Extra

It was epic. The Berkeley Public Works engineers faithfully used their best PowerPoint skills to convince the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission and the public at the North Berkeley Senior Center meeting on Thursday, February 20, 2025, that its most logical place for an unsupervised, 24-hour restroom was Channing Way and Telegraph Avenue. And they were lying. 

I was most likely the only person in the room trying to make any comment in a meeting which either didn't know, or didn't want to know, the facts. The original proposal for a public toilet was the southeast corner of Haste Street and Telegraph Avenue where the landmarked and recently renovated People's Park mural would have been completely obscured by the toilet. 

For the curious, yes; it is that easy to snooker a landmark's destruction through the public process. In your copious spare time ask local historians, hard-working volunteers at Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, or neighbors connected with Berkeley's Black history to fill you in and you'll get the best view of the most under-represented of Black history stories. 

I'd been part of the well-attended public demonstrations against the original Telegraph public toilet proposal. Demonstrations included the historic mural's artistic team, local poets, People's Park activists, landmark commissioners, and members of the public astonished that formal city procedures could possibly enable a toilet placement so comically inappropriate as to obscure a city landmark given obvious alternatives. 

But the motive was obvious. The engineers' purpose at the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission was to engineer approval of another public toilet at the corner of University and San Pablo. The proposed location is across from the former Wells Fargo Bank building, in front of the former PetCo and the former Subway Sandwich location, across from the former 7-11 location, and current home to open air drug use, drug dealing, homelessness, and prostitution continuing for so many years that the fellow living in the former Wells Fargo Bank dumpster shelter has been there since April of 2024 and has a Christmas wreath over his dumpster shelter front door. 

Those of us who live and work in this neighborhood tried to keep our eyebrows in check as we heard the Public Works engineers describe the arduous difficulty of having to have had dozens of public meetings regarding this, according to them, well-studied location, a location only 50 feet from a public restroom at the West Berkeley Public Library - which they neglected to mention to the Commission. This omission is curious. Ours is one of the few neighborhoods blessed with a public restroom which works well, offering any member of the public a place to relieve themselves during the day and wash up in a well-lit, supervised setting. Not many neighborhoods have this amenity, and we are grateful for it. 

Our neighborhood applauds this restroom, and does its best to weather any difficulties associated with the nearby Berkeley Food Pantry's clients, who are reported to cause problems on occasion for local businesses but who are clearly not responsible for the overt drug use, drug trade, and public prostitution playing roles in the loss of all but one business at the storied intersection once considered the gateway to Berkeley showcased by an archway declaring "Welcome to Berkeley" commemorated in the 1920's and lit up at night near the beautiful Rivoli Theater. 

San Pablo Avenue was once called "Music Row" by those who knew its wealth of cultural treasures; blues clubs, folk clubs, jazz clubs, brothels, yes, and breweries rocking the bay's cultural scene for the shipbuilders, sailors, and World War II personnel who made it a legend. We are fortunate that there still exist today the buildings, including the former Wells Fargo Bank building at University and San Pablo Avenue, and the six or seven jazz, blues, and folk venues nearby which exemplified the simple but straightforward architecture of the earliest working community and civil rights movement, a movement predating the better-known 1960's. 

The former Wells Fargo Bank building at University and San Pablo has offices in which Walter Gordon, one of Berkeley's prominent African American entrepreneurs, worked and held meetings. He was the first African American to graduate from Berkeley Law, and the first Berkeley African American police officer, serving as governor of the US Virgin Islands and the chairman of the California Adult Authority. His original home, by San Pablo Park, still exists today. 

What is stunning is that during 2025's Black History Month, at a hearing regarding the placement of a public toilet, none of this historic information was mentioned. The current effort to nominate this building for appropriate historic recognition was not mentioned either. No commissioners or staff appeared to have any information about it. I was given only one minute to speak; not enough time to mention the death toll at our intersection of young Black men shot to death in drug-related gunfire or the horror of drug-related overdoses. I wish the public could have had a moment to tell the story of what this, west Berkeley's first bank, meant to the nascent businesses coming to life for the Black community permitted to own property in West Berkeley and the workers who needed its services. 

My neighbors and I are, of course, in favor of public toilets. But placement is important, especially in a neighborhood which has, and which celebrates, its own West Berkeley Library public toilet, which, along with the Food Pantry services, we welcome and support. 

Please, Berkeley citizens, if you've read this far, encourage the Berkeley City Council to respect our neighborhood's struggling businesses and exhausted residents enough to situate its next public toilet somewhere where it will not interfere with the sightlines of our landmarks, our beloved views of the bay, and not exacerbate the serious drug and prostitution-related issues the Berkeley police are apparently unable to resolve. We lost three young Black men to drug-related gunfire at this corner, and need realistic assistance before any more lives are lost. 

# # #