging through a stray bin of garbage. If you hear footsteps, running, then you must quickly apply the Doppler Effect (remember when you told your high school science teacher that you’d only learn this stuff if it could someday save your life; well, wise-ass, now’s your chance). Are the footsteps coming toward your house, or retreating? If they are retreating, continue to stand still and listen for further developments. If they are coming towards your house, find cover. Chances are, more excitement will soon follow. 

It is interesting, sometimes, to hear those of my friends who live in other parts of the world express wonderment at why we in these beleaguered blocks do not cooperate with the police when we hear such things as gunshots in the street outside. The truth is, we have a high regard for our police forces, and know that they are busy elsewhere, with more important things. Right now, law enforcement officers—in the persons of our state Highway Patrol—are whizzing up and down International Boulevard, chasing down suspected DUI’s. Do not get me wrong. Driving under the influence is a serious and deadly problem throughout our neighborhoods, all of them, and one wonders why there is no great clamor to bring this sort of impacted, rolling convoy-type of enforcement to a street near you. Or perhaps to 66th Avenue just after a Raider game where, one would guess, they could wrack up citations en masse. But that’s another story for another day. 

Meanwhile, I have it on good authority (neighborhood talk up at the parking lot of the Quarter Pound) that those who are driving under the influence of liquor and other intoxicating substances have taken to traveling on parallel streets a block off of International to avoid the police blockades, on, say, Holly, where the open air drug dealers do their trade. From what they tell me, police are only sporadically encountered there. 

The Highway Patrol street patrols were supposed to have ended at midnight on New Year’s Eve, rendered into pumpkin-and-mice like Cinderella’s coach-and-four, the state grant to fund them having flickered, wavered, and gone out. We were told—remember that one?—that the Highway Patrol was supposed to free up the Oakland police so the police could do something—the actual something was never actually enumerated in detail—to reduce our rate of murder. How did they do? Three days before the turn of the year, we were holding at 111, only two less than last year’s 113. That may seem a minor drop to you, but numbers, as Einstein once told us, are all relative, and it’s most certainly a major accomplishment for the two guys this year who missed the cut. On the other hand, the Los Angeles Times reports that a shakeup by L.A.’s new police chief has led to a 23 percent reduction in that city’s murder rate. Didn’t Oakland get a new police chief, too, one time? 

Meredith May of the San Francisco Chronicle gives a more revealing number. She reports that Oakland has only 10 homicide investigators to handle more than 100 murders. Last year, on the other hand, the figure was 25 investigators for 48 homicides in San Diego, 16 investigators for 68 murders in San Francisco, 10 investigators for 49 homicides in Sacramento, and 14 investigators for 68 murders in San Jose. “My guys handle two to three times more cases than any homicide team in California,” May quoted Oakland homicide chief Lt. Jim Emery. It was not clear whether it was a boast or a complaint. 

In response to the embarrassment over last year’s murders, Mayor Jerry Brown floated a double bond vote to hire 100 more police. The financing part of the bond lost, partly because Brown never articulated what, exactly, those police might be assigned to do. Instead of 100 police, we might have profited more by hiring say, 10 more homicide guys. 

Oh, and maybe a couple of patrolmen to guard the utility pole that holds our cable box. I’d rather not miss another segment of The Daily Show, if I can help it.

So we’ve got a second baby waiting in the wings, just paddling around in that ever more cramped fetal health spa, waiting for his call-up to the big leagues. In fact, by the time you read this, he may already be here, or, if it turns out to be a busy decade for Berkeley-related news, he may already be a teenager. In these waning days of relative calm the second most important conversation around our house (after “Do you think we’ll go absolutely bat-poop insane raising two babies under a year old in a crappy student apartment?”) is about what we ought to name the new addition. 

The root of the problem is the desire for originality. We could just name him John and be done with it but we cling to the fantasy that a name defines a personality. And since my main reason for having a kid is home-growing someone to amuse me, I’ve got to start him off with an interesting name, if only for my own sake. Of course, every one of us has marginally true stories about tragically named people we’ve met—Flamingo, Truckstop, Latrinia—so extreme originality can certainly backfire. 

In finding the fine balance, those of us who have babies to name run up against the problem of the “Collective Cool,” that unfathomable force that makes us each believe that our own taste is unique and edgy. The Cool exists everywhere, from food to fashion to travel. I happen to actually be on the leading edge of The Cool, while you only think you are. For example I discovered distressed wood while you were still cooing over blond Nordic armoires and stainless steel end tables. And brightly colored Guatemalan peasant clothing? I was ahead of you on that one pal, way ahead. The problem is that when everyone else catches up, it doesn’t matter who was there first. The inevitable end result is a bunch of people standing around the hors d’oeuvres table wearing Rigoberta Menchu’s sweatpants and feeling stupid.  

Nowhere does The Cool exist more oppressively than with respect to baby names. While you can simply burn a pair of pants, a name is something you’re stuck with, and the consequences can be devastating. I’m sure my parents thought they were being hip and countercultural when they named me Zac, but it turned out there were three of us in my preschool class. Similarly, 10 years ago my wife had the fantastic suggestion to name her cousin’s boy Max. Nowadays you can’t throw a cinderblock into a sandbox without hitting half a dozen of the little guys. 

This presents a Catch-22: any name that I favor is rendered unusable by the simple fact that I favor it. Zeke appeals quite a bit, therefore it’s out. Same with Milo but I’m sure everybody else loved the Phantom Tollbooth every bit as much as I did. Finn is a nice one, but I know a couple of dogs so named, and there is no better harbinger of up-and-coming baby names than that. Some friends have tried to time-warp The Cool by choosing retro names like Bea and Hersch. It’s a decent strategy, but sometimes an old Jewish man’s name is just exactly that. “Hi, this is my son Saul. He can’t come to playgroup because he has bunions.” Perhaps the only solution is to go with names that you actively dislike; look for a wave of Adolfs and Brunhildas to hit the preschools in coming years.  

The Social Security Department maintains a website that tracks the thousand most popular names by year. My friend Alex turned me on to the site after discovering that due to various feminine spellings of his name—Alix, Alexx, Alecks—his name is now primarily for girls and he is fast becoming the Leslie of the 21st century. Manly-man that he is, he’s changing his name for sure and is at the moment deciding between Lance, Rod, and Peter. Tracking names on the website has become something of an obsession of my mine lately. True, Zeke is still only the 351st most popular, but it’s up from 655 a decade ago, and I don’t like that trend. Also, I don’t believe there is a uniform national spread here; it doesn’t matter if Milo is only at 819 if everybody in Berkeley has named their kid that. I don’t want to move to the Rust Belt just so my boy can have an original name, but I’ll do it if I have to. 

Perhaps the worst advice is “just wait until he pops out and see what name fits him.” If everybody did that, most babies would be named either Winston Churchill or Raisin. Actually, now that I think about it….

The Christmas shopping season fortunes of Berkeley’s independent merchants proved as varied as the inventories of the shops and stands that line city boulevards, according to interviews with shopkeepers. 

Though merchants weren’t offering concrete numbers, it appeared that booksellers and high-end boutiques had banner years, while street vendor sales were literally washed away. 

“This might have been our best Christmas ever,” said Shakespeare & Co. co-owner Harvey Segal, surpassing similarly positive reviews from other book sellers on Telegraph and Solano Avenues. 

Though most Berkeley retailers reported a December sales spike, David Fogarty of the city’s Office of Economic Development said Christmas isn’t as pivotal for Berkeley merchants. 

“We don’t have the kind of stores (toy stores and department stores) that generate big holiday business,” he said. “At a lot of the important stores in Berkeley purchasing is more equally dispersed throughout the year.” 

Nationally, December retail sales rose four percent in the days leading up to Christmas—the biggest jump since 1999—said International Council of Shopping Centers spokesperson Stacey Szluka. 

Leading the charge were apparel and electronics sales, she said—sad news for Berkeley, which saw nearly all of its electronic stores fold or take off to Emeryville in the mid-1990s. 

Camera stores—still plentiful in the city—reported robust sales. “We did great,” said Mark Bolt of Sarber’s Cameras of Solano Avenue, adding that many shoppers were in the market for digital cameras and didn’t want to trust their purchases to chain stores that employ camera novices. 

Most clothing merchants also reported stronger sales than last Christmas, though still far below boom year totals of the late 1990s. 

Official December sales figures won’t be available for a couple of months, Fogarty said, but recent city statistics show that, like the rest of Alameda County, Berkeley businesses have suffered through the regional recession. 

Twelve-month figures ending this August show Berkeley sales down 4.2 percent—with apparel sales falling 7.4 percent, recreational products like compact discs, cameras and sporting goods declining 13 percent and miscellaneous retail, mainly books, off 5.6 percent. During the same period, sales in Emeryville dropped 3.3 percent. 

Emeryville—Berkeley’s chain store foil—upped the ante this year with the opening of Bay Street, an upscale mall designed to compete against shops on Berkeley’s Fourth Street. 

Christmas sales at Bay Street weren’t available, but most Fourth Street merchants interviewed said the holidays gave them little relief from a tough year. 

“This has been the worst Christmas in my four years here,” said Cameron Von Ehrenkrook, an employee of April Cornell. She said mid-range boutiques like hers had struggled this year, but the street’s higher end shops like Molly B were doing better. 

That mirrored a nationwide trend, said Szluka. High-end chains like Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and The Sharper Image posted strong seasonal sales, while discounters struggled. 

Wal-Mart announced last week that same store sales growth through Dec. 24 was tracking around three percent—towards the low end of their forecasts. 

For Telegraph Avenue street vendors, the Grinch arrived wearing rain clouds. “Christmas is always a crapshoot. This is two years in a row now where the weather was shit,” said Phil Rowntree, a craftsman and avenue veteran who spent several weekends dodging downpours under a plastic sheath. 

Street vendors said their problems were more than weather related. “This is my season,” said Kymahni as she knitted a hat at her stand. Yet, she said, this year shoppers were buying her cheapest hats and her average weekend earnings has dwindled from $300 in 2000 to $100 this year. “It’s almost gotten to the point where I wonder if it’s worth coming out here anymore.” 

Summertime with its flock of tourists is usually the best season for street vendors, but Rowntree said sales have been down 30- 40 percent since the Sept. 11th attacks, and the ranks of sidewalk stands has been in decline. “You can get a vendor’s license tomorrow morning if you wanted,” he said. “There used to be waiting lists out here.”

During the dedication of the Lucretia Edwards Shoreline Park in Richmond last October, 300 guests listened as a succession of politicians praised the park’s 87-year-old namesake for her 50 years of relentless advocacy for open space.  

Edwards, who was seated in a specially garlanded chair, said the ceremony was “too much fuss,” but she listened gracefully to a succession of laudatory comments laden with terms like “fighter,” “champion” and “visionary.”  

The new park is located in Richmond on the former site of a WWII Shipyard. Like Edwards, the beautifully landscaped, two-acre park is small, enchanting and offers long, expansive views.  

Edwards and her late husband Tom moved to the seaside borough of Point Richmond, just after World War II. At that time, public access to the city’s 32 miles of shoreline was limited to a paltry 65 feet. The rest was mostly owned by companies such as the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards, Union Pacific Rail Road and Standard Oil, now ChevronTexaco. 

Over the years, Edwards, who is also a noted local historian and human rights activist, has successfully committed her tenacious resolve and sprite-like charm to creating public access to the Richmond shoreline. Thanks to Edwards and her “lady friends” in the Contra Costa Shoreline Parks Committee there are now 15 miles of public shoreline, 20 miles of Bay Trail and hundreds of acres of parkland, including 295-acre Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline Park, which was dedicated in 1977.  

“Her tireless efforts to make a difference are an inspiration to all of us,” said Contra Costa Supervisor John Gioa. “She showed us that advocacy backed by careful thought is the most powerful kind of advocacy.” 

Several weeks after the dedication, Edwards looked out over the bay from the living room in her modest, two-story redwood cottage where she and Tom raised their three children, and remembered a time when politicians had a different opinion of her. 

“I wasn’t very well liked. In fact they would have rather seen me dead,” she said with a sprightly smile. “After the war, Richmond was still a company town and in those days and everyone was so grateful for their jobs, they simply did not go against the company.” 

Edwards, cheerful and fey, sat in a chair at the end of a window seat below which there was a low bookshelf. Tom Edwards was a docking pilot for Standard Oil and spent much of his career navigating large tankers through the bay waters below their hillside home. Seasoned, hardbound California history books and nautical manuals lean into one another in the window seat bookshelf. 

Edwards said her upbringing made it difficult to get involved in the wrangling of political activism. “I was brought up in the Quaker tradition and was expected to be polite, ladylike and not to be a nuisance to anybody,” she said. “But I soon learned what great fun it is to antagonize people.” 

Edwards had enjoyed the seaside since her family vacationed on the New Jersey shore when she was a child. When she first moved to Point Richmond, she was appalled to learn how little of the shore was open to the public. She joined a local civic group. However, that group was distracted with other issues and a bit too “languid,” so Edwards splintered off with several other women and formed the Contra Costa Shoreline Parks Committee. 

The committee soon began an effective campaign to open Richmond’s shoreline to the public. And they used the most effective weapon they had; charm. 

“We very much believed in the divide-and-conquer theory,” she said. “We got dressed up in our flowery hats and invited individual politicians and officials to picnics with lots of cheap champagne. Once they were comfortable, we would begin the process of convincing them of the value of public access and we didn’t relent until we got some kind of concession from them.” 

Edwards and her associates also spent endless hours at city, county and company meetings where they employed similar techniques. “We were always so cute and feminine but really we were concealing knives to get those guys.” 

Edwards said she is a little embarrassed of the enchant-then-pressure method, “but only a little.” 

As an example of Edwards’ commitment to opening the shoreline, residents point to a now famous bit of Point Richmond lore. Nichol Knob, the highest hilltop in Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline Park, was for sale in the 1960s and a developer planned to use the site to build high-rise apartment buildings. Edwards was so distraught at the thought of the property being developed, she and her husband—who were not wealthy people—purchased the property and maintained it until it could later be sold to East Bay Regional Park District.  

Edwards has an impressive list of civic accomplishments including helping to save the East Brother Light Station from demolition, establishing the Home Health Hospice and putting Point Richmond on the National Registry of Historic Places. She founded the Friends of Richmond, an environmental watchdog group and served on the Marina Bay Citizens Advisory Committee, which ensured public access to the grounds of the former Kaiser Shipyards. More recently she served on the task force that developed plans for the rescue of Point Molate Navel Station.  

Edwards is not as active in local politics as she once was, but said she is proud when she sees the public using Richmond’s shoreline parks and said the hard work and long wait was worth it. “When you take on projects like these, you have to aspire to longevity because it takes a long time for them to come to fruition,” she said.

Holiday gatherings offer a chance to meet new people and find out what’s going on outside of Berkeley. Christmas cards and phone calls from distant friends are another way to get a window on the rest of the world. What I’ve learned this year is that planning issues and answers (or lack of answers) are remarkably similar throughout the country. From a farm friend back east: “We are still enjoying central Pennsylvania although there has been a great spurt of building around here—condominiums and McMansions going up with great abandon on some of the best farmland in the East. Progress marches on! It can’t be any crazier than California, though.” A young friend brought her brother from a midwestern university town to a Christmas party. He’s chair of his local historic preservation organization, and he reports that privately developed high-rise apartments are rapidly displacing the charming turn-of-the-century frame houses that sheltered generations of students with low rents. His major complaint is that easily disproved “affordability” criteria have been used as political cover for buildings which soon turn into high-priced market rate rentals. As a devoted progressive Democratic party activist, he’s particularly unhappy that his recently elected Democratic mayor has turned out to be in the developers’ pocket. Closer to home, some residents of an older East Bay exurb, who call themselves “democratic socialists;” complain that in their town trees are being cut down and potential parkland converted to apartments in the name of “saving the wilderness.” They still believe in what now seems to be an old-fashioned slogan, “think globally, act locally,” and they don’t think that filling up their local open space will prevent tenants of the new developments from moving to condominiums and McMansions on formerly rural lands as soon as they can afford it. Any of this sound familiar? 

Any editorial on growth-related controversies will elicit several passionate letters from true believers in the wide variety of quasi-solutions that have been proposed for the problem of excessive development in all the wrong places. All of these writers, if asked, would undoubtedly describe themselves as “progressives.” One camp (Smart Growth) contends that infill in Berkeley (or maybe El Cerrito) will stop McMansions in Fairfield or Carmichael. Doesn’t do much for central Pennsylvania, of course. Another (New Urbanism) contends that if you must build in Fairfield or central Pennsylvania, subdivisions comprised of houses close together with front porches will win out over McMansions on large lots. Maybe. But that’s what they already have in small towns in the Midwest, in areas which are still experiencing rural flight, and there in-town builders have another rationale for why their products are needed.  

The real secret is that the only way the building industry makes money is by building new buildings, and it’s always been willing to pay for the privilege. The major national contributor to both political parties has historically been the construction industry (though they may now be outbid by prison guards, who are really only a sub-set of the building lobby anyhow). Often, as in Berkeley, both “opposing” candidates are heavily subsidized by developer contributions. A little-noticed revision to election law raising the individual campaign contribution limit would make that even easier here, though Berkeley developers have traditionally circumvented the law by attributing large sums to their subcontractors and their mothers-in-law.  

Existing housing stock statistically has lower rents than new buildings which replace it. Rehabbing existing housing provides more jobs for more diverse workers than new construction. What re-use of old buildings doesn’t offer is excessive profit margins for big builders. Planning policy should be guided by what’s best for the overall community, not by what’s most profitable for developers. All over the country, like-minded progressive activists are fighting the same kinds of battles as we are in Berkeley, and we should be talking to one another all the time, not just during the holidays.  

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet. 

Gerda Miller, longtime Berkeley Gray Panthers leader and activist for recognition of decent housing, healthcare, and education as basic human rights, died at home on Dec. 18. 

Born in 1913 to a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, Gerda turned to political activity as a young woman, demonstrating against the Nazis. She and her sister fled Germany during Hitler’s rise to power and never saw their parents again. 

Gerda made her way to Palestine where she started a pickle-canning kibbutz. With the outbreak of the Second World War, she was drafted into the British military and, as a Royal Air Force sergeant, ran a gas supply station on the Sinai Peninsula. 

After a brief marriage to a British soldier, she lived in England until the end of the war. She then moved to New York, where she studied at night to obtain a master’s degree in education from Hunter College. 

Gerda became founding director of the nursery school program at New York’s Congregation Rodeph Sholom. Under her leadership, the program expanded into the Rodeph Sholom Day School covering grades K-8.  

She married Morris Miller in the 1950s. The couple had no children. 

Gerda retired from teaching in 1975. Shortly thereafter, she and her husband moved to Berkeley where Gerda joined the newly founded local chapter of the Gray Panthers. 

Showing considerable organizational skill, she helped to build the Berkeley Gray Panthers into a formidable group of activists who remain a respected force for social and economic justice in the East Bay. 

Irv Rautenberg, who served alongside Gerda as Gray Panthers co-convener, recalled, “Gerda was a real fountain of strength for progressives in Berkeley. The way things are going in this country, we need her now, and we’ll miss her.” 

Gerda always combated the misperception that only seniors could join the Gray Panthers. She believed fully in its mission of bringing age and youth together in pursuit of a better society. Appropriately, Gerda’s large circle of friends included not just members of her own generation, but many who were young enough to be her children and grandchildren. 

Her commitment to tenants’ rights and personal experience fighting eviction from her North Berkeley apartment led her to become a candidate for the Berkeley Rent Board in 1984. She was the top vote getter. Over the years, Gerda remained a voice for effective rent control. She always made sure the pro-tenant forces had plenty of volunteers to help with campaign mailings and to lobby legislators. 

Gerda and the Gray Panthers pushed for affordable housing on the Clark Kerr campus; as a result of these efforts, Redwood Gardens was created. She also promoted intergenerational housing. For the last decade, Gerda played a substantial role in efforts to establish a Canadian-style single payer health care system for all Americans. 

Gerda moved out of Berkeley four years ago, after a broken hip and stroke forced her to leave her upstairs apartment. From her new home in an Oakland senior facility, she continued her participation in community life until just a few months before her death. 

One of Gerda’s closest friends, former City Councilmember Carla Woodworth, observed, “Gerda was a natural-born organizer who made politics fun. She could pack a bus to Sacramento with 24 hours’ notice. She was just an extraordinary human being.”