- "Cat Woman is watching you..." This was written with a sharpie on all the payphones on Bancroft Ave within a few blocks of Telegraph. You'd be walking along and then the phone would ring, and if you picked it up you would have a very cryptic conversation with a deep voiced woman who could describe your every detail. Anyone?

- There was this stairwell on the south end of Eshelman Hall (in lower Sproul Plaza) that had like 8 floors of cool graffitti including poetic diatribes, stoner mini-murals, and a certain number of Flipper logos.

- Remember when Polka Dot man briefly switched to X's? (He had a very profound explanation, too)

memories of coffee.

remember when caffe strada was espresso roma? i worked there one summer. for a while they ran an incredible caffeine, bagels, fresh orange juice and pastry assembly line from which then-owner sandy boyd was rumored to have raked in a million NET profit a year. no surprise seeing as how he paid us all chicken feed. i fell in love three times there at least, and broke up with somebody there once or twice as well. some song lyrics got written on napkins there that probably actually were heard by someone later on. they had some of the funniest and most profound bathroom graffiti i have seen anywhere.

for years and years and years, that was me and my older brother's "god we are so cool" place to hang out and drink "hella" giant capps and check out the college women. on days when it got overly infested with annoying frat/sorority people, we'd go hang at cafe med, or whatchamacallit - that one next to silverball. there were different scenes at each of the different cafes, and depending on what crowd i was hanging out most with that week - i was a total crowd-hopper - i would hang out at their cafe. for a good long time i hung out at sufficient grounds over by yogurt park with my friend laurie and drank jasmine tea instead of coffee. as i may have mentioned before, i scorned au coquelet as a teenager because our gang of young punks found the old mole to be somehow more politically correct. the virulence of that prejudice only mystifies me now.

i of course had peet's running through my veins since i was about ten years old, but it never really interested me as a place to "hang out" until well into my twenties. then we'd get our coffee and sit on the curb across the street, or maybe get some great vegan food from the late lamented juice bar collective. there were a number of regular resident mentally ill regulars who came and caffeined up while talking to themselves at various volumes - people in line were so focused and no-nonsense they usuallly didn't bat an eye.

sometimes we'd hang out at the cafe in the french hotel next to, well, it was andronico's, before that it was the co-op, i have no idea what it is now. anyway, the french hotel had the best mochas and that was our staple drink there.

i think somebody already mentioned "cafe depresso" on upper hearst - i wish i could remember its real name. i went by looking for it a couple of months ago and it's no longer there - i'm not sure it's even the same building. i liked cafe depresso because i could buy cigarettes there. i think my camel nonfilters habit started there. it was the kind of place where if you DIDN'T have a batik-covered journal to write in with a deep, pensive look on your face, then you were some kind of freak. i think they catered mostly to PSR students; i think they also had live music although my memory of that is vague.

are there any i missed?

Pardon me but I'm linking this thread to the other one in case one or the other gets lost in the mists of time.

berkeleykids.tribe.net/thread...7c570da

Right- The cafe depresso was actually called the cafe expresso..... and now its a copy mat or sumpthin.Does anyone remeber the La Vals/Northside theater..the photos of the two boys around 8 years old and then the same boys at 18 looking rather rough?
A friend took acid and peed in her concave plastic chair at La Vals. I got kissed in the movies for the first time. North Side was a hang as well as Indian Rock....the view on San Diego Rd, The Spring estate ( we called it Williams college)on San Antonio Rd. These were our stomping grounds...running wild in the hills...spring time always brings this back to me no matter how far away I travel..
I am working on a panegyric art video dedicated to the old daze and I am looking for young actors to play berkeley kids circa 1968...please reply if you know anyone .....