Author Archive
June 22, 2019 by tomdalzell
Big Bill Miller and the Berkeley Provos
The Berkeley Provo Movement was small, short-lived (late 1966 until 1968), and important in a way that was completely disproportionate to its size or lifespan. Its de facto leader, Big Bill Miller, was a bigger-than-life, prominent figure in countercultural Berkeley for five years and then disappeared. The Berkeley Provo Movement was loosely based on the Dutch Provo movement, […]
June 19, 2019 by tomdalzell
Mini-Post: Liane Chu
Let’s try this out for a few weeks and see how it goes. The idea is – a mid-week tiny taste of Quirky Berkeley. My thought is a single photo, maybe two. This might be bettered suited for Instagram – we’ll see. In the fall of 2017, I published a post called “Liane Chu […]
June 15, 2019 by tomdalzell
Tyler Hoare Again! Sub Missing! Airplane Missing! UFO Missing!
Tyler Hoare is one of the most prolific creative people I know. I wrote about his art, emphasis on his different incarnations of Snoopy doing battle with the Red Baron, and I wrote about his show last winter at the Compound Gallery. Now I update you: 1) The Snoopy submarine that Hoare launched in […]
June 8, 2019 by tomdalzell
Painted Ladies #3
I look at this house and smile. I imagine the people living there. I imagine that they are intelligent and compassionate, with exquisite if simple taste that reflects solid Berkeley values. Is that reading too much into a beautiful painted lady? I doubt it. After a first and second post on Berkeley’s painted ladies, I […]
June 1, 2019 by tomdalzell
The Elephants of Bruce and Carol Feldman
What happened is this. I published a post with depictions of elephants on March 2. It was a very popular post. I got more suggestions about elephants that I had missed than any other feature that I had written. On May 4, I published a second elephant post. After the post appeared, Ian Wood wrote me. Ian […]
May 27, 2019 by tomdalzell
Dorothy Herger
This post is about Dorothy Herger, a retired art teacher who lives in Vallejo. It is about her life, the art she has made, and the art she has collected. Quirky Berkeley All-Star Doug Heine suggested/insisted that I meet Dorothy, who was his art teacher in high school. Heine was not wrong with his instincts. Herger […]
May 25, 2019 by tomdalzell
Susan Brooks’ Sketchbooks
A little more than a year ago, I met Susan Brooks and visited her studio/gallery in the Sawtooth Building. I showed you photographs of her prints, jewelry, and small figures that she calls her “objects of desire and mirth” We saw a prolific artist. Here is her website and here is her Facebook page. When she posted […]
May 18, 2019 by tomdalzell
Big Birds
Once upon a time I published a post about big birds. That was in October 2013. My standards have changed considerably since then. In this post I polish things up. I omit birds that have gone away. I include birds that have newly arrived on our scene. And I freshen up some photos. While at […]
May 11, 2019 by tomdalzell
Before the Caldecott – The Inter-County Kennedy Tunnel
When the Caldecott Tunnel opened in 1937, it was not the first tunnel to link Contra Costa County with Alameda County. The Caldecott’s predecessor, known variously as the Broadway Tunnel, the Kennedy (L. W. Kennedy, who started work on a tunnel years earlier but got flooded out) Tunnel, and the Inter-County Tunnel, opened in […]
May 4, 2019 by tomdalzell