Berkeley Barb

The "Berkeley Barb" was an underground newspaper that was published in Berkeley, California, from 1965 to the early 1980s. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers of the late 1960s, covering such subjects as the and civil-rights movements as well as the social changes advocated by the youth culture.

History

The newspaper was founded in August 1965 by Max Scherr, who had earlier been the owner of the Steppenwolf bar in Berkeley. Scherr was the editor from the newspaper's inception until the mid-1970s.

The "Barb" carried a great deal of political news, particularly concerning the Vietnam War and local political events surrounding the University of California. It also served as a venue for music advertisements and was among the first of the underground papers to carry an extensive classified ad section in which explicit personal sexual advertisements were posted.

In 1978 the numerous sex ads were separated out into a separate publication, "Spectator". Deprived of advertising income, "The Barb" went out of business within a year and a half; the last issue was dated July 3, 1980. [ [http://timelines.ws/days/07_03.HTML Timeslines site] ] "The Spectator" ceased publication in October 2005. [Wendy McElroy. " [http://www.zetetics.com/mac/xxx/ XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography] ", 1995. Chapter 7.] .

Banana skins and other hoaxes

Max Scherr had a satirical sense of humour and used the "Barb" as a vehicle for comedy as well as news. One of the "Barb"'s most famous covers showed a boy with a chain around his mind. Another cover, printed in green ink, depicted the body of a dead hog. The headline read "Pig Slain!". This issue sold rapidly as readers sought additional information on what they thought would be an article on a cop-killing. Search as they might, there was nothing in the paper that related to the cover.

In March 1967 Scherr, hoping to trick authorities into banning bananas, ran a satirical story which claimed that dried banana skins contained "bananadine", a (fictional) psychoactive substance which, when smoked, supposedly induced a psychedelic high similar to opium and psilocybin. [cite book
first = Jay
last = Stevens
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year = 1998
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title = Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream
chapter =
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publisher = Grove Press
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id = ISBN 0-8021-3587-0
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pages=336] (The "Barb" may have been inspired by Donovan's 1966 song "Mellow Yellow"Or|date=August 2008, with its lyric "Electrical banana/Is gonna be a sudden craze"; Donovan, in turn, was inspired by a banana-shaped vibrator.Fact|date=February 2007) The hoax was believed and spread through the mainstream press, and was perpetuated after William Powell included it in "The Anarchist Cookbook". Runs on bananas at supermarkets occurred, reminiscent of those that had occurred with morning-glory seeds a few years earlier. A New York Times article on illicit drugs by Donald Louria, MD, noted in passing, that "banana scrapings, provide— if anything—a mild psychedelic experience." [Louria, Donald (1967), "Cool Talk About Hot Drugs." "The New York Times Magazine", August 6, 1967 p. 188] The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was forced to make a serious investigation, and concluded that banana skins are "not" psychedelic. Interestingly enough, the skins do contain a measurable amount of toluene, which is also found in airplane glue.

The "Barb" was itself subjected to hoaxes. At a memorial for the social activist and founder of the Yippies, Stew Albert, the following story was told:

One victim of an Albert prank was Max Scherr, editor of the Berkeley Barb, that legendary paper of the days of "the Movement."

"A lot of Jewish kids were converting to Buddhism then," Paul Glusman said, so Albert cooked up a hoax, getting a letter mailed from Japan to the paper reporting that "all the Buddhist kids in Japan were converting to Judaism."

Scherr ran the letter. [ [http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/text/article.cfm?issue=06-16-06&storyID=24412 "Comrades recall Stew Albert" by Richard Brenneman] ]

The Barb's relationship to the poor

The "Barb" was used as a means to obtain eating money by Berkeley's early hippies and runaways, and later by street people. The paper originally sold for 10 cents and later for 15 cents. On the day the paper was published, vendors would stand in line in the wee hours of the morning until the office opened. The papers could be purchased for resale at a 50% discount or obtained for collateral. The prospective Barb vendor who wished to obtain papers on collateral would show Scherr something of value, such as a musical instrument or a backpack containing clothing and poems. If Scherr felt the goods were valuable enough that the owner would return to get them, he would keep the collateral in exchange for a bundle of papers to sell on the street corner. The vendor got to keep half of the money, so when that bundle of papers was sold, he or she would return to the office, buy back the collateral, pay for a second bundle of papers with cash, and then return to the street corner to sell enough papers to buy food. At the time, a plate of fish and chips cost 30 cents, and an ice-cream scoop sized portion of turkey stuffing could be had for 14 cents at Larry Blake's restaurant, so Max Scherr kept many hippie runaways and homeless people from starving.Fact|date=February 2007

References