People's Park, Berkeley

These days, People's Park is part lawn, part garden, part rec center and part drug clinic.  No one is going to mistake the lawn for College Green in their wanderings, but it is lush and sizable.  On a sunny day recently, couples and groups sat and laid in patches around it.  When the Food Not Bombs people arrived to serve food at 3pm, groups of homeless people congregated or circled on the grass to talk while they eat.  

There is a guy named Will who sells copies of Street Spirit (I'll do a posting about this publication soon) at the Haste St. entrance to the park.  He wasn't sure he would have enough momey for another meal after the 3pm FNB visit, but if he sold a few more Street Spirits he would get there. He spoke very highly of the quality of the FNB meal, a well-balanced, flavorful vegetarian offering worthy of praise.  

Next to the lawn there was a basketball court with rims that had that practical but annoying double strip of iron to make them sturdier.  I saw about as much diversity on the court in half an hour there as I did during twelve years of roundball in Maine.  College students came and went from using the facility, and it seemed that UC Berkeley has a much more authentic claim to the term urban campus than Brown.  

The drug clinic was bright and welcoming, unidentifiable until the brochures were in sight.  Farther down the park, another form of therapy was available in the form of the community garden.  Will told me that everyone is welcome to take stuff from it, that he would himself if he had a kitchen to prepare things in.  Some of the herbs were in perfect form and I picked some mint to carry.  The peppers and tomatoes were still pretty small and green, perhaps because so much of the garden was shady.  At the end of the walkway were more benches with folks sleeping on them, and some younger counter-culture couples walking around as well, waiting for FNB to come.  

The Park remains an inspirational location, symbolic of the grand capacity members of communities have for supporting each other, when they commit to it.  Increasing social services and creating an accepting culture in the area has shown itself to be a sustainable strategy there for decades now, and one that area residents are and should be proud of.  I am grateful to live near it, and I hope the Park's spirit will travel with me when I come back East.