For fifteen years, the Wat Mongkolratanaram Thai Temple on Russell
Street has been serving breakfast every Sunday morning from 10 a.m.
until around 1 p.m. — or until the food runs out. Hundreds of
people flock to the temple during those hours. The all-volunteer
kitchen crew serves beef noodle soup, pad thai, papaya salad, sweet
iced coffee, and sticky rice and mango, each for a “suggested” donation
— patrons are asked to purchase tokens which they then barter for
food. Temple volunteers call the operation a form of “merit-making”
— by providing breakfast to the hungry folk of Berkeley, they are
garnering “merits” for the afterlife. Neighbors call it a commercial
kitchen that’s been running illegally since 1994.
The conflict came to light last April, when members of Wat
Mongkolratanaram approached Berkeley’s zoning adjustments board with
plans to build a new edifice. Sixteen feet wide, 24 feet long, and 44
feet high (including a 14-foot spire), the proposed sanctuary would
include three Buddha statues on a raised platform, and would take up
roughly as much space as a church cross or small steeple, said Pahole
Sookkasikon, a Berkeley resident who has been involved with the Thai
temple since childhood. The original plan also included a small parking
lot on Oregon Street with four spaces allocated specifically for temple
members. But when residents balked at the prospect of clogging up their
residential block, temple staff moved the proposed lot to Martin Luther
King Jr. Way, and expanded it to eight spaces.
In keeping with Berkeley city planning regulations, Wat
Mongkolratanaram sought approval from its neighbors before building the
addition. According to Sookkasikon, some neighborhood residents reacted
unfavorably to the temple’s construction plans, mostly because of the
parking spaces, and also because the new structure would prevent
sunlight from entering the backyard gardens of surrounding residences.
(Oregon Street resident Thom Rongh wrote the zoning board that the new
development would also pave over a community garden that already been
destroyed by the temple.)
But the dispute over the building pales in comparison to the other
half of Wat Mongkolratanaram’s proposal: A request to institutionalize
Sunday morning breakfasts. Although Wat Mongkolratanaram’s current
zoning permit only allows the temple to serve food three times a year,
Thai breakfast has been going on week after week, consistently, since
its 1994 inception, and getting steadily more popular (it earned a 2004
East Bay Express “Best Of” award for “Best Breakfast Not in a
Restaurant Where You Can Be One with Your Food”). For many years, food
preparation started as early as 5 a.m., creating enough clamor to wake
up all the neighboring residents, and smells that wafted throughout the
area and hung there for days. After numerous complaints, the temple
volunteers reduced their hours of operation and started cooking at 8
a.m. But other problems persisted. Victor Herbert, a professional
conflict mediator from East Bay Community Mediations, summarized the
dispute after an August meeting with some of the parties involved: “The
neighbors said the weekend cooking odors were overwhelming and
unacceptable, and the ingress of hundreds each weekend overwhelmed
their quiet streets and their expected quiet lives.”
And yet, for every resident complaining about noise and effluvia,
there appeared an enthusiastic devotee ready to defend Thai breakfast
to the end. “As a homeowner on Otis Street, I would like to express my
support for Wat Mongkolratanaram on Russell Street. … The brunch that
is held weekly brings a wonderful element of community-minded,
conscientious, and peaceful people to the neighborhood — both old
and young,” wrote Martha S. Chazanoff in a letter to city planner Greg
Powell. “In terms of its detrimental impact on the neighborhood, it is
minimal at worst,” wrote Rita Hamad, who lives roughly a mile away.
“The gathering itself lasts only three hours, and it is no worse than a
typical Sunday event at a church in terms of the parking problems
created.” Sookkasikon said that his activist group Save the Thai Temple
put together a petition in support of the rezoning proposal and got 200
signatures thus far — 118 from within a three-block radius of the
temple, he said.
But many temple supporters live far enough away from 1911 Russell
Street that they never experience the drawbacks of Sunday breakfast,
and have little grasp of what the neighbors are fussing about. “I drive
from Point Richmond every Sunday,” said Tony Carr, a longtime
breakfast-goer who owns Vikram Yoga studio in Oakland. “They have a
noodle soup that you can’t find anywhere.” Carr added that in his
observation, most of the houses on Oregon Street have driveways, so he
can’t understand why they would object to people parking on the street.
“I understand there’s some problems with the neighbors, but didn’t they
know about it before they moved in?”
On top of everything else lies the dicey issue of whether or not the
Sunday breakfast is a spiritual activity or a commercial enterprise.
Sookkasikon wrote that Wat Mongkolratanaram depends on its Sunday
morning revenue stream for 80 percent of the temple’s overall funds,
which ultimately support language and cultural programs, and help fly
Buddhist monks in from Thailand. Yet, he hesitates to characterize the
breakfasts as an income-generating operation. “It’s all volunteer-run,”
Sookkasikon said. “Volunteers pay for the food and make it. People who
come purchase tokens in exchange for suggested donations. … This
happens every Sunday in a lot of regions of Thailand.”
Opponents reject the “merit-making” euphemism and the use of tokens
as symbolic currency, arguing that at the end of the day, it’s really
about dollars and cents. Not small change, either — a
transportation study on SavetheThaiTemple.com said roughly
628 patrons visit the breakfasts every four hours, which suggests that
they generate several thousand dollars each week. Sharon Hudson,
president of the Benvenue Neighbors Association in Berkeley, cited Yelp
reviews that explained how to get cash for your donation if you
purchase too many tokens by accident: “If you get too many tokens, you
don’t need to save them. Just go back to the counter and return them
for some Lincolns and Washingtons,” one reviewer assured. “Hmmm,” wrote
Hudson, “When you go to church, do you retrieve some of your money from
the donation plate if the service wasn’t fully satisfying? Or is this
‘fee for service?'”
Over the past nine months, temple members and neighborhood residents
have entered a series of mediations to air out their grievances. Wat
Mongkolratanaram made a few small concessions by reducing its hours of
operation, posting a few “No Parking” signs in the area (the Any
Mountain store on Shattuck Avenue provided 32 additional parking
spots), moving their prospective parking lot to Martin Luther King Jr.
Way, and assigning a post-event garbage patrol. But as far as weekly
food service goes, temple members are digging their heels in. “I had
suggested they build a building and enclose it if they want to have a
restaurant,” said Liz Jennings, an Oregon Street resident who said she
has no problem with the temple per se, but disapproves of Sunday
breakfast. “You zone it as a commercial kitchen and feed people
indoors, instead of having this quasi underground commercial kitchen
with no health inspection or containment of odors.”
A February 12 hearing at Berkeley’s zoning adjustments board will
decide the ultimate fate of Wat Mongkolratanaram’s Sunday breakfast,
and at this point, said Jennings, the board appears to be split on its
decision. “We’re trying to be professional reasonable human beings, but
the problem is these people have not budged,” she said. “I think
they’re gonna bluff us off again till the 12th, at which point the
board is going to bluff on their project.” Jennings admits she’s a
pessimist, but said she finds the board’s ambivalence disheartening.
“How can they be split on something that’s illegal?” she asked, then
answered her own question. “It’s Berkeley, hello.”
