Streets of Berkeley

Just watched a video of somebody trashing Berkeley while cruising through its streets, running one red light after another.

Watch it if you're interested in seeing what the city looks like. Dull, basically. It's by no means something a Chamber of Commerce would put out. Quite to the contrary, it's another of the many YouTube pieces this guy Nick Johnson comes up with, catering to the folk who get off on evidence that the world has gone to hell. One hit piece after another.

There's more than one doctoral dissertation to be had on this phenomenon, part of the dumbing-down of America. Remember all that optimism about how our lives were going to improve with the advent of the internet? How we'd all be so much better informed, our democracy would be so much better because we'd no longer be at the mercy of a few conglomerates in control of the media, etc. etc.?  What many missed was the downside - the fact that every idiot and his uncle Dufus would now have a pulpit to spew half-baked opinions from and tips from porn stars with lessons on how to douche properly, macaroni and cheese recipes, and shows like Jim Bakker's in which he instructs you on how to prepare large quantities of food for the Apocalypse (how did he reach the conclusion that there would be survivors?)  And shows like these Nick Johnson videos on the worst places on the planet to spend your days and nights.

The trouble with commenting on this phenomenon, rather than just leaving it to fade away, is that you become an enabler of the trash. In this case, though, since we're talking about a video of the city of Berkeley, I can't let it go without comment. It's a hatchet job that, as the many comments demonstrate, rings true to many viewers. It does include lots of accurate information; it is not a misrepresentation of the state of affairs in Berkeley; it does provide factual information which it's important we be reminded of regularly. 

The problem with it is that it passes for social commentary when it is a collection of anecdotal evidence by a blind man - in this case, a woman - describing an elephant. She's got her hands on one of the elephant's legs and insists Berkeley is like a tree trunk. The woman that Nick interviews falls into the trap most people who try to describe something as broad as culture fall into - they reveal a great deal more about their own limited experience than they provide a balanced picture of a culture as a whole. Where one would hope for an enlightened study of a social problem, one gets little more than a set of observations at the level of gossip. You don't doubt what she says; you just have to recognize that another person sitting in her chair would describe things differently. As the years go by we learn more and more about the universe through astronomy. Here we see the world at the level of astrology.

It begins on the freeway coming in from the south and the west, then comes up Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. When it crosses the Berkeley line you can see the Campanile in the distance. Note the biased orientation from the start: Nick says to the woman, "You didn't grow up there so you're not jaded with, like 'old Berkeley'..."  Really stupid commentary. Makes me want to turn the volume off and just watch the street views.

So elitist, she says... People go off to their apartments in Paris... Hate you if you play tennis... Hate you if you don't do yoga... One silly false generalization after another. What saddens me is that it touches on a genuine flaw in American society, the gap between the haves and the have-nots, the fact that we've become a country of super rich and poor with fewer and fewer folks in the middle class with each passing year. But instead of any kind of social analysis which might lead to addressing the problem, they simply sneer. The observation that unless, like me, you got into the housing market while that was still possible for the average person, you pretty much have to have big bucks to buy in these days, is accurate, and that's a tragedy. But it's an American tragedy, not a local one. 

Such a missed opportunity. Things need fixing, and we really ought to be shining the light in the right places, instead of making these snear jobs.

I'll stop the kvetching with that. And urge my friends who might like to see what the streets look like where I walk the dogs every day to take a little ride - I assume on a bicycle, for the most part, occasionally in a car - through the streets of Berkeley, California. Up Telegraph Avenue (twice), through the UC Berkeley Campus, past People's Park (twice), round and round.

I watched it hoping to see Taku or me walking the dogs. No luck.

I've lived in some marvelous places. I love Berlin and when I go there I still feel the ache of "a history that never happened."  I feel at home in the grand city of Tokyo and in the small town of Oiso, down the coast from Tokyo. I'll always be grateful to San Francisco for giving me a place to start my adult life. But these days, there's nowhere I'd rather live than in Berkeley, California.  

Warts and all.