The ''Berkeley Barb'' was a weekly underground newspaper published in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, Cali ...

, during the years 1965 to 1980. It was one of the first and most influential of the

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...

newspapers, covering such subjects as the anti-war movement and Civil Rights Movement, as well as the

social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Sustained at a larger scale, it may lead to social transformation or societal transformat ...

s advocated by youth culture.

History

The newspaper was founded in August 1965 by Max Scherr, a middle-aged radical who had earlier been the owner of the Steppenwolf bar in Berkeley. Scherr was the editor and publisher from the newspaper's inception until the mid-1970s. The ''Barb'' carried a great deal of political news, mainly concerning opposition to the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

and activist political events surrounding the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

, particularly the Vietnam Day Committee and the Free Speech Movement. It also served as a venue for music advertisements. Starting around 1967, the ''Barb'' was the first underground paper to have an extensive classified ad section carrying explicit personal sex advertisements. Ultimately about a third of the paper was occupied by various forms of sexual advertising: as well as the personals there were ads for X-rated films, pornographic bookstores, mail order novelties and classifieds for models and massage, all both gay and straight. Photos of nude models spilled over into the news section. The formula of radical politics and sex worked, and the ''Barb'' was one of the top-selling underground papers in the nation. Efforts to clone this formula in other cities (e.g. '' Rat'' in New York City) ran into resistance from staff, readers and local authorities; female staffers and supporters from the '' Berkeley Tribe'' staged a sit-in at San Francisco's ''Dock of the Bay'' to successfully block publication of a proposed spin-off sex paper, and when male staffers at '' Good Times'' tried to put out a special "Sex" issue, women staffers stole the mock-ups and page layouts and burned them. In 1969, under pressure from an underpaid and rebellious staff which believed, based primarily on information from an accountant, that Scherr was making windfall profits (the ''Barb'' may have been the only underground newspaper of which this could be said), Scherr sold the paper for $200,000 to Allan Coult, a professor of anthropology. The deal fell apart shortly afterwards and Scherr resumed ownership, cancelling the agreement after Coult failed to make the initial payment. At this point almost all of the 40 person staff, including managing editor James A. Schreiber, walked out and formed the "Red Mountain Tribe". After putting out a special ''Barb on Strike'' issue, they launched their own rival newspaper, the '' Berkeley Tribe'', which soon claimed a circulation of 53,000 copies. Meanwhile, Scherr, who had locked the doors and then taken the files and equipment out of his own offices, continued publishing the ''Barb'' out of new offices with a new staff. The paper continued to be successful for a few years but the heyday of the underground press was passing. The ''Barb'' was caught up in the general downward trend, with contributor burnout and slowly falling circulation and ad revenues leading to a vicious circle of decline. In 1978, with circulation down to 20,000 copies and dropping, the numerous sex ads were spun off into a separate publication, '' Spectator Magazine''. Freed of the stigma of "adults only" but deprived of advertising income, the ''Barb'' went out of business within a year and a half. The final issue was dated July 3, 1980. ''Spectator Magazine'' ceased publication in October 2005.

Underground comix

The ''Barb'' was one of the first papers to print

underground comix Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, ...

, featuring Joel Beck's '' Lenny of Laredo'' in 1965;"Joel Beck: Underground comic artist", ''San Francisco Chronicle'', September 21, 1999
and later featuring the work of cartoonists such as Dave Sheridan and

Bill Griffith William Henry Jackson Griffith (born January 20, 1944) is an American cartoonist who signs his work Bill Griffith and Griffy. He is best known for his surreal daily comic strip '' Zippy''. The catchphrase "Are we having fun yet?" is credited t ...

Zippy the Pinhead Zippy the Pinhead is a fictional character who is the protagonist of ''Zippy'', an American comic strip created by Bill Griffith. Zippy's most famous quotation, "Are we having fun yet?", appears in ''Bartlett's Familiar Quotations'' and became a ...

" beginning in 1976).

Banana skins and other hoaxes

In March 1967, Scherr, hoping to trick authorities into banning bananas, ran a satirical story which claimed that dried banana skins contained "

bananadine Bananadine is a fictional psychoactive substance which is supposedly extracted from banana peels. A hoax recipe for its "extraction" from banana peel was originally published in the ''Berkeley Barb'' in March 1967. This recipe was itself an excerp ...

", a (fictional) psychoactive substance which, when smoked, supposedly induced a psychedelic high similar to opium and psilocybin. The ''Barb'' may have been inspired by

Donovan Donovan Phillips Leitch (born 10 May 1946), known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter and record producer. He emerged from the British folk scene in early 1965 and subsequently scored multiple international hit singles ...

's 1966 song " Mellow Yellow", with its lyric "Electrical banana/Is gonna be a sudden craze". The hoax was believed and spread through the mainstream press, and was perpetuated after William Powell included it in '' The Anarchist Cookbook''. A

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

article on illicit drugs by Donald Louria, MD, noted in passing, that "banana scrapings, provide— if anything—a mild psychedelic experience". The

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respo ...

(FDA) investigated and concluded that banana skins were not psychedelic. 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 Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
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."Comrades recall Stew Albert" by Richard Brenneman
/ref>

References

External links

''Berkeley Barb'' website

''Berkeley Barb'' digital archives
on Independent Voices website Newspapers published in the San Francisco Bay Area Alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States Mass media in Berkeley, California Counterculture of the 1960s Defunct newspapers published in California Defunct weekly newspapers 1965 establishments in California 1980 disestablishments in California Newspapers established in 1965 Publications disestablished in 1980 Underground press Weekly newspapers published in California

History

Underground comix

Banana skins and other hoaxes

See also

References

Further reading

External links