When In Berkeley…
I moved to Los Angeles in 1995 amidst a flurry of condescending eye-rolls and pitiful looks followed by, “Why? I hate LA!” Twenty years later, Kevin Bacon and Mobe declare LA “cool” enough to live in. WHOSE ROLLING THEIR EYES NOW?
I also get judge-y about people thinking that Berkeley is “cool.” I’m sorry, Michael Chabon, but you don’t get to just buy a house here after making a lot of money on your bestseller novel without going through the very real, terror for your life and daily sexual-assault that was 1984-1986 of King Junior High School.
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I drive around Berkeley now and it looks like a glorious, urban, college-town utopia of windy streets filled with craftsman homes and large trees. It’s hard to believe that Berkeley felt like a scary place to me in the early 80s. To this day, marijuana still smells like public parks during remedial English class and absent fathers. I watched young kids lose their personality to excess drugs, I watched fights. I did not witness gun violence, despite attending “urban” schools, but I felt a distinct sense that the world had no sense or order. Growing up in Berkeley and Oakland, I always felt more aware of the “decay” part of “urban decay.”
Thanks to technology, Berkeley and Oakland have undergone the same organic, locally-grown fabulousness of New York or any once “cool” place. The debate on the morality or benefits of gentrification have some merit. And sure I don’t necessarily mind walking down 4th street to buy a Crate n’ Barrel olive wood nibble bowl for or eye gel. And I know that nostalgia will always make me think that life was better when bars had two beers (Miller or Budweiser) and 13-year-olds had the freedom to go to parks and abuse their bodies with mild marijuana in the middle of the day.