Berkeley Barb - The Barb's Relationship To The Poor

The Barb's Relationship To The Poor

The Barb was used to make some money by Berkeley's early hippies, denizens of "The Ave" (Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, on the south side of campus), locals, runaways, and later by street people. The paper originally sold for 10 cents and later for 25 cents. Every Thursday night around 9pm a Volkswagen truck (the one with the fold-down sides) would arrive from the printer, pulling up to Max Scherr's house on Oregon Street (which served as the paper's offices). The waiting street vendors would help unload the papers and then get in line to get their stack. The papers would be purchased at half-price or obtained for collateral. The prospective 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 50 papers to sell on the street corner. As soon as their papers were in hand vendors would rush off to a popular corner or their personal favorite corner and spend the night on the corner so that they'd be able to sell their papers during the rush hour on Friday morning. The first vendor to get to The Pic coffee house (formerly Piccolo Espresso, now the Caffe Mediterraneum) was guaranteed sales of up to 25 papers. The vendor kept half of the money, so when that bundle of papers was sold, he or she would return to the office, buy back the collateral and possibly buy more papers with cash, and then return to the street corner to sell enough papers to buy food, dope, or whatever they needed. 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 sales of Scherr's paper kept hippie runaways and homeless people from starving.