Cody’s Books, iconic mainstay of elite-intellectual Berkeley, long a fixture at the corner of Telegraph and Haste, closed in 2006. That spurred the Berkeley mayor into action regarding Telegraph Avenue, that erstwhile beacon of the Summer of Love now turned scummy urban blight. According to an article by Jason B. Johnson in the San Francisco Chronicle of May 18, 2006:
"I’m pretty optimistic that we can get Telegraph back on its feet," said Bates.
I had the pleasure of experiencing Telegraph after dark a few weeks ago; it’s an experience I will not be repeating any time soon.
Telegraph Avenue stands as the Bay Area’s most damning indictment of hapless government and touchy-feely liberalism in triumph. The city councilman who has overseen Telegraph’s slide into a sewer continues to spout nonsense about "homeless outreach programs". Challengers seem to be cut pretty much from the same cloth, and thus any immediate improvement seems doubtful. Telegraph doesn’t need helping hands outreached. Telegraph needs mailed fists wielding broadswords.
The nexus of the problem is not located on Telegraph itself, but rather a block away: university-owned People’s Park. It should be plowed under and residences built on the site. Nobody is in control there, with the result that a full city block stands as an open invitation to every gin-soaked, drug-addled loser on the planet. Vagrants can live under the trees, take all the crack and/or meth that they want, and go wandering around the neighborhood in a daze—all within three blocks of the main campus entrance, and all within an area mostly devoted to student residences and their accompanying services. All those fine, fresh-faced and energetic young people bustling around, taking care of the activities that will land them at the top of California’s economic and social ladder, while within their midst shuffle their polar opposites: contemptible losers who sponge off the neglectful benevolence of a feckless city council.
And if those students were a few years younger? Would anybody stand for druggies hanging around a middle school? I feel uncomfortable walking by People’s Park on the way to my building at the corner of Dwight and Hillegass; how would I feel knowing it was my 18-year-old child doing the same? What if my child were 13 years old instead?
Between People’s Park and the scummy stretch of Telegraph Avenue, a significant portion of the south side of the UC Berkeley campus area is in danger of turning into a Dead Zone. There’s no excuse for it, no amount of political posturing or finger-pointing that can make up for this sickening failure on the part of the Berkeley and UC authorities. The solution is clear, although the implementation is likely to be complicated. First: remove People’s Park; the university needs more housing and the university already owns the land. Second: active and constant police patrols enforcing a "sit/lie" law—permanently, or at least until the last druggie has gone shuffling off in search of another place to ruin.
Because it’s the vagrants and street urchins who have been destroying the neighborhood, plain and simple. Get rid of that cancer, and Telegraph will begin to heal itself as the students return and opportunity opens up. Perhaps it’s time that Berkeley—always ever so conscious of its public image—showed a face of courage, rather than squishy cowardice, to the rest of the nation, by doing what is only right and proper to protect the city’s most precious resource: those tens of thousands of young people who hold the future well-being of our society in their hands.
People’s Park: the source of Telegraph’s woes