[lbo-talk] Toilet Ladies of Berkeley

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Wed Apr 13 20:47:41 PDT 2005


Many self-styled social activists have advanced forms of the toilet lady syndrome because in spite of their voracious ambitions for influence and recognition they are typically relegated to the margins of irrelevance, or simply seen as crackpots, which they often are. Therefore they size any opportunity to deny something to people they perceive as "important" (city officials, developers, teachers, etc.) as the only means of exerting their influence no matter how pathetic and ridiculous their efforts are.

Wojtek

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Berkeley is riddled with Toilet Ladies and in fact they have created their own political parties, the neighborhood councils. These were started by the rich areas to block traffic to their neighborhoods---particularly around the Claremont Hotel which is strategically located in a rich neighborhood that also provides the only southeast access to the main east-west freeway corridor that connects the suburbs of Walnut Creek, Concord, and Orinda with Oakland. This corridor should have been linked up with the interchange to the Bay Bridge and San Francisco long ago, but was blocked back in the late 60s and early 70s. As a result to get to or from SF to these suburbs you can either take a dog leg jog toward downtown Oakland, or use Ashby Ave through Berkeley.

Once the informal Claremont neighborhood council got its way with the help of the local real estate lobby, other neighborhoods demanded similar councils. The consequence was an absurd patchwork of neighborhood interest groups who also managed to get the city charter changed so that the city council was elected by district---which more or less correspond to these neighborhood areas. The effect was to stall almost all city government activity, especially development and support services in a political dead-lock. The neighborhood councils greatest achievement was to creat complete traffic chaos on already narrow main streets and to further jam traffic to a crawl during peak commute hours.

For example, the neighborhood where I live which is within walking distance of the UCB campus is a parking-nazis-heaven with overlapping fields of fire: meters, red zones, one way streets, street sweeping, voracious meter maids, fake cul de sacs, parking barriers, parking permits, and cops waiting around every corner to slap $75-$250 violations on you for making a wrong turn.

Among the most amazing things is the state of war that exists between the state owned university and the city owned streets that provide access. One street that leads from the university connects to the east-west freeway corridor through the notorious Claremont district (mentioned above). The university refuses to pay for a traffic light on Piedmont, and the city refuses to install one without state re-reimbursement. So there is a stop sign that creates a bottle neck of traffic every morning and every evening that takes about ten minutes to move a little over three blocks. The stop sign is in place because this particular T-intersection provides access to the old California School for the Blind and Deaf. The state moved the school out of Berkeley in the late 70s and the university took over the property to build dorms and extend various campus service departments. The city held up this transfer for close to ten years to get the state to build some low income housing on the site (bitterly opposed by the neighborhood council)---which the state eventually did. Now in the middle of a university facility is a low income apartment complex for elderly and disabled city residents. Vehicular access is nearly impossible, so the elderly and disabled who live in this apartment complex have a nightmare time getting paratransit rides to do their shopping and errands. The particular location is difficult to get to even for power wheelchairs since the site is very hilly. Of course this particular site is on almost daily emergency fire department and paramedic ambulance runs which use my street as their main access route (one way, with a fake cul de sac, almost zero parking, resident parking permits only, etc, etc)

The internal absurdities of Berkeley city politics are worth a multi-volume study. For almost a century, Berkeley has been the site of intense, bitter, and vicious politicalization of every square inch of the city, its personnel, services, programs, and infrastructure. The result is a monster reminiscent of the Byzantine Imperial court in its haggling with the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Rome, and Alexandria.

By some miracle which I don't understand at all, Berkeley High School and the main branch of the Berkeley Public Library has been almost completely re-built---in a record breaking ten year frenzy. This must have been funded under some state mandated boondoggle to meet earthquake standards. The two locations are within half a block of each other and city hall and are perfectly wonderful looking.

My ex-wife spend her entire career as a city planner struggling to get a master downtown plan passed through the council and city bureaucracies. She started on it in 1974, the year after our son was born. Sometime in the mid-eighties when the kid was in middle school, the plan was passed with modifications and weakening provisions added. By the mid-nineties (as he graduated from UCB in Chemistry) it was so heavily amended that it was unrecognizable. It was finally tossed out about five years ago (while junior was doing a medical residence in Houston). The ex took an early retirement last year when the city manager threatened to move her from Emergency Preparedness Planning back to the new Downtown Plan. Thirty years was enough. She can now be a grandmother to our cute grand-daughter (eighteen months)

Back in the mid-70s as the first phase of this downtown planning got underway, our marriage became darker and darker, a kind of terminal dread settled over our relationship, sex disappeared all together, and vicious mood swings, swung to the tune of the next meeting of the neighborhood councils. (Sexist pig that I was, I thought it was her period. Wrong!) Since I worked for the university at the time, and she worked for the city, we disagreed on everything in Berkeley including sending the kid to city schools. Lack of money won that round. He did find in the racially charged and contentious climate of public schools in that era. Meanwhile the ex invested in a new husband--head of the Codes and Inspections depart. Dooh! Law and Order all the way.

Tolstoy wrote War and Peace to span from youth to middle age of his main characters. The Berkeley Downtown Master Plan spanned from young motherhood to grandmotherhood of my ex-wife---from the idealism of a young marriage and promising life to the bitterness of divorce, failed careers, middle age, and the emptiness of old age. The one bright note for the ex, was the city pension plan and a golden parachute. I get whatever is left of Social Security, and a towaway zone ticket for my ancient Honda.

I watched de Sica's Umberto D. last night, thinking I should probably invest in a small, cute, black and white dog.

CG



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