BIG CHAINS REPLACE TELEGRAPH SHOPS
By Keith Palchikoff
The Daily Californian, 8/22/86
The heart of Berkeley's south campus community, Telegraph Avenue, has undergone many changes since a violent student movement brought it national attention more than two decades ago.
At that time, conservative-minded merchants were leaving the area as students became more militant. Now merchants are being forced out by higher rents and national businesses, according to Barbara Moskowitz, who together with her husband Moe, founded Moe's Books.
Moe's began in 1966 in a partnership with Shakespeare Books, which now sits across from it on Telegraph Avenue. The partnership did not succeed, and Moe moved his store to what is now Cody's Books and then, a while later, to its present location.
IN addition to used books, the store sold used records. However, its record business was later undercut by the arrival of Rasputin's Records. "Rasputin's drove us out of business," Moskowitz said. "They bought a plastic wrapping machine and made used records look new."
Moskowitz believes the avenue is "much better now" than it was 20 years ago. "It went through a terrible time in the '60s... and some of the conservative shopkeepers gave up."
"It was much more conservative then. (Some of the merchants) couldn't get used to the idea that students had opinion."
Over the past 20 years, the type of businesses operating along Telegraph has changed considerably.
A recent study comparing the makeup of the Sather Gate Commercial District in 1964 to what it is today showed a shift from service to retail-oriented businesses. The study was produced by the Telegraph Avenue Subcommittee of the Berkeley Planning Commission.
The most dramatic change occurred in the number of restaurants added in the district, which extends along Telegraph Avenue from Parker Street to Bancroft Way and includes part of Durant Avenue. The number of restaurants increased from 17 to 85, to become 25 percent of the overall businesses, compared to 10 percent before.
Moskowitz said that the south campus area, as far back as she could remember, has always had fast-food restaurants catering to the campus crowd. Unlike now, however, the fast food was mostly sold on Bancroft Way.
"Now there are all too many shoddy restaurants," she said.
In the 1960s, most of the businesses were locally owned. The few such businesses that remain are threatened by rapidly increasing commercial rents and a current wave of franchise businesses, according to Tom Hunt, a longtime Telegraph Merchant.
"The rents are pushing out the neighborhood-serving businesses and replacing them with a regional service business," Hunt said.
To curb the effects of the rent increases on Telegraph Avenue merchants, the city of Berkeley approved an ordinance in January requiring binding arbitration in Southside commercial rent disputes. The ordinance prohibits landlords from evicting merchants just tot raise rents or admit new tenants.
"Those new businesses are all run by people who don't live here. They have no stake in the community," said Telegraph Avenue street vendor Russell Andavall. "They just go home to Orinda at night and forget about Berkeley. They probably don't even let their children come here."
Andavall said street vendors were first allowed on Telegraph in 1972. He credited the late Fred Cody, founder of Cody's Books, for encouraging the change.
"It was Fred Cody's idea to let the hippie vendors out on the street," Andavall said. "He saw it as a way to take the Avenue back from the hookers and drug dealers."
Although efforts are being made to retard change on Telegraph Avenue, "it may never get back to what it was like before People's Park," Moskowitz said.
