Author: fivecreeks

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Celebrate Berkeley Parks at our Fundraiser!

Bring friends and family for an afternoon of camaraderie, food, drink, and music by the Berkeley Old Time String Players at Berkeley Partners for Parks’ annual Fundraiser, 3-5:30 pm Sunday, Sept. 28, at beautiful Halcyon Commons — an abandoned strip transformed into vibrant urban open space.

Dedication of the Halcyon Commons Rejuvenation Project follows. Come see this great example of the kinds of projects Berkeley Partners for Parks makes possible! Meet the people who are creating and revitalizing Berkeley paths, parks, creeksides, even a labyrinth!

Halcyon Commons is on block-long Halcyon Court, between Webster and Prince, one block west of Telegraph. Suggested donation $30; all donations tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

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Park(ing) Day Friday, Sept. 19

Celebrate Worldwide Park(ing) Day
Friday, Sept. 19, at two Berkeley events:

  • Berkeley Partners for Park and Ecocity Builders transform a parking space on Center Street between Shattuck and Oxford into a mini-park for a day, showcasing our need to pass Measures WW and HH, continuing existing levies that support local and regional parks.
  • Nomad Cafe and neighbors offer music, a kid zone, face painting, plus grass and hay Friday through the weekend at 65th and Shattuck, presenting their vision for what the urban street corner could become (info at //
    nomadcafe.wordpress .com/2008/ 09/17/parking- day-at-nomad- cafe-this-
    friday-sept- 19/)

    • Stop by and enjoy the “an open-source experiment in
    reprogramming the urban surface” — creating ephemeral urban parks at metered parking spaces. The concept originated with San Francisco-based REBAR, www.rebargroup.org. The idea has gone worldwide and is now co-sponsored with Trust for Public Land.
    For more info and a glimpse of other projects, go to www.parkingday.org.

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    UC Berkeley funding for BPFP “Greening Berkeley” partners

    For the third year in a row, BPFP’s “Greening Berkeley Hands On” partnership has been awarded a Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund grant by UC Berkeley. This year’s award of $24,000 will help BPFP affiliates carry out a wide variety of hands-on environmental projects. The grant pays for both materials and a UC student intern, who organized student volunteering through CalCorps, UC’s public-service arm.

    Projects in the 2008 grant range from path construction and a solar light for the Santa Fe Right of Way, projects of Berkeley Path Wanderers, to tools and gloves for the city’s 14 public-school gardens, through Friends of School Gardens. The community-built Schoolhouse Creek Common will install chess tables and a bench. Nearby, Friends of Westbrae Commons will continue transforming the Ohlone Greenway south of Gilman with native coastal-prairie plants. Friends of Shorebird Park Nature Center will spread fresh sand and build new racks at Adventure Playground, while Aquatic Park EGRET will get upgraded nataive plants and upgraded wheelbarrows. Friends of Five Creeks will be able to install signs on local natural history and plant drought-tolerant natives in a variety of sites, from the Santa Fe Right of Way to Mortar Rock Park.

    Aquatic Park EGRET also will partner with Earth Team Environmental Network, Berkeley Community Media, College of Natural Resources, and Berkeley Community Garden to involve local teens in habitat restoration days that teens also will film for showing on local cable TV. This project received a $5000 Chancellors Community Partnership grant.

    Join us to carry out these projects! Contact BPFP or the affiliate group you are interested in — click on “Affiliated Groups” at right.

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    Australian link for John Hinkel Park

    BPFP went international recently when Vicki Rostron of Australia wrote asking for information on Hinkel Park, which her great-grandfather John Hinkel donated to the city in 1918. John was a fan of the then-youthful movement of Scouting, and donated the beautiful tract in North Berkeley, with two creeks, on condition that it would remain natural and that Scouts could continue to use it. It seems that John’s son Hulbert Hinkel (John’s wife was Ada Hulbert) was a dashing pioneer aviator, the second man to do an inverted loop in an airplane. He also married five times – one bride, Dorothy Perry of Sydney, Australia, was Vicki Rostron’s grandmother. We sent Vicki background on the park along with a promise of a tour when she comes to visit. We’re looking forward to it!

    Hinkel Park is one of Berkeley’s most beautiful and bucolic parks, as cultural geographer, Grey Brechin, attests: “In a lovely canyon studded with live oaks, the Civil Works Administration in 1934 built a four-acre park with an intimate Greek amphitheater, trails, and rustic clubhouse. The eater was used by the Berkeley Community Players for many years and then by the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, though next year the festival moves to Orinda because of traffic and space problems. Today, the theater’s tree-shaded terraces seem more Druidic than Greek.” (Quoted from “Built by FDR: How the WPA Changed the Lay of the Land”: //www.graybrechin.com/GBrechinArticle5.html.)

    Noted Berkeley historian, Susan Cerny remarks about the donator of the park, ” The land… was given to the city in 1918 by John Hinkel, a downtown property owner. It was reported to be the largest gift the city had ever received…Before giving the property to the city, Hinkel made some notable improvements: he built a rustic redwood clubhouse, a stone fireplace and playground, and also created the network of pathways. The park was conceived by Hinkel to be a natural space where the native flora would be retained and enhanced rather than being replaced it with artificial plantings.” It has retained that original character for the past 90 years. See her article about the park:www.berkeleyheritage.com/berkeley_landmarks/john_hinkel_park.html (See also the photos in this article)