BERKELEY BARB

The '''Berkeley Barb''' was an underground newspaper that was published in Berkeley, California, from 1965 to the early 1980s. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers of the late 1960s, covering such subjects as the and civil-rights movements as well as the social changes advocated by the youth culture.

Contents

History

References

History

The newspaper was founded in August 1965 by Max Scherr. Quill Max was editor from the newspaper's inception until the mid-1970s.
One of the ''Barb's most famous covers showed a boy with a chain around his mind. Another cover showed in green ink the body of a dead hog. The headline read ''Pig Slain!''. This issue sold rapidly as readers sought additional information on what they thought would be an article on a cop-killing. Search as they might, there was nothing in the paper that related to the cover. The entire thing was to sell more papers, and it worked.
In March 1967 the ''Barb'', hoping to trick authorities into banning bananas, ran a satirical story which claimed that dried banana skins contained "bananadine", a (fictional) psychoactive substance which, when smoked, supposedly induced a psychedelic high similar to opium and psilocybin.^[1] (The ''Barb'' may have been inspired by Donovan's 1966 song "Mellow Yellow", with its lyric "Electrical banana/Is gonna be a sudden craze"; Donovan, in turn, was inspired by a banana-shaped vibrator.) The hoax was believed and spread through the mainstream press, and was perpetuated after William Powell included it in ''The Anarchist Cookbook''. Runs on bananas at supermarkets occurred, reminiscent of those that had occurred with morning-glory seeds a few years earlier. A New York Times article on illicit drugs by Donald Louria, MD, noted in passing, that "banana scrapings, provide— if anything—a mild psychedelic experience."^[2] The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was forced to make a serious investigation, and concluded that banana skins are ''not'' psychedelic. Interestingly enough, the skins do contain a measurable amount of toluene, which is also found in airplane glue.
The ''Barb'' and similar papers were used as a means to obtain eating money by the street people. One could stand in line in the wee hours of the day until the office opened. Then you would show them something you valued, usually your backpack with your clothing, poems and such. If they felt your goods were valuable enough that you would return to get them, they would hand you a bundle of papers to sell on street corners. The paper sold for 15 cents and you got to keep half of that. When all your papers sold you would return to the office, buy back your backpack and another bundle of papers, and then return to the street corner to sell enough to buy some food. Since fish and chips cost 30 cents for a single portion and 60 cents for a double, this business was a good way to make sure you didn't starve or otherwise become too sick to last on the street.
In 1978 the numerous sex ads were separated out into a separate publication, ''The Spectator Magazine''. Deprived of advertising income, ''The Barb'' went out of business within a year and a half^[3], and ''The Spectator'' ceased publication in October 2005.
Max Scherr Dead from Cancer
Max Scherr, radical founder and editor of The Berkeley Barb, which was a leading underground newspaper in the 1960's, has died of cancer less than a year after the tabloid ceased publication. He was 47 years old. Mr. Scherr, who died Saturday at his home, founded the paper in 1965 as a sounding board for criticisms of the establishment. It was an outspoken advocate of political, social and sexual revolution. The paper, which claimed a weekly circulation of 90,000 at its peak in 1968, survived charges of obscenity, external political storms and internal power struggles. It was distributed on street corners by the ''flower children.'' In 1970, Mr. Scherr sold the paper Allan Coult, a professor of anthropology. The Barb never survived the changed social climate after the 60's and folded last year, publishing only about 2,000 issues weekly. Burton Stone
'CORRECTION NOTE:' The above obituary is undated and inaccurate. Max was 53 in 1969. I spoke with him in November 1980, following Reagan's election, and I believe he died two years later, at age 65. He owned the paper long after I stopped writing for it, which was in 1971. The paper's ownership and assets came under dispute in 1975, during Max's divorce trial. According to an April 14, 2007 article by Fred Gardner in CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/gardner04142007.html, the Barb went through multiple ownership changes in 1973. Gardner states, "(Attorney Fay)Stender revealed that on Nov. 1, 1973, at a paper-signing ceremony ... the Barb was sold to a Panamanian company, Presentaciones Musicales, S.A. for $250,000. PMSA immediately sold the physical assets of the Barb to Artesia Convalescent Hospital Enterprises (ACHE), which thereafter changed its name to International News Keyus, Inc. (INK, Inc.) The Barb's intangible assets, such as the name and publishing rights were sold to EST International, a company based in Tortola, the British Virgin Islands. Then EST licensed INK to publish the Barb in exchange for a royalty payment of 20¢ per issue sold." In the mid-1990's I tried to contact INK regarding preservation and archiving of the Barb. My calls were never returned. - Jef Jaisun

References

1. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream, , Jay, Stevens, Grove Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8021-3587-0
2. Louria, Donald (1967), "Cool Talk About Hot Drugs." ''The New York Times Magazine'', August 6, 1967 p. 188
3. Wendy McElroy. ''XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography'', 1995. Chapter 7.