A group of Berkeley residents hosted an unsanctioned street fair on Telegraph Avenue last week, bringing in several bands and drawing over 100 passersby to stop and listen to the music.
The group Take Back Telegraph hosted the event Friday at the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street that began at 4 p.m. and ran well into the night, kicking off UC Berkeley’s homecoming weekend as visiting families shuffled by in the street.
“There’s a sorry lack of places for people to just hang out and do nothing,” event organizer and Cal student Connor Green said. “The only option we have is to take back the streets because it’s either that or we conform to what they want us to, stay on campus and never see the real world until it’s too late.”
“There’s a sorry lack of places for people to just hang out and do nothing. The only option we have is to take back the streets because it’s either that or we conform to what they want us to, stay on campus and never see the real world until it’s too late.”
Connor Green, Take Back Telegraph organizer
In the past, Green and other organizers used People’s Park as free public space to spend time in the community, but as conditions in the park declined, groups like Berkeley’s unofficial chess club began to spend their free time nearby on Telegraph Avenue. Residents like Green came to appreciate the chess club’s tables as a free public space for residents to meet their neighbors.
“I don’t see this as a way of taking back People’s Park, or even taking back the chess club now that it’s been moved and there’s been some legal battles,” Green said. “We just want to bring back the spirit of what made Berkeley revolutionary in the first place, and we wanted to keep it open-ended, because everybody has their own interpretation of what that means.”
After chess-club fines, uncertainty
Event organizers were not sure if their event would be welcomed on Telegraph Avenue, knowing that property owners Ken Sarachan and Laurie Brown are still facing $148,600 in fines over residents playing chess on the corner in the same spot where the unofficial street fair was held.
“That particular case was pretty unusual, and (property owners being fined again) wouldn’t happen, and doesn’t actually happen,” said Telegraph Business Improvement District executive director Alex Knox. “There’s vendors and people setting up every day, and it doesn’t happen. That was a fairly specific situation and I think that was definitely much more involved and complicated than just somebody setting up on the sidewalk.”
Knox says that organizers and other property owners should not expect to be fined for public gatherings on Telegraph Avenue in the future.
“(People) are free to set up on the sidewalk and do things — they really, actually are, and they do, and nothing happens,” Knox said. “The city is responsible for regulating and enforcing things. We just get to promote a neighborly, courteous, healthy, positive environment, and people do set up.”
While a Berkeley police officer asked the Take Back Telegraph organizers to turn the music down, the night was otherwise uneventful.
The city of Berkeley did not respond to requests for comment.
The post Take Back Telegraph: Berkeley residents try to revive public space with pop-up music fest appeared first on Local News Matters.