"it starts here"

[Note:   It was a challenge to find a way to illustrate this column.   We used material from an abandoned photo project titled "On the road with a copy of "On the Road.'"   Since Berkeley is specifically mentioned in "The Dharma Bums," that might have been a better choice, but the photo editor had to go with what was available.]

National columnists' Day is rapidly approaching and the World's Laziest Journalist intends to write a column for the occasion about a fellow who was born in Berkeley (about a hundred years ago) and became one of the Bay Area's top contenders for the right to call himself "Mr. San Francisco."   UCB has the Hearst School of Journalism and that particular Berkeley rascal was personally fired by William Randolph Hearst . . . twice.   That notorious columnist might provide the basis for one installment of the aforementioned hypothetical student TV show "Berkeley Tonight" (or whatever).

Didn't the Sixties officially start (in Berkeley) when Mario Savio said:   "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious--makes you so sick at heart--that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."   [Can you believe that that quote is not in Bartlett's?]  

Now the disk jockey will play Janice Joplin's "Oh, dear Lord," Ry Cooder's "Crazy "Bout an Automobile (Every Woman I Know)," and Woody Gutheris's "Go For a Ride in the Car, car."   Speaking of cars, we have to celebrate this weekend by watching "Rebel without a Cause" one more time.   Have a "See the USA in your Chevrolet" type week.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3  |  4

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).