.Letters for the week of October 8-14, 2003

Enough whining about Wal-Mart. Go open your own rock venue. Thank goodness for Berkeley's restraint. Finally, an interesting Express story.

“Low Prices, Blighted Suburbs,” City of Warts, 9/17

If Wal-Mart sickens you, try not shopping there

Can we stop writing about the evils of Wal-Mart already? Sure, the company is anti-union, and yes, the stores are a blight on the landscape and to local businesses. Every story that mentions opposition to Wal-Mart seems to miss one key point: If the company’s so evil, why is it thriving? People have to be willing to shop and work at Wal-Mart for the company to open new stores.

To all the people who want to block approvals for Wal-Mart and other out-of-town chain stores, I say: Don’t shop there and don’t let your loved ones shop there. Surely individual customers are easier to persuade than giant corporations. These companies aren’t causing the problems that follow their new stores; it’s the shoppers who allow them to stay open. If they’re so odious, why do cars clog the freeways every time a new megastore opens? Everybody can live without the cheap, convenient, and plentiful crap sold at Wal-Mart. Until more of us learn to support our local businesses, we ought to quit bitching.
K.C., Fremont

“Sweet’s Relief?,” Planet Clair, 9/17

It’s her rock ‘n’ roll fantasy
Unless Katy St. Clair or the Express are offering to foot the bills and take the legal falls and ramifications for whatever happens with St. Clair’s smug fantasy of a “rock ‘n’ roll, people” punker anarchy emporium at Sweet’s Ballroom, she frankly should lay off Craig Krstolic and build such a place of her own.

Krstolic, Matthew Fox, and others didn’t go through the efforts they did to restore and revitalize this landmark (which is HISTORICALLY a blues, jazz, and swing venue, for St. Clair’s information) to see it trashed and destroyed either by crazed fans or by police looking for the slightest excuse to close the place down.

It’s easy for St. Clair to say “simply have the paperwork ready when the fuzz barges in,” “live a little,” and “do it” when you consider that she’s not the one who’ll be staring the police or other officials in the face or suffering the consequences of the actions she insists on Krstolic taking.

(But then again, the Express did “do it” for Gary Coleman …)
Garrett Murphy, Oakland

“A Walking Tour of Berkeley’s Hysterical Landmarks,” Feature, 9/17

Goliath still has the power
When you blow away all of the smoke and rhetoric, what we’re left with is the simple fact that the only power that the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance gives the volunteer landmarks commissioner “Davids” against the big-monied big-building developer “Goliaths” is a one-year maximum protection against demolition. After that, the owners and developers are free to do whatever in the world they want. Period. End of story. Except of course for the other simple fact that no one screams louder when attacked than the schoolyard bully.

As a Berkeley citizen and as a former landmarks commissioner, I can only say thank goodness for all of those who have struggled to enable Berkeley to maintain its sense of scale and dignity, and who have had the good sense to recognize that what gets put up is oftentimes and sadly so much more ugly and useless than what gets knocked down.

The landmarks preservation process doesn’t so much “slam on the brakes” as slow things down just enough to help people to stop and think about the value of preserving what little remains, thereby enabling Berkeley to maintain its sense of place as a unique, livable, and humane community. And for that we are all better served.
Ken Stein, Berkeley

Will Harper responds
The letter-writer oversimplifies the situation. Having something designated a landmark or a structure of merit is all too often a project-killer in Berkeley. Period. End of story. This is the “moment of reflection” argument advanced by Berkeley’s hysterical preservationists to justify their decisions. By designating something a landmark or even a lowly structure of merit, the commission imposes an extra layer of red tape and ensures itself a role in the fate of a project because it gets to review any proposed demolition or alteration of a designated historic resource. Perhaps more importantly, designating something a historic resource typically triggers an extra level of costly and time-consuming regulatory review under the California Environmental Quality Act that can delay construction for months, if not years. As the saying goes, time is money, and not too many developers want to spend what it takes to get something built in this town.

“Landmark” has lost its meaning
Thank you for the walking tour of Berkeley’s Hysterical Landmarks. I have often wondered how much money Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) would raise for its lawsuits and operations if it sponsored just such a tour of “non-elite” landmarks rather than those buildings for which Berkeley is famous.

The word “landmark” implies a hierarchy of values which has been negated by those who have dishonestly used such designation to stymie change in the perfection they feel Berkeley has achieved. When a leader of BAHA and the landmarks commission once told me that a West Berkeley pickle factory had as much value as Maybeck’s Christian Science Church, I understood that the word no longer had meaning here.

BAHA members should ask for an accounting of how much of the organization’s money and staff resources have been expended on such nonsense as the Doyle House lawsuit, and all Berkeley residents should be concerned for what such perversions of process are costing the city.
Gray Brechin, Berkeley

Are we too wacky for you?
For a paper based in Berkeley and primarily distributed around Berkeley and Oakland, you folks sure have a low opinion of Berkeley and Oakland. These are, after all, communities that put “wacky” liberal ideas like a free-trade-coffee-only zone on the ballot even though they often lose, and consistently elect genuine progressives to office. You have a field day with Berkeley in your last issue, adopting a particularly condescending and nasty tone when speaking of the area’s famed preservationist and antidevelopment efforts. After all, these “Berkeley” attitudes ARE standing in the way of progress in the classic “I can do whatever I want with my property regardless of what neighbors, scientists, and the community think, so bulldoze everything and put up a strip mall” sense. As Dubya would perhaps say to people who oppose oil drilling in the ANWR, “They hate freedom.”

However, did it perhaps occur to you that most people in Berkeley and Oakland LIKE things this way? That maybe it’s why they keep electing progressives and placing hyperidealistic, impossible-to-implement propositions on local ballots? Of course, I know nothing about your background, Will Harper, but I do know very well that your parent company (New Times/Ruxton Group) is definitely NOT from the Bay Area and has been voraciously gobbling up independent newsweeklies across the country, then standardizing them to an identical format featuring a right-leaning Libertarian/NIMBY editorial bent.

In this capacity, you have nicely represented the needs of a small percentage of landlords, businessmen, and paranoid upper-middle-class residents in our region. I understand how the vast sea of poor people, enlightened intellectuals, and freaks surrounding you can seem disconcerting, what with their needs being thrust to the fore so often — but hey, that’s what happens when a group of people figure out they’re a majority. Maybe you should consider relocating the Express to its spiritual home, perhaps Danville or Walnut Creek. Or perhaps New Times/Ruxton could consider just leaving the region altogether, much like those formerly rich ex-tech émigrés who fled after the bottom fell out on our paper economy. After all, it is awfully “wacky” here.
John Mink, Oakland

Your joke was insensitive
We had intended not to comment on Mr. Harper’s article, preferring that it crumble by itself under the weight of its many misstatements of fact and misinterpretations. But in the sidebar box on the fate of the Byrne site at 1301 Oxford St., he lets his penchant for oversimplification lead him into an assertion we cannot believe either he or the Express intended to make: that “Judaism” was a or the threat that caused a problem with Congregation Beth El’s project or the future of that historic site.

First, let us be clear: The cardinal sin with respect to this original Berkeley homestead site was the city’s, in failing to purchase the site when it was available. This is a site that should have belonged to the people of Berkeley.

Beyond that, the issues surrounding the permitting of the synagogue’s project had to do with far more than the landmark nature of the site, important as that may be. They involved the city’s determination to preserve and where possible daylight its creeks, and serious questions about appropriate development of a site completely surrounded by a residential neighborhood.

There were Jews on both sides of the table in the many years of discussions between Congregation Beth El and its prospective neighbors. Although some of the public discussions included unfortunate insinuations that the opposition was religious in nature, those were promptly withdrawn. In fact, the issues surrounding the development of the Byrne site concerned the construction of a large multi-use facility in the midst of a residential neighborhood. They had nothing to do with Judaism; the same discussions would have occurred whatever the nature of the proposed building complex.

For Mr. Harper and the Express to have implied otherwise is to flirt with an ancient and heinous calumny.
Carole S. Norris & Alan S. Kay, Berkeley

Clean it up, pottymouth
The last line in Will Harper’s “Hysterical Landmarks,” “to put a boot in some builder’s ass” to describe the Landmark Preservation Commission’s efforts to respond to citizens’ complaints about overdevelopment in neighborhoods, is so crudely devised that the entire piece comes under suspicion. I am disgusted by this type of crude journalism.
Nancy Wilson, Berkeley

“Trailers are for Travelers,” Feature, 9/10

Lucky Irish, lucky Scottish
I can’t help but wonder how the legal system would have treated the noncitizen Travelers if they had been Arabic people, or black Caribbean people, or Mexican people, or anyone else not white.
Ruth Bird, Berkeley

You finally moved me
Bravo! It’s been quite awhile (reporting has been much less interesting since the new owners took over the operation there) since I have read an article that has informed me, moved me, that was well-researched, and all parties given the opportunity to be heard!

Yes, this trio has committed crimes, but in comparison to white-collar crimes that rake in millions to billions of dollars, this is minuscule. The trio’s takings pale compared to the profits Home Depot brings in yearly, some of which are made off the backs of all of those minimum-wage earners employed there.

Thank you for not demonizing these people and for giving them a human face, and thank you for not toeing the line for the federal government, which is so omnipresent in these post-9/11 years. I’ll look for your name when I reluctantly pick up the Express searching for a true story that has some real relevance to our social, political, and economic realities.

Thanks again for a great report.
Rosemary Zappulla, Oakland

Corrections
In our October 1 article “Rebirth of the Blues,” we erroneously credited the song “Snatch It Back and Hold It” to the band Cafe R&B. The song was written by Junior Wells.

In our October 1 article “Trees, Views, and the ‘Other 9/11,'” we erroneously stated that Friends of El Cerrito Trees endorses an ordinance similar to the one enacted in the city of Tiburon. The group does not.

In our September 10 article “E-Voting: Fast, Cheap, Vulnerable,” we misspelled the name of Diebold critic Avi Rubin. We regret the error.

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