Barrington Hall
Encyclopedia
Barrington Hall was a student housing cooperative
Student housing cooperative
A student housing cooperative, also known as co-operative housing, is a housing cooperative for students in an educational institution.Unlike a resident who acquires shares at market rates to earn the right to occupy a specific apartment on a permanent basis , a resident of a student co-op acquires...

 in the University Students' Cooperative Association
University Students' Cooperative Association
Berkeley Student Cooperative is a student housing cooperative serving primarily the University of California, Berkeley but open to any full-time post-secondary student. BSC houses over 1300 students in 17 houses and 3 apartment buildings...

 (USCA) system in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, from 1935 to 1990. It is currently privately operated student housing.

History

The first Barrington Hall was a boarding house on Ridge Road, housing 48 students, purchased by leaders of the student co-op movement in 1933. Located at 2315 Dwight Way, at Ellsworth, the better-known, second building was opened to house 200 men in 1935, two years after the founding of the USCA. The building was formerly the largest apartment house in Berkeley. It was leased to the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1948; the Navy returned the building significantly upgraded. Barrington Hall, along with all the USCA residences, was always open to all students regardless of race, religion or nationality. In 1967, Barrington Hall's house council voted to become co-ed
Coeducation
Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...

, which by the rules of "locus parentis" meant the house lost its accreditation with the University.

Throughout its history, Barrington Hall had a reputation for supporting social and political activism. In 1960, "Cal undergrads, particularly residents of the Barrington Hall co-op on Dwight Way, were part of the crowd of demonstrators protesting against the San Francisco meeting of the House Committee on Un-American Activities." By the time of the People's Park
People's Park (Berkeley)
People's Park in Berkeley, California, USA, is a park off Telegraph Avenue, bounded by Haste and Bowditch streets and Dwight Way, near the University of California, Berkeley. The park was created during the radical political activism of the late 1960s....

 Riots in May 1969, Barrington Hall, which was only two blocks from People's Park, was an infamous place in Berkeley. The devotion to cooperation in a nation committed to competition bore radical fruit after thirty-five years. Barrington became a 'safe house' for deviance, good or ill. It was safe for unmarried men and women to live together, safe to paint and draw on the walls, safe to do or sell any drug, safe to crash in if you had no other place to stay. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was also the headquarters of the anti-apartheid movement, and offered sanctuary and meals to the homeless. In 1984, Barrington residents voted to make the Hall open as an official sanctuary for refugees from El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, complaints against Barrington started piling up in the early 1960s. One example from 1983 noted: "Resident complains not fit for habitability. Live boa constrictor, fire, dried blood on her door, food and burning matches thrown at dinner, person wandering through halls brandishing a whip and striking the walls with it." In the 1980s, the co-op was the focus of numerous accusations regarding drugs and noise. According to the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit,
"Barrington Hall's reputation was larger than life, even by California standards.... If Berkeley, California, was the last bastion of sixties counterculture, Barrington Hall, the city's oldest ::and largest student housing co-operative, was surely the last rampart. While much of Berkeley became stuffy and conventional, the residents of Barrington Hall clung to their ::freewheeling ways. A bit too freewheeling, according to two of Barrington's neighbors. They claim that the co-op's denizens engaged in massive drug-law violations, turning the ::neighborhood into a drug-enterprise zone.... Barrington Hall prided itself on fostering alternative lifestyles.... Its bizarre and irreverent rituals included nude dinners with themes like ::Satan's Village Wine Dinner and the Cannibal Wine Dinner--the latter complete with body-part shaped food. These bacchanalian festivals often turned riotous..."


In 1989, after three previous attempts to close the hall, all defeated within the USCA by campaigns organized by Barringtonians and former Barringtonians, it was closed by a USCA referendum intended to stem the growing liability associated with Barrington's wild atmosphere. The closure was fought by the residents during the referendum campaign, in court and in the building by student squatters. In 1990, the USCA president stated "Barrington has a larger-than-life reputation. All across the continent, people know it as a drug den and anarchist household." The East Bay Express called it "the great Breughel painting of Berkeley campus counterculture," which was doomed by "a cocktail of drugs and radical-left politics." The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Berkeley's last student bastion for radical behavior, is expected to close today -- burying a civilization Margaret Mead might have chosen for her final expedition into cultural anthropology." The squat climaxed in a night-long riot — in March, 1990, which began as a poetry reading — involving Berkeley police, off-duty police officers (hired by the USCA), and the residents. Fires burned 20 feet high, and 17 people were arrested. Squatters were readmitted to the building the next day. A week later, one was killed in a fall from the roof manned by security guards. The final eviction of all residents took place in September, 1990.

The former Barrington Hall now serves as privately operated student housing.

Musical history

Before legal arbitration
Arbitration
Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution , is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, where the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons , by whose decision they agree to be bound...

 with the neighbors in 1984, Barrington was the launching pad/petri dish of Bay Area Punk, and bands played frequently.

In the early 1980s, the house band for several wine dinners was the Lemmings, whose song "I'm on Sound" described the Barrington experience, with the chorus "Those who say don't know. Those who know don't say." This song appeared on their first record "Running," and the album's cover art was reproduced as one of the many murals on the Hall's walls.

The song "Frizzle Fry
Frizzle Fry
-Personnel:Primus*Les Claypool – electric bass, electric fiddle bass, string bass, vocals*Larry LaLonde – electric guitar, acoustic guitar*Tim "Herb" Alexander – drumsProduction*Todd Huth – second acoustic guitar on "Toys"...

" by the band Primus
Primus (band)
Primus is an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, currently composed of bassist/vocalist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry "Ler" LaLonde and drummer Jay Lane. Primus originally formed in 1984 with Claypool and guitarist Todd Huth, later joined by Lane, though the latter two departed...

 as well as the theme of their album, Tales From the Punchbowl, was inspired by one of the Barrington's recurring parties, called "Wine Dinners," held at the house at which punch laced with LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...

 was served. The pop group Camper Van Beethoven
Camper Van Beethoven
Camper Van Beethoven is an American alternative rock group formed in Redlands, California in 1983.An eclectic band, Camper Van Beethoven mixes elements of pop, ska, punk rock, folk and alternative country, as well as various types of world music. Their aggressive musical pluralism created a...

 played at one such "Wine Dinner" in 1988-89, under the name Vampire Can Mating Oven. Black Flag
Black Flag (band)
Black Flag was an American punk rock band formed in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, California. The band was established by Greg Ginn, the guitarist, primary songwriter and sole continuous member through multiple personnel changes in the band...

, Flipper
Flipper (band)
Flipper is a punk band formed in San Francisco, California in 1979, continuing in often erratic fashion until the mid-1990s, then reuniting in 2005. The band influenced a number of grunge,, punk rock and noise rock bands...

, X, NOFX
NOFX
NOFX is an American punk rock band from Los Angeles, California .The band was formed in 1983 by vocalist/bassist Fat Mike and guitarist Eric Melvin. Drummer Erik Sandin joined NOFX shortly after. In 1991 El Hefe joined to play lead guitar and trumpet, rounding out the current line-up...

, Operation Ivy and The Dead Kennedys played at Barrington in the 1980s, along with hundreds of other punk rock bands. The song "Barrington Hall" by Les Claypool's Frog Brigade, released in 2002, is all about Barrington, and includes the lyrics "Just when I had thought I'd seen it ah ah ah all, I stumbled 'round the corner into Barrington Hall. Does anyone here remember Barrington Hall? Does anybody here remember Barrington? They care not for wrong or right, they electrocute the night, the people that live in Barrington Hall...."

The legal arbitration restricted Barrington to three parties a semester with "amplified music," and so bands could only perform at Wine Dinners after that.

Musicians in Barrington house band Idiot Flesh
Idiot Flesh
Idiot Flesh was a band formed in Barrington Hall, a student co-op at the University of California at Berkeley. They formed in 1985 under the name Acid Rain, and their demo album "We Were All Very Worried" was released as a cassette-only edition in 1987...

 went on to perform with Charming Hostess
Charming Hostess
Charming Hostess is a band that grew out of the Oakland avant-rock scene in the mid-1990s.-Current work:Today, the music primarily springs from three women with an emphasis in the body—voices and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. The work grows from diaspora...

, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is an American experimental rock band, formed in 1999 in Oakland, California. The band fuses classical, industrial, and art-rock themes throughout their music...

 and Faun Fables
Faun Fables
Faun Fables is a band from Oakland, California. Faun Fables is a concept and vehicle for Dawn McCarthy, who was inspired to write the original material while traveling after leaving the New York City music scene in 1997. Faun Fables also covers both 20th century compositions by other song writers...

.

Murals

Much of the building, which was four stories high and a block deep, was covered with murals and graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

.
"Every surface in Barrington was covered with psychedelic murals and layer upon layer of graffiti. The graffiti wasn't just tags--it contained long debates about revolution, religion, art, everything.... which would go on for years."

The tradition of murals began in the 1960s, and many of the "original" murals were painted by house members, such as a large mural of the Beatles Yellow Submarine. As times changed, so did the murals; the 1980s murals were more punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

. But old murals were considered sacred by house by-laws, and so the artistic expressions of several decades adorned Barrington, making its walls a living history of late 20th-century counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...

 in the US. One mural from the 1970s was of Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...

. A prominent mural from the 1980s, painted in a neo-psychedelic style and with Japanese anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 characteristics, made reference to 1950s icon Disneyland. Stationed just inside the front entrance of the building, it said:
"Welcome to Barrington, kids! Please keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times."


Graffiti was a tradition which began in the 1980s, and consisted of everything from large multi-color spray paint tag designs to merely scrawled words, such as "Only seven more shopping days till Armageddon."

Insect banquet

For many years, there was a yearly insect banquet at Barrington Hall at which entomophagy
Entomophagy
Entomophagy is the consumption of insects as food. Insects are eaten by many animals, but the term is generally used to refer to human consumption of insects; animals that eat insects are known as insectivores...

 was practiced. It was often mentioned in Herb Caen
Herb Caen
Herbert Eugene Caen was a Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco journalistwhose daily column of local goings-on, social and political happenings,...

's column in the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

.

New Member Disorientation

At the beginning of every semester in the 1980s, a new member orientation, called the "New Member Disorientation", was held for incoming students. Two films were shown, and nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas or sweet air, is a chemical compound with the formula . It is an oxide of nitrogen. At room temperature, it is a colorless non-flammable gas, with a slightly sweet odor and taste. It is used in surgery and dentistry for its anesthetic and analgesic...

 was procured for a big party. One of the films was a super 8mm film called "Leo and Phred," which depicted Leo and Phred engaging in sex acts while on heroin to the tune of "White Lines" by Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash. The other film was a claymation film which featured "Onngh Yanngh." Onngh Yanngh was the legendary folk hero
Folk hero
A folk hero is a type of hero, real, fictional, or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. This presence in the popular consciousness is evidenced by...

 of Barrington. His motto — adopted from a famous quotation of Lao Tzu's — was "those who tell don't know, and those who know don't tell." The film was made circa 1980, and humorously tells the "story" of Onngh Yanngh. Later, when the neighbors filed a lawsuit against the USCA under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization...

 (RICO) for drug sales in the building, one of their claims was that Barrington's Onngh-Yanngh/Lao Tzu motto was actually akin to the mafia code of omertà
Omertà
Omertà is a popular attitude and code of honour and a common definition is the "code of silence". It is common in areas of southern Italy, such as Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, and Campania, where criminal organizations defined as Mafia such as the Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita, and...

.

Barrington Bull

The Barrington Bull was an in-house publication of Barrington Hall, published from 1936 to 1989. (The name was briefly changed to The Barbarrington in 1938.) It was the first USCA publication of any kind. Volume I Number I of The U.C.S.C.A. News appeared on October 24, 1938, "a publication," claimed the lead article, "designed to create greater unity of purpose and action among the five houses of the co-operative association." Ed Wright, the editor, was also the editor of The Barbarrington. Terry Carr and Ron Ellik, later to achieve great success in the science fiction field and indeed to win a Hugo Award for their fanzine, FANAC, were editors in the 1950s. In the 1960s, a tradition of giving each issue a theme began with Guy Lillian, also a Hugo nominee, one of whose issues (with cover by Pat Yeates) is shown here. Some themes from the 1970s include: The "Onngh Yanngh" Bull, Spring 1978 The "Wasted" Bull, May 1978 and "The Hippie Ghetto" Bull, Fall 1979.

Lawsuit

In 1989, neighbors filed federal and state lawsuits against Barrington and the USCA, in an attempt to stop heroin dealing and collect monetary damages for loss of property value under the RICO act. "According to the factual allegations of plaintiffs' complaint, Barrington Hall residents collectively agreed at a house meeting to allow drug dealing at Barrington. At least nineteen different individuals within the co-operative sold drugs there, and drug sales have allegedly been going on at Barrington for over twenty years." The federal suit was dismissed in 1992. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to reinstate the federal lawsuit against Barrington.

Barrington collective

In 2002, a group of UC Berkeley students founded a cooperative organization, and named themselves after Barrington, to commemorate its "spirit." The collective publishes the "Disorientation Zine," as a complement to the orientation information UC Berkeley provides to new students.

Notable Barrington residents

  • Tara Bahrampour, instructor at New York University
    New York University
    New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

    , journalist for The New York Times
    The New York Times
    The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

    , freelance correspondent and author of To See and See Again: A Life in Iran and America.
  • Robert Barkaloff, Los Angeles
    Los Ángeles
    Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

     photographer.
  • Composer Tom Dean, General and Artistic Director, and founder of the Oakland Opera
  • Jewlia Eisenberg
    Jewlia Eisenberg
    Jewlia Eisenberg is an American composer. As founder and bandleader of Charming Hostess she coined the term "Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girly" to describe her genre of music which spans an eclectic range of styles....

    , co-founder of eclectic band Charming Hostess
    Charming Hostess
    Charming Hostess is a band that grew out of the Oakland avant-rock scene in the mid-1990s.-Current work:Today, the music primarily springs from three women with an emphasis in the body—voices and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. The work grows from diaspora...

    .
  • Sandeep Junnarkar, Associate Professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
    CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
    The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism is a public graduate journalism school located in New York City. One of the 23 institutions comprising the City University of New York, or CUNY, the school opened in 2006...

    , former journalist for The New York Times on the Web, the founder of Lives in Focus, a non-profit media company that uses video, audio and photographs to present the voices and stories of those who are rarely given space or time in traditional news media.
  • Mathematician Andreas Floer
    Andreas Floer
    Andreas Floer was a German mathematician who made seminal contributions to the areas of geometry, topology, and mathematical physics, in particular the invention of Floer homology.-Life:...

    , inventor of Floer homology
    Floer homology
    Floer homology is a mathematical tool used in the study of symplectic geometry and low-dimensional topology. First introduced by Andreas Floer in his proof of the Arnold conjecture in symplectic geometry, Floer homology is a novel homology theory arising as an infinite dimensional analog of finite...

    .
  • Rhacel Parrenas
    Rhacel Parrenas
    Rhacel Salazar Parrenas is Professor of Sociology at USC. Prior to working at USC, she taught at Brown University, the University of California, Davis and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.-Career:...

    , Professor at Brown University
    Brown University
    Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

    , public intellectual, known for her work on the family, migration, domestic work, and human trafficking.
  • Journalist and documentary filmmaker Micah Garen
    Micah Garen
    Micah Garen is a photographer, documentary filmmaker and writer, and founder of Four Corners Media.On August 13, 2004, Garen and his Iraqi translator, Amir Doushi, were kidnapped and held hostage in Nasiriya in southern Iraq...

    , author of the Iraq war memoir American Hostage.
  • Brian Herbert
    Brian Herbert
    Brian Patrick Herbert is an American author who lives in Washington state. He is the elder son of science fiction author Frank Herbert....

    , author of numerous science fiction novels.
  • Erik Himmelsbach, music critic and journalist for Blender, Rolling Stone, and LA Times, formerly managing editor at the Los Angeles Reader
    Los Angeles Reader
    Los Angeles Reader was a weekly paper established in 1978 and distributed in Los Angeles, USA. It followed the format of the Chicago Reader. The paper was known for having lengthy, thoughtful reviews of movies, plays and concerts in the LA area. James Vowell was its founding editor...

     and Spin
    Spin (magazine)
    Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

    ; now television writer and producer of pop culture documentaries such as Monterey 40
  • Tim Hitchcock, Professor of Eighteenth-century History at the University of Hertfordshire, author of Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London and co-director of The Old Bailey Online, http://web-apps.herts.ac.uk/uhweb/about-us/profiles/profiles_home.cfm?profile=D9F0B63B-B44D-B348-DDEA711F6AE2FF7D
  • Rodney Koeneke, poet and author of critical study of I.A. Richards.
  • Film and television director Michael Lehmann
    Michael Lehmann
    Michael Stephen Lehmann is an American film and television director.Lehmann attended Columbia University. His first job in the film industry was answering phones at Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope film company. Later he supervised cameras on films that included 1983's The Outsiders...

  • Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz
    Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz
    Ross Lomanitz was an American physicist.He was born in Bryan, Texas and grew up in Oklahoma. His father was an agricultural chemist and named his son after the Italian socialist Giovanni Rossi, who had founded an agricultural commune in Brazil in the 1890s...

     Physicist who was prevented from working on the Manhattan Project
    Manhattan Project
    The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...

     with Robert Oppenheimer
    Robert Oppenheimer
    Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first...

    , due to FBI surveillance.
  • Journalist Sam Quinones, author of two books of nonfiction stories about Mexico, now with the Los Angeles Times.
  • Bob Pisani
    Bob Pisani
    Robert Pisani has been a news correspondent for financial news network CNBC since 1990. Pisani largely covered the real estate industry and corporate management until 1997. Since then he has reported live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, surrounded by the flurry of floor traders doing...

    , CNBC reporter since 1990.
  • Composer Belinda Reynolds
  • Joel J. Rane, author of Scream at the Librarian.
  • Pink Cloud
  • Hyun Joo Kim
  • Chris Thompson, journalist, formerly at East Bay Express
    East Bay Express
    The East Bay Express is an Oakland-based weekly newspaper serving the Berkeley, Oakland, and East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area...

    , by 2007 was writing for The Village Voice
    The Village Voice
    The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

     in New York City
    New York City
    New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

  • Michael Tigar
    Michael Tigar
    Michael E. Tigar is an American criminal defense attorney known for representing controversial clients. He is also a member of the Duke Law School faculty.-Early life and education:...

    , lawyer for the Chicago Seven
    Chicago Seven
    The Chicago Seven were seven defendants—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner—charged with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois on the occasion of the 1968...

    .
  • Steve Richter
  • Lisa Derrick, blogger (La Figa at Firedoglake
    Firedoglake
    Firedoglake is a US collaborative blog which primarily specialises in covering news from a left-progressive/left-liberal stance...

    , Huffington Post), writer/editor (Sacred History Magazine, Grammy Magazine), journalist (Spin, Details, New Times, etc.), author ("Las Vegas with Kids")
  • Onngh Yanngh
  • Wayne Brosman, lawyer in downtown Los Angeles.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK