Jill Rants and Raves: Berkeley - A Lion With No Heart

Berkeley's an odd place. Known as the 'People's Republic Of...' and the home of the 'Free Speech Movement', it is in reality a city that has no downtown soul, proclaims to protect the rights of artists but has no true 'arts district' and is a snake pit of NIMBYism & Nannyism. It is hostage to the demands of the University of California and development. What UC Berkeley wants it gets, and what condo and retail developer Patrick Kennedy wants, Patrick gets. And all this under the stewardship of a man who stole newpapers (a student newspaper forchrissakes) who had endorsed his opponent in the last mayoral race. Tom Bates didn't start the rot but has certainly done a fine job of ensuring it's advance.

Berkeley has small pockets of high end retail indulgence: an aura of invincibility emanates from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in what has quaintly been called Gourmet Ghetto for too many years, and boutiques and beauty stores wrestle for the dollars that arrive in droves of Mercedes and Lexus SUV's in the cute area known as 4th Street, close to the 80 freeway so that philistines can sort of come to Berkeley but not have to venture too far into it, on their way to Sacramento.

Full disclosure here: If I could afford to open a gallery on 4th Street, I'd do it!

This is a city that prides itself on beating back what are known as 'big box' stores - yet for years protected one of the most corrupt slum landlords until finally one of his sex slave labor teenagers died in one of his nasty apartments from poisoning from a faulty heater. Her death shed at least some light on the cruel practice of buying young girls from poor families in India and bringing them to work endless hours in restaurants and other businesses owned by Lakireddy Reddy. And after a full day in the kitchen, having to sexually service him.

This is a city that wouldn't be caught dead allowing a Target store to open in Berkeley, yet allows one cheap and nasty retailer after another to open on Shattuck Avenue, a grand street which should, years ago, have been the centre piece of new downtown revitalization. After allowing the closure and gutting of a beautiful Deco building which housed one of the best ice cream parlors - Edy's - in the Bay Area ( the place I first discovered the guilty pleasure of a vanilla malt), an Eddie Bauer store opened, which surprsie surprise closed within three years, leaving an empty building with no hint of it's glorious past.

'Downtown' Berkeley is a scandal of mammoth proportions. Multiplex movie theatres thrive with homeless kids camped outside, while one of the few independent movie houses closed, MacDonalds and cheap junk food is plentiful, and stores range from copy shops to cheap futon stores and the occasional brew pub. Two 'big box' pharmacies sit opposite each other on Shattuck Avenue, and cheap hotels nudge the YMCA and the parking garages.

Car dealerships sit further south on Shattuck Avenue, and if Mayor Tom Bates has his way, they will move to the north also, onto Gilman Street whose industrial past is over but which might have a chance at real evolution as an artisan and small manufacturing district - if it weren't for the fact that the School District is building a bus yard on one of the most beautiful 2 acre sites in northwest Berkeley.

But back to 'downtown' Berkeley - what a joke. While just west of Shattuck there is the fabulous Berkeley Rep and what has been laughingly constructed as an 'arts district' - where no artisans or artists can afford to work - and the new Library is an amazing place, the surrounding area is a wasteland - served up to the highest bidders who tend to be cell phone providers and 'dollar stores', video rental places and the ubiquitous Barnes and Noble.

Berkeley is a city of much talk and no follow through when it comes to Downtown. And a city with no downtown heart is a city with no life flowing through it. The small pockets of retail glamour sit a few miles from the wreckage near City Hall and watch smugly as the drugs, homelessness, and parking garages overwhelm what should have been the model for a modern small city.