Someone calling themselves a student comments on the closing of Cody's Books on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue:
First of all, this is very sad. Cody's is a wonderful store, and I'll miss it greatly.
Time to put on my hater hat.
"Older readers" don't like going to Telegraph Avenue for the same reason we younger readers mostly avoid it: it sucks. Hippie nostalgia just doesn't cut it anymore--the original hippies have turned into self-righteous, self-absorbed reactionaries, and their contemporary Telegraph imitators seem to have forgotten the activism and idealism and kept only the addictions, the aggressive panhandling, and the funky smell.
We the students of UC Berkeley do not need any more Bob Marley tee shirts, hemp necklaces, or novelty bumper stickers. We need bars. Clubs. Performance space. Nightlife of any sort. But the selfish Boomer neighbors don't want the noise, and Blake's doesn't want the competition.
We the residents of Southside need better bus service, but god forbid Joe's Head Shop lose its curbside parking spot. We need affordable housing, but save us from infill development lest it make Berkeley less suburban or block someone's precious view. We need our cars to stop getting broken into, but let's not distract our cops from doing heroin.
All is not lost--Telegraph still has Amoeba, Moe's, Shakespeare & Co., and some decent cheap restaurants. But Telegraph needs new life, and that means ditching the nostalgia act and getting with the program.
I can't...find anything here to disagree with (aside from the cops-doing-heroin reference - what's that about?) And we thought children of annoying Boomer copter-parents were soft.
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