Author Archive
February 23, 2019 by tomdalzell
Berkeley’s Liquor Stores
I chose this photo as the lead for the post before knowing it was a City of Berkeley Landmark – the Clephane Building (1905), C.M. Cook, architect, long known as Black & White Liquor. Even without the architectural pedigree, it is a perfect first photo of Black and White Liquor for this next in a series […]
February 18, 2019 by tomdalzell
Field Trip – Sacramento’s Dragon House
In early February we were in Sacramento for work – an opportunity for a Quirky Berkeley notional field trip. It is President’s Day, and so there is some synchronicity in going to our state capital for our field trip today, no? It is President’s Day, which started out as Washington’s Birthday. When George Washington was eleven years […]
February 16, 2019 by tomdalzell
Tyler Hoare at the Compound Gallery
I have posted about Tyler Hoare, the Berkeley artist most widely known for his Snoopy and the Red Baron sculptures in the Bay. Soon I will post about the Compound Gallery, 1167 65th Street, Oakland. I kid you not – my post about the Compound Gallery will rock you down to your quirky soul. On […]
February 9, 2019 by tomdalzell
Harold Adler: The Story of a Cultural Polymath
rabbi A few weeks ago I posted about the Art House on Shattuck, a flash-backing and welcoming and stimulating living room of the Sixties. Harold Adler is the bright light behind the Art House. Some of the highlights of his life and work are recounted below. It would be a Herculean task to recount them all. He […]
February 3, 2019 by tomdalzell
General Wastemoreland
In 1969, a former Maryknoll seminarian from East Los Angeles named Tom Dunphy moved to Berkeley. Several years earlier he had been ordained “General Wastemoreland,” alluding to and mocking General William Westmoreland who commanded United States Army forces in South Vietnam. Dunphy in his Wastemoreland persona, bedecked in an over-the-top imitation of a military uniform, was a one-man […]
February 3, 2019 by tomdalzell
General Hershey Bar
General Wastemoreland’s mentor William Arthur “Bil”l Matons was born in Racine, Wisconsin in approximaely 1906. His parents were Lithuanian immigrants whom he claimed were Roma. His family moved to Milwaukee where he may have attended a semester of high school. He took a series of jobs – steel mill, steeple jack, coast guardsman, chook […]
January 27, 2019 by tomdalzell
Chronological Errors
I had an idea for a post. I started making a list of items to include. And I started to think of the word or words to describe what the objects on my list have in common. Words that I considered were: Prolepsis. The representation of a thing as existing before it actually does […]
January 19, 2019 by tomdalzell
Berkeley’s Dark Satanic Mills – Second Verse
I continue here my examination of the fast-disappearining industrial Berkeley, using William Blake’s glorious phrase “dark satanic mills.” Bruce Springsteen isn’t in the Blake league, but when he writes about his father’s job at a rug mill he is spot-on: Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain, I see my daddy walking […]
January 12, 2019 by tomdalzell
Berkeley Counterculture Stores 1968
The California Historical Society teaches that Jay and Ron Thelin’s Psychedelic Shop at 1535 Haight Street opened on January 3, 1966, “one of the earliest and most influential in the neighborhood. It provided informational literature on popular drugs like LSD; books on eastern religion and metaphysics; and other paraphernalia necessary for a ‘good, enlightened, and safe trip’ such […]
January 5, 2019 by tomdalzell