Roxie was a bit nervous that night cuz she’d only recently hooked up with Chepe and had been hanging out with Fleric a lot, and knew of his intentions, and she knew that he was Chepe’s best mate. It didn’t matter, but still – it put her in a somewhat awkward situation. Especially after Fleric passed out for several minutes on Roxie’s floor with a bag of nitrous attached to his face. Whatever! She got over it. Shebang kind of flipped out that Fleric was ‘out’ for so long. 

Roxie and Shebang would get pinched for doling out LSD at a later Wine Dinner, in a manner done identically for over decades, but THIS TIME, it was suddenly found ‘wrong’. After the party, the expulsions began. The expulsions from Barrington Hall didn’t include Chepe or Fleric, but they would include Roxie and Shebang, along with Jonah, the boyfriend of Celine, one of Fleric’s best friends at the time along with Fleff, Flibworth, and Chepe Escondido. They’d all get kicked out of Barrington eventually. Everybody would get kicked out and painted over eventually.

That night, they all sucked gas and had a great time. Chepe and Fleric were just LA dudes destined to know each other for life; Roxie and Shebang were two Bay Area fiery young women destined to know each other for life as well. They were punk rock chicks circa 1988 when they first moved into Barrington. Roxie wore patent leather shoes with no socks and always had paint on her fingers, paint on her clothes where words and lines were adorned on leather and denim, her fingernails black, her nails short, her eyes dark, her hair black. Her hands grasping reason sexy rhymes. Roxie was a painter, an opinionated artist. Roxie held a lot back, but she gave much more. Roxie is best described by Bob Dylan in song. 

She’s got everything she needs. She’s an artist. She don’t look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black.

Shebang’s eyes were big with a Scotch Irish mix of strength. Shebang radiated reddish pink raspy alienated love and she or Roxie could rip anybody on the planet a new ASSWHOLE (sic) with eithers’ seething oratory and unique perspective of being both smart, beautiful and full of life, but also bitter rancid cognizant of the reality that was the 80’s in America. These girls had opinions and voices. They were beyond cool. They were the hottest girls in the world. As the Social Eds., they threw rocking parties. They knew all the Gilman Street bands like Operation Ivy, Green Day, L7, Jawbreaker, Blatz. They were buddies with Jessie, the singer from Blatz. Jessie would remove his shirt on stage. Across his abdomen he painted a target. He beckoned audience members to spit on him and try to hit the bull’s eye.

In 1992, four years later, after Fleric moved back in with his ‘toads’, Skachurchka’s word for ‘parental units’, and Saké, his Keeshound mutt in LA. Shebang, then sporting ink, a robotic skeletal rodent on her bicep, and her tattooed boyfriend with a neck gecko among other tats on muscled body parts; the couple stayed with Fleric for one weekend on Euclid St. in Santa Monica while the Hollywood Tattoo Convention was in town. Shebang and Gecko-neck met Fleric’s infamous father. ‘Is your dad famous?’ Shebang asked in her raspy voice. Not yet, Fleric replied.

Fleric remembers when the three first met – both Chepe and Fleric liked Roxscama, but she ended up with Chepe for the next two years off and on, mostly on. Roxie, like Chepe and Fleric, would later move to Fiction House, a six story house up the street from Barrington Hall, after Barrington Hall closed in 1989. They along with Flibworth and Jo Fay Day, and over time, Rhacel P., and Johnny Vermont, which wasn’t his real name, would move up the street to Fiction House. They were all Barringtonians: Flibworth became one of Fleric’s best friends after first meeting in fall 1987, along with Chepe Escondido. Johnny and Rhacel and her sister, activist, writer, filmmaker, editor and founder of Smell This – an anthology of writing by women of color which first appeared in 1989, Philippine Celine, and her boyfriend Jonah moved into Barrington Hall fall 1988. Johnny’s mother was the Mayor of some Northern California town. Rhacel, like Celine was from the Philippines and is now a University Professor. Jo Fay Day was from Calistoga, California. That’s practically wine country. Sparkling water! Hot springs! Jo Day was the closest Fleric ever had to a little sister. She taught him mucho. Davíd from El Salvador, a working stiff a bit older than los estudiántes, also lived in Fiction house. Eva from San Diego, another Barringtonian lived in the Fiction’s backhouse. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Dennis Hopper’s Colors were popular in 1989, when we all first settled into Fiction House. BDP came out with Edutainment the next year and KRS1’s poster hung from Fiction House’s 3^rd floor wall.

Fleric was happy that Chepe ended up with Roxie since it was pretty clear to Fleric from the get go that it wouldn’t be him. With Fleric, if he likes a girl and she’s not into him, he’d rather see her with a friend than with some dickhead. It’s only for the meanwhile, and life presents changes around every turn. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? -- Traffic 

Fleric wanted to be with Roxie, but that wasn’t going to happen. If Fleric’s friends are happy, then he’s happy. Everybody’s happy. Roxie was Fleric’s friend. A girl can easily go from the being the object of Fleric’s affections to being his best friend’s girl and he’s cool with that. 

The first girl Fleric ever really had a crush on when he was thirteen years old in LA, the first girl Fleric ever talked to on the phone and got to know – and she was hot, BLONDE, blue eyes with top shelf cans. Topshelf was a HUGE Who fan, like Fleric, and an herb aficionado, and a 68 monkey like Fleric – well, Topshelf ended up with Fleric’s older brother for the next two years, off and on, mostly on. Fleric had to endure his older brother and the girl he was first smitten with as a post-pubescent boy, getting stoned and having sex in the next room all summer long, two summers. He had to see Topshelf every day all over his house in a continuum of summers. People get used to things. Fleric ended up with Topshelf’s best friend, JK. That didn’t last. JK went to Cal. 

Roxie and Shebang moved into Barrington Hall in 1988, the same year as Johnny, Rhacel and her sister Celine and Celine’s boyfriend, Jonah; one year after Fleric, Fleff, Flibworth, and John three years after Chepe and Chrissulivan, two years after AK47, and four years after Gene and Nils. 

Eight years later, in 1996, Fleric would meet Roxie in Andong, South Korea, where she worked as an English teacher. Fleric taught English in nearby Taegu. The first time Fleric ever went to Seoul was with Roxie. They took the train from Taegu. Barrington Hall old members share a collective unconsciousness.

After Chepe was firmly with Roxie in 1988, Fleric dated the singer of one of Barrington Hall’s house bands, Beef Church, Chrissullivan. Chepe was the drummer for Beef Church. Chrissullivan had been Chepe’s girlfriend in 1985, 1986 – not two years, but two semesters off and on, mostly on. Fleric was in high school at that time. 

The first girl Fleric was ever sweet on in Fall 1987 in Barrington Hall when he first moved in, one year before Roxie moved in, long after Chrisullivan had moved in, but before Fleric had met either – the first girl Fleric met at Barrington Hall and really liked and was really attracted to, physically and mentally, and spent time with and kind of messed around with one night… Well, she ended up getting together with Fleric’s new friend, Flibworth and subsequently living with Flibworth for the next two years, off and on, mostly on. Boo hoo for Fleric.

Fleric, Flibworth, and Chepe Escondido all remain friends and still meet weekly in 2010 to pray and to practice. They have a rock and roll band – bass, drums, and guitar. They each play each instrument shifting positions after un-allotted time increments – the guitarist gets the mike; that is the only rule. But the drummer or bass player, if wind allow, can bellow the main vocal line. Fleric, Flibworth and Chepe have similar tastes in music and muses.

On with the Show

Any time, day or night, you could find something to eat at Barrington Hall. No. That was not always true, especially not over the vacation periods, but normally, in Barrington, 1987-1989, the kitchen was open 24-7 and you could always find something to eat, although they locked the walk-in refrigerator so people wouldn’t raid tomorrow night’s dinner. Ramen, instant noodles in soup with tons of chopped garlic added; and mandu, the Korean name for what they then called ‘pot stickers’ were a staple at the house for night time noshing. 

Barringtonians usually fried pot stickers in oil on the griddle or in a frying pan, and dipped them into soy sauce mixed with cayenne pepper, or vinegar. Fleric never once boiled the pot stickers into soup, but that’s what that they do in South Korea. They call pot stickers mandu in South Korea and mandu gook is a soup made with boiled mandu and green onions with an uncooked egg and black pepper, or hoo choo in Korean language, thrown into the boiling soup. Sometimes ramen noodles are added, or ddeok – rice ground to flour and pressed into firm doughy chips. Then it’s called deok mandu gook. 

Koreans eat deok gook, a common soup with deok, on New Years Day each year, both on the Lunar New Years Day and January 1^st. Why? Who knows? Ask a Korean. Ask Gene Jun. He was Korean. Still is, I hope. I hope he didn’t go all Michael Jackson on us. Onyang, the Barrington Hall spiritual entity that – legend has it – lived in the alcove of the single room in suite 307 of Barrington Hall, where Fleric lived from 1988-1989, is also the name of a town in South Korea, the first town north of Pusan on the east coast just above Yangsan. Onyang, South Korea is famous for natural hot springs. There’s a Buddhist temple there as well.

In additions, quesadillas were a nighttime favorite at Barrington Hall. There were usually tortillas, big blocks of cheese, usually jack and/or cheddar and salsa in the fridge. Bagels and cream cheese, a big rack of fruit, tea, coffee, Malita one cup coffee makers, a hot water dispenser to drip your own individual cup or pot of coffee as strong as you wanted, a milk machine – a guy could spend weeks of his life in Barrington Hall never leaving. Many did. They took a semester off of school and just never left the building, took a lot of drugs. Many just missed a lot of class but hunkered down in the final minutes and managed to graduate. There was a completely different crowd in the dining commons at four a.m. At four a.m. people you didn’t see any other time, were drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

Wine Dinner Fall semester 1987, Fleric drank a cup of acid punch. Ron Yang, perennial house crasher from 87 to 89, wrote a song that went to the music of the Beatle’s Help!   It went like this – Help! I drank some punch! Help! Not just any punch. Help! You know it was spiked with Acid! HELLPP! That’s just the intro. Ron recorded it on a four track recorder. He played the drums, bass, guitar, and he sang. Ron Yang, as he was called, looked like Mick Richards.

The Social Ed. had prepared a punch bowl in the AK that contained a deliciously fruity concoction with liquid LSD. The servers asked you if you wanted to trip for the next ten hours, and made sure that you knew what you were getting and what to expect, before they gave you a cup. They were very conscious of the effects of their beverage. Still they gave out a lot of doses in cups of punch throughout the night. Fleric had taken LSD before. Fleric was a Deadhead. 

Hours later, Fleric was dosed off his ass, having video AND audio hallucinations watching from just a few feet away as Primus performed live on stage in the low ceiling dining commons – Subterra, and later roaming hallways and hanging out with Barringtonians and other Berkeley students. 

Primus opened their show with Pink Floyd’s In the Flesh, covered Rush’s YYZ, and performed their hit, It’s Pudding-time, Children, as well as many others. Five minutes before show time, Fleric had never known that Primus or Les Claypool existed. Hey baby, do you want to lay down with me. Hey baby do you want to lie down by my side, hey baby.   Hey Baby!

Les Claypool, bass player, singer, front man and brains behind Primus, went on to do the theme for South Park, which along with the Simpsons, Futurama, King of the Hill and to a lesser extent, Family Guy, American Dad, and the Cleveland Show is/are/have been the most influential and progressively cutting edge programs on television over the last decade. Two decades if you count just The Simpsons. What am I saying? Seth MacFarlane has made as big an impact on TV as Norman Lear, Jackie Gleason, Ernie Kovacs, Geraldo Rivera, Sid Caesar, Larry David, Bill Cosby or any TV visionary. It’s great how The Simpsons and South Park tackle an issue with each episode because kids watch cartoons. It’s interesting that animated sitcoms can have so much insight and impact and reflection on modern American culture.  

Hey! Hey! Hey!

Fleric, while tripping balls, ran into his first ever girlfriend JK, BFF to Topshelf, his first crush. JK was the first girl he’d ever kissed in his life back in 1984 and there they were at the 1987 Wine Dinner. There was zero connection between them, the acid said so. JK told Fleric of hallucinating herself on mushrooms back in high school. She was not only the best friend of Fleric’s first ‘unrequited love’ with the top shelf cans, blue eyes and a taste for The Who, who ended up with his older brother; but JK with the curly brown haired girl was also the first girl Fleric had ever gotten naked with and spent the night with. They were sixteen and she had a waterbed. Her mother went away on vacation sometimes, leaving JK alone. Fleric got his first BJ and he wasn’t even circumcised yet. All that un-retractable foreskin with nowhere to go. You would think a Jewish girl would be turned off by foreskin. “It’s against my religion!” That would work in this situation. Good think it wasn’t an issue. That was in LA in 1984. Fleric would later get circumcised in 1992 after college, after moving back to LA, around the time of Shebang and Gecko-neck’s visit. Phimosis, or un-retractable foreskin syndrome would get the better of Fleric, and 24 years after his birth, after high school, after college, Fleric would finally see the head of his penis for the first time. Neither JK, nor any of Fleric’s high school or college partners ever saw it. Fleric likes first times.

In 1987, three years after first meeting Fleric, brown curly haired JK of the Judaic persuasion, who lived in Cloyne Court, a Northside Co-op there in Berkeley, ran into Fleric at the Wine Dinner. She too, was a Cal student. ‘What are the chances of running into your first girlfriend three years later in a different city at a party on acid?’ Fleric thought to himself in geometric shapes that formed all around him. Seeing JK was very weird for Fleric. That whole night was weird for everyone Fleric knew, had just recently met. 

Fleric’s suitemate that semester, also new to Barrington, a dude named Ashley from LA, went to Chaminade High School in LA’s valley. Chaminade High School was in the Del Ray league, so they played sports against Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, where Fleric attended high school. Ashley looked like a Chippendale’s Dancer. He was handsome in an LA, superficial kind of way: tall and strong, thick head of curly black hair, strong white teeth. Ashley got into Berkeley, so he wasn’t stupid. Ashley double majored in Biology and History. 

Fleric and Ashley had a friend named Jeffo who lived on the 3^rd floor. Ashley and Fleric lived in suite 105. Jeffo was a homosexual, but you wouldn’t know that unless you knew him well. Jeffo wasn’t overtly gay. Jeffo was a Deadhead stoner. It was just that Jeffo liked men. Fleric had no problem with Jeffo’s sexuality. Fleric was actually surprised to hear Jeffo was gay, although it made sense. 

Fleric and Jeffo played guitars together a lot. And they smoked a lot of weed. Unlike most 19 year old college students, Fleric didn’t ‘chase pussy’ every chance he got, so it was cool hanging out with someone who wasn’t driven by an impulse to score with chicks all the time. Fleric didn’t realize Jeffo’s impulses at first, but he didn’t care when he learned of them. Jeffo didn’t like Fleic that way. Jeffo liked Ashley that way. Ashley had no clue. 

And that night, Wine Dinner 1987, while Ashley was flying high on LSD, Jeffo probably said to him, ‘Hey, Ashley, let’s go back to my room and smoke a doobie,’ and Ashley probably said, ‘Okay.’ There, Jeffo probably dimmed the lights and put on America or Crosby Stills and Nash, something mellow. He probably had his arm around Ashley, and Ashley probably thought Jeffo was just trying to settle him cuz he was tripping so hard. That’s when Ashley found out the hard way that Jeffo was gay. Ashley freaked out. Ashley was never the same. 

Hours later, as a broken-hearted, still tripping Jeffo sat alone in his 3^rd floor single room strumming his acoustic guitar, this non-resident friend to other 3^rd floor residents was flying high on LSD and running around the hallway wearing nothing but his tighty whitey briefs. High Guy knocked on the wrong door and instead of getting his friends, he got Jeffo, who quickly invited the guy in, and within minutes, freaked his shit out, too. God, that’s the stuff youtube is for. 

Like, there’s a party going on, you’re alone in you room, wouldn’t you like some beautiful girl in her underwear to knock at your door? And when you’ve answered the door, and she was just standing there all high, wouldn’t you invite her in? 

Now imagine you’re a gay man, and you’re sitting alone in your room. Then, all of sudden, there’s a knock at your door and it’s this handsome man wearing nothing but briefs and a bulge, and he is high off his ass. It like that “Thank you, God!” scene from Animal House! Jeffo must have thought he won some spiritual lottery! Fleric knew that high guy, he was of Indian descent. High Guy was kind of cool, kind of regular, destined to become an engineer or computer scientist and get a good job and then probably marry an Indian girl cuz that’s what he mother wants. He was dark and in very good shape, like he worked out. Fleric saw high guy after the Wine Dinner and after hearing of the incident Fleric asked him, “So I hear you met Jeffo?” His eyes assumed a nightmarish gaze as if to say, “PLEASE don’t go there! 

Jeffo wasn’t a bad looking guy, and he was high on acid that night like the others. It seemed like all the guys in Barrington were handsome, and very interesting – Chepe, Gene, Nils, Flibworth, AK47, Jeremy, D. Tune, Ashley, Jeffo. And all the women, girls, were hot – Chepe had a thing for the hot blonde artist AP. Dharni had a smoking brown body and a beautiful face. Fleff spoke often of her butt. Chrissullivan and Susie God were goddesses like Althea and Moniqua and the rest of the young women of Barrington Hall. Cindy Walker, built like a brick shithouse and having skipped two grades, moved into Barrington Hall in 1983 when she was 16 years old! She was a Barrington delegate to the USCA board in 1987 and she took to the board her witty accusatory – “They (the accused) are afraid to dose!” Barrington Hall could’ve had a pin up calendar, but that never crossed anyone’s minds. It was strange being around so many beautiful people all the time. And living in such proximity to so many people, you inevitably ran into somebody every time you left your room. 

Fleric remembers the morning after 1987’s first fall Wine Dinner – Primus would come back and play one more time later that semester – but the morning after the first Wine Dinner, after the sun was up, different old members like the Chance twins and Renaldo and Bass Barnes and Ravila, and Amy Sokalov, armed with brooms started cleaning the dining commons, gathering empties, taking out the trash. Fleric felt compelled to help out. They all moved out at the end of that year. As Dimitria Psyche told Fleric, “It is the duty of new members, once they become old members to teach the new members. Fleric and Flooby and Fleff did not do any teaching. They have only themselves to blame for Barrington’s demise. Serious actions against Barrington Hall began in 1989. By 1990, Barrington Hall was formerly closed, and all occupants were ordered to evacuate. By then, Barrington Hall was a new, almost entirely different household – one not as community conscious – as the former had been.

In a twisted kind of way, given Jeffo’s two attempts at romance with two handsome straight men – in the America that was the 1980’s, and sadly still is, one could say that Jeffo is lucky he didn’t get his ass beaten. Then again, Barringtonians were a mellow sort, and people high on Acid generally don’t look to violence as a solution. Acceptance of all cultures while some may seem foreign, may even freak people out, was the unspoken, unwritten rule at Barrington Hall. ‘No guns. No cocaine dealing. Never call the police.’ Those were the only House Rules in the Barrington charter. There was a Barrington House charter.

Each semester that began, most old member dudes paid attention to the incoming female new members, checking out the hotties, incoming freshwomen (sic) like vegan Denise T, who kept a small mink in her room as a pet. Ged and Dave had a ferret named Rowdy Pants. AK and SLefferts and others had cats. Tony Moffitt, related to the Moffitt that the UC Berkeley building is named after, had a big dog named Droogy, the name taken from A Clockwork Orange and he’d take the dog to Lake Anza and ‘swim the dog;’ Tony would say, “I’m going to swim the dog, any one wanna come along?” There was one lesbian woman, a really cool chick who’d painted a huge Lou Reed, the cover of Transformer album, on the floor of her 2^nd floor room. She’d be checking out the new female members as well, like she was one of the dudes. And if you kept score, which nobody did, but if you did, Fleric would bet that she would’ve come in at least second. Living in Barrington made you grow socially and accept differing opinions, whether you wanted to or not.

The semester that Fleric was Dinner Manager, fall 1988, he made out with Jab, the Kitchen Manager in the store room. She was hot and blonde, with a long thin body. He never saw it, but he heard that she was in an X rated movie and won some award for, ‘Best sex on a pool table.’ 

Before Fleric, in fall 1987, Deadhead Austin was the Dinner Manager and, coincidentally, Roxie spent her first year at Cal, living in Austin’s bedroom, living with his family and using his drawers filled with dozens of ticket stubs from Grateful Dead shows. Austin’s family lived in Berkeley. Roxie’s family, that is, her dad was so protective that he wouldn’t allow Roxie to live outside her home, unless it was in the home of a family he knew. Roxie’s family knew Austin’s family. Disallowing his daughter a normal college life – that’s kind of protective and loving; yet, kind of psycho – Roxie’s father’s concerns are a metaphor – some things in life are hard to judge, impossible to fit into convenient packages of ‘happily ever after’ and ‘hunky dory’.  

After Austin, before Fleric, German Punk Piet with the zipper tattoo on his arm was Dinner Manager and one day, he found a dead raccoon, killed by a motorist – veritable road kill. He had a long debate one day, spring 1988, with Denise the vegan, in German language, while the skinned carcass boiled in a large pot, over the ethics of not letting the meat go to waste.

Flibworth left every room he lived in with numerous shelves, a double sized loft, and other wooden additions, like a desk attached to the wall. This maintenance room was locked, the keys were held by the Maintenance Manager and he lived there for free. The Kitchen Manager also lived there for free. The Dinner Manager paid only 25% of the semester’s fee. The Maintenance Manager was the guy you called if your toilet got stopped up, or if your door knob broke. Just ask JC, Juan Carlos, guitar player for the Disciples of Low Self Esteem. Future maintenance manager, Rob Grindage played drums, bass and sang for the Disciples.

Grindage flipped out on drugs at the Wine Dinner 1987. JC called for the ambulance after Jo Day told him to go check out Rob. She said he was freaking out in his room, jerking himself off repeating, “Gumby, foreskin, Gumby, foreskin,” Grindage was okay the next day; and he rocked harder because of the melee in his brain. 

Barrington Hall had two front doors, one on Haste St., the other on Dwight Way, hence the block long hallway. The north door, Haste St., opened to the first floor residential, a long line of doors, foyer entrances. The Dwight Way entrance, right down the street from Shitty’s market, led to the basement, or SUBTERRA as it was named courtesy of spray paint. Entering from Dwight, just inside the door, to the left, on the wall, ‘The Rogues Gallery’ displayed a glass box behind which numerous photos of ‘old members’ hung. Opposite the wall of photos, and to your immediate right as you entered the building was a switchboard station. 

Past the Rogue’s gallery, also to the left was the meeting room, where Barringtonians held weekly meetings Sunday evenings to discuss issues related to the house. Outside the meeting room was a meter wide, six foot from top to bottom white butcher paper, tacked up on the wall, the top of which said BITCH LIST where people could write throughout the week, things they wished discussed at Sunday’s meeting. By Sunday, there was usually a long list of things related to the house or its residents.  Anything not on the list by Sunday morning would NOT be discussed until the following week. Like PNG-ing somebody, such as Skateboard Kenny, Berkeley Bob, Ice-pick Al or Hella fuckin’ rockin’ Ronny Raw. One time, the issue was people are hoarding dishes – What’s to be done? Room inspections? 

Meetings required a quorum and were very democratically run. Although the same people attended every week and most people never attended.

One issue debated on Sunday evening was when that New York Charming Hostess chick went ape-shit after that guy posted a notice blasting some residents. What pissed her off was that in the castigating note, which Connecticut Paul, who also lived in Spens Black and who was also a 68 monkey like Fleric, had written and posted to the milk machine, Paul blasted certain individuals whom he called a bunch of CUNTS. She really took offense at such a negative use of the word ‘cunt,’ when, she reasoned, he could have easily used the word ‘jerks’ or ‘assholes.’  By Monday, somebody had written the word ‘cunt’ on her front door with a circle around it and a line through it. “NO CUNTS!” Perhaps the perpetrator of the vandalism was trying to show irony, as if to say, “I support you in your cause!” New York lived in Fleric’s suite, so he saw the writing on her wall everyday. It was very decorative. He laughed when he saw first it, and several times after. Being a pothead makes many repeated pleasures feel like the first time. Fleric likes first times. They keep life fresh. New memories make every day a new day.

Each floor of Barrington Hall residential had 15 doors on each of the three block long hallways and behind each door was a foyer with one bathroom – each bathroom with shower in a classic bathtub with four antique feet; and two to four rooms, usually three – doubles or singles. Each foyer had one phone connected to a switchboard. 

The switchboard was a strange thing. There was a single direct number for Barrington Hall once upon a time, and if you called that number in 1987, a live voice would have answered, if you called between the hours of nine am and midnight when someone was usually on duty. Then the caller would tell the operator the name of the person they wanted to talk to or their room number if they knew it and the operator would put the call through to the room. If the person answered, they were connected, and if no one answered then the switchboard operator would take a message and put the message into a bin which residents checked. Residents could make outgoing calls as well from the phone in their foyer, via the switchboard if an operator was on duty. Residents could also call room to room without the assistance of the operator. The operator, when his/her shift had finished might even personally deliver some messages if he/she knew the recipient or if he/she just wanted to be neighborly. Residents got work shift hour credit for operating the switchboard and since everybody had to do five hours a week, it wasn’t a bad gig. Sure beat pot wash.

Pot wash was a work shift, as was snack cook. Chepe’s work shift was always vacuuming. He vacuumed the three carpeted block long hallways twice a week. The hallways were a popular place to hang out. You never knew who was gonna just be there. Socially, it was like living in a volcano, and the people were lava, or magma, if you were somewhere within the heated interior.

Barrington Hall had nightly snack, four nights a week – school nights – which generally consisted of a couple hundred cookies or brownies freshly baked at 10 pm. Dharini, Barrington resident from Ojai, CA and of Sri Lankan descent, the daughter of doctors – she was the snack manager spring semester 1988. Ensuring that a delicious snack for over a hundred people was served at 10 pm nightly was the majority of snack manager, Dharini’s work shift hours. She also had to tell the Kitchen Manager what and how much she needed of ingredients to order each week. Snack cooks received work shift hour credit for their time and effort in the kitchen. Sometimes, when there was a labor shortage, Work Shift managers would give double hours for dishwashing and other undesirable work. AK47 and SLefferts were the Work Shift Managers in spring semester 1988. They did loads of pot wash.

On the right, next to the switchboard was the ‘store’. Store managers earned their work shift hours by running the store. That job had its perks, like a Costco card and 24 hour access to the store. One stipulation was that to be the manager you had to have a car. Another was that you were inevitably going to be hassled a lot by smokers and cola junkies and alcoholics and stoners craving chocolate during non-business hours. Fleric was recently told by Flibworth, who sometimes helped run the store in 1988, that THAT never happened. Perhaps. The store was open for limited hours, six pm to eleven pm daily and they sold beer, soda, cigarettes, candy bars, gum, snacks, and sundries at cost. 

Next to the store was a stairway leading up, but Fleric and Fleff didn’t take that stairway up, they preferred to enter SUBTERRA.

This vestibule area opened to SUBTERRA, which was also known as the dining commons – a cafeteria like environment complete with long Formica tables and numerous chairs and benches. After walking through the dining area, they entered the industrial sized kitchen area. To the left was the dishwashing area – several sinks and even a sanitizer, which someone had tagged with black ink ‘I am Sanitizer!” 

To the right was the kitchen with huge wooden chopping board-esque table in the center. There was a proper fridge large with steel doors, and a walk-in fridge next to it, which was locked. There was also a locked store room with dry, non-perishable goods. The Kitchen Manager held the keys to both doors. 

Beyond the stairway was, to the left, the maintenance room where there was a table saw, numerous tools and wood and supplies for residents to use if they wished to build a loft or make shelves for their room.  To the right was the band room, complete with big amps and a drum kit. All one had to do was bring down an axe and patch cord or drum sticks, then rock out Beef Church style. Just ask Chrisullivan, vocalist extraordinaire for Stonio Lopez’s brainchild, Beef Church. Chepe Escondido played drums for Beef Church. He reminded Chepe of a Mexican Keith Moon 

Architecturally speaking, Barrington was a cross between an eyesore and the coolest building you’ve ever seen. The roof had solar panels but you could also hang out and run around on the roof. You could even throw a washing machine off the roof into Bev Potter’s yard. Been done. And Sebastian Potter was not pleased. There was a sauna atop the roof of Barrington. The sidewalk curb on the Haste St. side was perpetually painted purple.

It became evident to F&F that just about every inch of the building had been tagged, muralified (sic), or simply decorated with paint or festooned with graffiti. Everywhere you looked, even on ceilings something caught your eye. Words painted on wall: You can’t fistfuck with nuclear arms / Everybody is alienated but me / Aubrey is the esophagus of animals that can’t chew / John has no foreskin / Carlos has a foreskin / You can see eternity with two mirrors but your head gets in the way

Famous works by Van Gogh, Matisse, Magritte, and other famous artists had been painted on the walls by former residents, as well as many original paintings. Chepe Escondido had done one original Escher-esque square mural on the first floor back in 1986. It looks like ALL the art that once graced the walls of one of the happiest places on earth would be painted over as the 80’s came to a screeching halt in 1990 and nobody gived a damn. You think with all the well wishers and save the dolphins people in California, somebody would’ve stood beside Barringtonians in their fight to save their house? You’d have thought wrong. The 80’s began and they took John Lennon.   The 80’s ended and they took Barrington Hall.

F&F stood in silence in the vestibule for several minutes adjusting to the heightened reality in which they were now standing. ‘Speed Kills, but Heroin is Death!’ was graffitied overhead adorning the entrance to the dining commons from the vestibule area. The vestibule: from where could be seen not only into the dining commons, but also the rogue’s gallery, the switchboard, the store, the south stairway, the meeting room, the Bitch list.   

The two boys walked through the dining commons and the kitchen. Several university age youths, guys and gals in full on non-conformist attire were sitting walking smoking cigarettes drinking coffee reading books doing homework playing Chinese checkers. One Dennis the Menace looking youth sat in the dining commons. He had surfer blonde hair and eyes stoned shut, and was beat-boxing a rhythm with his mouth. Flibworth would befriend Dennis and drive him to his hometown of Orange County one long weekend in 1988, and with Flibby’s dad, the three would take acid and trip there near the beach. Dennis fancied wearing no underwear and faded jeans with many holes, one big one right in the crotch area so he’d sit with his pink testicles fully visible; and while the three were tripping – Dennis, Flibby, and Flibby’s dad, his mother arrived and saw the three with basketball sized pupils and elongated smiles, nervous giggles and Dennis’s testicles proved to be too much for her. Flibby’s parents split up permanently not long after that. The two boys, Dennis and Flibby returned to Berkeley in Flibby’s station wagon with Johnny Rotten’s profile stenciled onto the side.

The two boys, Fleric and Flef, passed the kitchen and to the right of the band room was another stairwell, the north stairwell leading up.  It was highly decorated with paint. A Nosferatu-esque shadow portrait graced the top of the stairs amidst many colors and pictures and words painted on the walls and ceiling.  That was the first time Fleric saw the name E. Horace Jun at the end of a few lines of verse. He would remember the name for the rest of his life. They took this stairway up.

Anecdotally, there’s also a third stairwell that did not make it all the way down to the basement and it was known as ‘The Hidden Stairwell.’ Most people never knew of it. It did a good job of going unrecognized. Its doors were perpetually shut. It went between the first and third floors only. Both other stairways went all the way to the roof as well. Had the Hidden Stairwell gone through to the basement it would’ve comedown somewhere in the middle of the dining area. It was grafittiville in there, a little creepy, always quiet, a little apart. JC, that is Jen Chernoff’s crow mural Charlie Manson stencil Matt Rasta-toker Tom Floper, Fluke and Flayla, Stella Wilde Shannon Wong Karl Renegade brrng spray paint sharpie black pencil Nosferatu Frykdal (rest in peace, Per and naked Ian-ray) DISCO GGFH good guys from hell, gay geeks from Hayward – all the ghosts of the living, living vampire lives had their yellow panic room. It was quite electrifying. It was as if time stopped when you entered the hidden stairwell. A little taste of immortality, or immorality, rigorous mortis (sic). Mortifying to Morty Seinfeld. ‘You can see eternity with two mirrors, but your head gets in the way.’ Fleric wouldn’t discover the hidden stairwell till about a month after first moving into Barrington in fall 1987. He thought he’d been all over the house. Fleric spent hours walking the house.  Brushing by 501 Spanish Verbs Sean K. and bass player Barnes, spiritual swimmer Sandeep, Latin Aldo, clean cut Charlie Brown shirt wearing dude, enjoying every space in that warm womb of a wooden frame whose picture is your life and your stuff and your growth and your well-being. Those who know don’t tell, those who tell don’t know. Fleric would first discover the hidden stairwell during a three day marathon speed binge when he didn’t leave the house the entire time except once to go to Shitty’s market for a turkey sandwich.

Shitty’s made mean turkey sandwiches with jalapenos and they sold raspberry flavored Calistoga sparkling water. E-Bone worked there, and then later SLefferts, AK47’s roommate. AK47 and SLefferts were the local scientists and enjoyed poker games at their house. Every time Fleric entered their Rochdale apt, where they made their escape to after leaving Barrington Hall in 1989 with the rest of the rats leaving the sinking ship, before they moved to the Spence Arms, Night Court was ALWAYS playing on their TV. Night Court or Cheers. Shitty’s was the name we gave our neighborhood corner store, located right there on the corner, where SLefferts worked. It was actually called Roxy’s but nobody ever called it that. 

 Back to the Story

It was summer and the dorms were dead to F&F who had each moved to different north side co-ops. Both Fleric and Fleff went to visit Barrington Hall that summer afternoon 1987 for the first time. Little did they know what the next few years would bring: disorientation parties with nitrous tanks, acid punch wine dinners with bands like Primus and Steel Pole Bathtub and house band, Acid Rain. The lyrics of Primus’ song Frizzle Fry tell of that infamous wine dinner in 1987 when four people were hospitalized. Fleff’s roommate’s friend tried to jump off the building that night, high as he was. That was months away.

Along the first floor corridor where F&F walked for the first time, EVERY inch of wall had some recognizable image. There was one of an old man with grey hair and a long beard. The face, which spanned six feet from chin to head top had a green hue running through it. Later, after F&F became residents, they would regularly see the bearded scraggly man down in the dining commons drinking coffee, the same bearded man whose face made it to the wall. He was called Berkeley Bob, and he was a homeless veteran who enjoyed spending nights in the downstairs dining commons talking to himself and smoking non-filter Chesterfield 100s. Bob was a former US Army soldier who had been a member of the MK Ultra experiments in the 1960’s when, in an effort to test for possible uses of psychedelic drugs in mind control experiments, Bob was dosed with LSD and other psycho-tropics numerous times and subsequently lost his mind. These were the rumors and that was basically the story of Bob, since, well, Berkeley Bob did not make for a good interview subject. He mainly talked to himself in unintelligible garble.

As F&F stared at the large mural of Berkeley Bob, which began at the ground and finished the ceiling, as did all the murals, in a symmetry that spanned over 20 years, a German Punk rock dude who fancied tight fitting tank sleeveless shirts and had a tattoo of a zipper running up his upper arm dividing his bicep from his tricep (sic) walked by. GP had an ornery look to him, a little menacing, but his smile and his eyes shone with warmth and sarcasm with little tolerance for stupidity. No one in the dorms looked anything like this guy. Fleric decided to make conversation.

-- Hey, who is this old man?
-- That’s Berkeley Bob.
-- Berkeley Bob? Is he famous?
-- He is around here.
-- Do you live here?
-- I do. You guys thinking about living here?”
-- We are.

They continued taking and walking. Talking and walking up to the second floor and into GP’s room they entered. The room looked as if it had been recently ransacked. It was a large double and stuff was strewn all about in a whirlwind of chaos and in the center of it all near the wall a silent rustle emanated from a tubular lump under blankets atop a large mattress on the floor. A blond female German head emerged. GP looked at the head then to the youths. He spoke, “We’re having a party on Saturday night. Let me put you on the guest list.” He bent down and fished along the floor filled with refuse and litter and he picked up a piece of paper and a pen off the floor. He looked at the protruding head with sleepy eyes that looked in need of glasses. He smiled sweetly at the face then turned to the boys. “What are your names?” They told him and he wrote them down and then dropped the pen and paper to the floor and said, “Okay, you guys are now invited. See you there, Fleff and Fleric.” He showed them the door. Once outside, they stared at the closed door for a minute then walked down the second floor hallway taking in all the scenery. They toured the 3^rd floor hallway as well. Every inch was covered in murals, one, then another, then another down the block long hallway. 

"Dude, we are so living here."

 TO BE CONCLUDED