Part I

Part III 

Financial windfalls.  This is probably the most important positive side effect of the Memorial upgrade.  I remember the U$C 2005 game.  Well, to be fair, I try to forget the game.  But here I’m talking more about before the game.  I BARTed in early and went from tailgate to fraternity to Bear’s Lair to stadium.  Just all over the place.  And I wasn’t the only one.  There were thousands and thousands and thousands of people (many dressed in red L!) roaming the streets of Berkeley for hours before the game (speaking of just plain crazy energy).  A more successful football team will bring thousands upon thousands of customers to Berkeley businesses on fall Saturdays.  This is especially true since the BART drops you off so far away from the stadium and you have to walk so much.  Who knows?  Perhaps Cody’s woulda stayed in business if Tedford had come a few years earlier. Really, for us fans this is the least important point, unless you happen to own a downtown eatery.  But it is the most important arrow in our quiver of arguments, because the City of Berkeley probably doesn’t particularly care if you have great memories or feel some slight embarrassment if people think Berkeley is crazy.  But they sure do care about the growth of business in the city. 

And remember, this is a city that would rather have major employers such as Cody’s go out of business rather than make a good faith effort to clean up Telegraph.  This is a city that would rather keep fast food employers out of Telegraph Ave than have those jobs and business growth.  It is that whole 60s-obsessed ethos again.  They want it to remain exactly as it was back then even as it gets more and more run down.  Remember, this is a city that would rather keep a patch of drug and homeless infested “park” because 4 decades ago, people had a great week and a half planting long since dead plants.  Yeah, they are really STICKING it to Ronny Regan by keeping the ever so dangerous People’s Park smack dab in the middle of the student ghetto.

I’m not advocating for razing the whole thing and putting up a giant parking structure or some such thing.  Far from it.  Nonetheless, I’m sure there is a middle ground to turn that land into something productive, while still retaining its garden-esque atmosphere and being true to the spirit of the 60s. 

The professional protesting class supports the city in all these anti-growth endeavors.  And, unlike the vast majority of Cal students, they are local, registered, and VOTE.  So, the city ignores the majority to kow tow to a vocal and powerful minority.

And yes, I know exactly what the professional protesting class would say.  In a perfect world, this stunning importance of football wouldn’t exist.  In a perfect world, people would flock to Berkeley to see avant-garde jazz music and Brechtian plays.  I cannot disagree!  Except for the Brecht thing, I hate that guy.  Suck it, Bertold!

Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world.  We do not have thousands upon thousands of people flooding Berkeley businesses and bringing their families to bond over a Turtle Island String Quartet performance.  We won’t have people from the Midwest, Northeast, and South respecting Cal, because of its all student-run student government.  The success of a football or basketball team can have many positive effects on a school and local region. 

I don’t understand why the City has such a negative view of the UC.  Is it this imperial arrogance they claim?  Is it this snobbish intellectualism against its athletic pursuits?  Or is it just that it plays better to their constituencies to appear strong to Cal?  I can’t answer that.  What I do know is that without Cal, Berkeley would be a MUCH different place.  It’d be more El Cerrito or Albany than San Francisco East.  Yo Yo Ma and Wynton Marsalis probably wouldn’t come to play each year.  Much fewer Nobel prize winners would probably work here.  And Berkeley’s most well known trait (Land of the Free Speech Movement) wouldn’t exist.  The City cannot keep treating Cal like an unwanted 30,000 person transgression into its hallowed land.  The City has one of the most advanced, forward-thinking, technologically and culturally vibrant organisms smack dab in the middle of itself.  Yet it seems to fight it at every turn. 

I just wish that Cal would run a stronger PR campaign to get the truth out.  Instead you see article after article in the Chronicle, East Bay Express, Berkeley Daily Planet that seem to spread disinformation about the project.  This could be one of the best things to happen to Berkeley, both environmentally, culturally, financially, and nationally.  But because of the limited interests of a vocal minority, we are dangerously close to not seeing it to fruition.