Berkeley '88

Tim Armstrong

I was working at Looking Glass Photo & Camera down on Telegraph Avenue for a year or two while I was going to college. I often brought my twin lens with me to shoot some street scenes while in transit. Sometime I would just stroll all the way down Telegraph, from the UC campus to the border of Oakland where my job was, as I had a lot of friends that worked in shops along the way.

It was a time warp for me to spend time in an area that I had known since childhood. My Great Uncle Rick Ratto ran the pawn shop across the street. My Mother and her family had moved from Boston in 1950 and had lived for 35 years in a house a few blocks away on 61st Street in Oakland, a home that held some of my very first memories.

The year was 1988, a time when the streets of Berkeley were a mix of people filled with those who had recently been dropped off from the Napa State Hospital, college kids, die hard hippies, homeless folk and local punks. It was a community that was rich with individuals that marched to the beat of their own drum. The offbeat tenor of Berkeley's inhabitants were greeted with open arms on Telegraph.

Since I had just started shooting a few years earlier, I was drawn mostly to the maps that were drawn in the features and expression that lingered on the face of people I encountered. The streets of Berkeley always contained someone or something interesting to capture. The following photographs represent some of my earliest reportage work, many of which have never been seen before.

Like Alice Through the Looking Glass,

Julie Pavlowski Green
January 18, 2014

Angus and Friend