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{{Short description|Building in Berkeley, California, USA}}
'''Barrington Hall''' was a student housing cooperative in the ] (USCA) system in ], ], from 1935 to 1990. It is currently privately operated student housing.
{{coord|37|51|52.85|N|122|15|44.13|W|region:US|display=title}}
]
'''Barrington Hall''' was a ] in the ] (USCA) (now known as the Berkeley Student Cooperative (BSC)) system in ], ], from 1935 to 1943 and 1950 to 1989.<ref name="CheapPlacetoLive">{{cite book |last=Harper |first=Will | url=https://ejinjue.org/green-book/cheap-place-to-live/ | title=Cheap Place to Live | publisher=John Nishinaga | date=1973 | access-date=January 17, 2019}}</ref><ref name="CounterculturesLastStand">{{cite book |last=Gasper |first=Krista | url=https://ejinjue.org/green-book/countercultures-last-stand/ | title=Counterculture's Last Stand: The Fall of Barrington Hall | publisher=John Nishinaga | date=2002 | access-date=January 17, 2019}}</ref> It is currently privately operated student housing.
]


==History== ==History==
The first Barrington Hall was a boarding house, housing 48 students, purchased by leaders of the student co-op movement in 1938. 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.<ref name="Houseahome">{{cite news |url=http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/Alumni/Cal_Monthly/November_2003/Making_a_house_a_home.asp |last=Hughes |first=Robert A|title=Making a house a home |work=California |date=November 2003 |publisher=California Alumni Association at UC Berkeley |accessdate=2007-01-18}}</ref> The building was leased to the ] 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 became ]. The original Barrington Hall was a ] fraternity house on Ridge Road leased from that fraternity in 1933. In 1935 the lease was allowed to expire and ] purchased a building located at 2315 Dwight Way, to which the name Barrington Hall was transferred.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|last1=Lillian|first1=Guy|url=https://ejinjue.org/green-book/cheap-place-to-live/|title=A Cheap Place to Live, from The Green Book - A Collection of U.S.C.A. History|last2=Gasper|first2=Krista|year=2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201228203949/https://ejinjue.org/green-book/cheap-place-to-live/|archive-date=28 December 2020}}</ref> The building was formerly the largest apartment house in Berkeley and would host 200 men when it opened the same year.<ref name=":4" /><ref>{{cite news |author=Lois Baker |title=Cooperatives Band on 159 Campuses; They Report 73,232 Members, With Annual Business of Nearly $3,000,0000 |newspaper=] |date=March 7, 1937 |quote=One of them, Barrington Hall, is the largest apartment house in Berkeley.}}</ref> It was leased to the ] 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 ], which prompted the university to revoke their accreditation on the grounds of acting "]".


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 ]."<ref>Charles Wollenberg (2002) '' {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070202133935/http://berkeleypubliclibrary.org/system/Chapter9.html |date=2007-02-02 }}'' Chapter 9, Heritage of the Sixties, hosted by Berkeley Public Library</ref> By the time of the ] 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, some of its members were very active in the ], 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 ].<ref name="Counterculture’s Last Stand">{{cite web |url=http://ejinjue.org/thegreenbook/html/node3.html |title=The Greenbook: Counterculture's Last Stand |last=Gasper |first=Krista |year=2002 |access-date=2007-01-26 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110726020736/http://ejinjue.org/thegreenbook/html/node3.html |archive-date=2011-07-26 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=75 Years Later, Co-Ops Keep Up Spirit |newspaper=] |url=http://www.dailycal.org/article/103193/75_years_later_co-ops_keep_up_spirit |author=Carol Yur |date=October 21, 2008 |quote=Several co-ops, most notably Barrington Hall, became leaders in political activism on campus, Finacom said. 'I think every protest movement they had a role-in the Third World strike in the late '60s, People's Park, and as you got into the '80s, the anti-apartheid protest.'}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Co-op Sanctuary Movement |newspaper=Toad Lane Review |date=Spring 1985}}</ref>
In the 80s, the co-op was the focus of numerous accusations regarding drugs and noise. 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 ]. The squat climaxed in a night-long ]&mdash; in March, 1990, which began as a poetry reading&mdash;involving Berkeley police, off-duty police officers (hired by the USCA), and the residents.


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."<ref name="Sam Whiting B8">{{cite news |title=Cal's Barrington Hall -- home of nude 'wine dinners' -- closes |author=Sam Whiting |newspaper=] |date=March 5, 1990 |page=B8}}</ref> In the 1980s, the co-op was the focus of numerous accusations regarding drugs and noise.<ref>{{cite news |title=Expulsion of Barrington heroin users, dealers threatened|newspaper=U.S.C.A. News|date=February 27, 1986}}</ref> According to the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit,
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 ]." "By the time of the ] Riots in May of 1969, Barrington Hall 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 ], 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 ]. {{fact}}


<blockquote>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...."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/939/939.F2d.808.90-15750.html |title=Ruth E. Oscar; Charles Spinosa, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. University Students Co-operative Association, George Proper, et al. |publisher=United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit |year=1991 |access-date=2009-02-15}}</ref></blockquote>
The former Barrington Hall now serves as privately operated student housing.

In 1989, after three previous attempts to close the hall,<ref>{{cite news |title=182 Students Evicted from Berkeley Co-op |newspaper=] |date=November 22, 1987 |quote=The 182 University of California student-residents of Barrington Hall, the drug-plagued housing co-op, are being kicked out of the hall, the largest eviction in the half-century of the Berkeley campus' student co-ops.}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news |first=Jim |last=Herron Zamora |title=Barrington Hall, Once Hotbed of UC Radicalism, Closes |newspaper=] |date=April 10, 1990 |quote=Since 1985, Barrington Hall had been attacked by neighbors over its residents' alleged drug use, noisy parties and generally rowdy life style. Last fall, the 18-house University Students Cooperative Association that operated Barrington voted overwhelmingly to shut Barrington. Added Denise Tukenmez, a three-year resident at Barrington and a biology honors student who dyes her hair bright green, 'Barrington is a place where you learned to accept other ways of thinking and challenge the prevailing ideas in society. There's really nowhere else like it.' Several closure attempts failed, but students in other co-op houses began to lose patience with Barrington after their rents were hiked in order to fight lawsuits.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |author=Steve Rubenstein |title=Barrington Hall Lived Down to its Billing |newspaper=] |date=November 22, 1989 |quote=Barrington Hall of Berkeley is being shut down and I am going to miss it.... When I lived there, it was every bit the rowdy establishment its ticked-off neighbors say it is. I lived at Barrington Hall as a UC freshman in 1969, when Berkeley operated under even fewer rules than Barrington did.... Barrington Hall, a tired four-story building south of campus, was a co-op, not a dormitory. This meant that the people who lived there were supposed to run the place, a concept perhaps ahead of its time.... Soon I got kicked off the maintenance crew and onto the telephone switchboard crew. That job involved fielding incoming calls, often from parents. With suitable bribes, a member of the switchboard crew could be induced to tell parents that a particular student was studying in the library, when she was actually visiting her boyfriend's apartment. The other duty of the switchboard operator involved making long-distance calls on behalf of Barrington residents who all seemed to be using the same telephone credit card number, the one printed in that morning's edition of the underground newspaper.... The food was bad. It was trucked to the hall from the central kitchen in a vehicle we called the slop wagon, which was being kind. At Barrington, residents subsisted on self-serve peanut butter sandwiches from the snack lounge. After dinner, we members of the dish-washing squad wore thick rubber gloves and aprons. We also wore swimmer's plugs in our noses, even though the aroma of the discarded slop was certainly no more unpleasant than the teargas wafting nightly over Sproul Plaza.... Maybe it's true that Barrington has had a less couth and civilized clientele since my time there, but somehow I doubt it. Maybe its day is past. Maybe I should have been kicked out myself."}}</ref> The closure was fought by the residents during the referendum campaign, in court and in the building by student ].<ref>{{cite news |title=Campus Life: Berkeley; 'Squat or Rot': Students Fight Eviction Effort |newspaper=] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/04/style/campus-life-berkeley-squat-or-rot-students-fight-eviction-effort.html |date=February 4, 1990 |quote=When the University Students Cooperative Association voted to close Barrington Hall last November, the 166 University of California students who lived there were given until Jan. 20 to move out. The residence has a history of drug-dealing, poor maintenance and bad community relations, officials say. Most students left the house, but about 40 students refused to leave the building a few blocks from campus. And 15 of them have retained a lawyer to help them fight the eviction.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |author=Debra Levi Holtz |title=UC Student Housing Co-op Wins Fight to Evict Tenants |newspaper=] |date=March 23, 1990 |quote=The owners of a controversial student housing cooperative in Berkeley received a court order yesterday permitting the eviction of 17 people who refused to leave when the building was closed two months ago. The residents of Barrington Hall will be forced to move within two weeks....}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Police Evict Barrington Holdouts |newspaper=] |date=September 13, 1990|page=B6}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{cite news |author=Chris Thompson |title=Tale of Two Animal Houses |newspaper=] |url=http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2005-05-04/news/cityofwarts_print.html |date=May 4, 2005 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050506001221/http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2005-05-04/news/cityofwarts_print.html |archive-date=May 6, 2005 }}</ref> 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."<ref name="Sam Whiting B8" /><ref>{{cite news |title=The Co-op That Chaos Killed |newspaper=] |date=March 5, 1990}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news |title=UC Students, Police Wage Pitched Battle; 8 Hurt, 17 Arrested |newspaper=] |date=March 4, 1990 |quote=The 75 students who were driven out of the building gathered on Haste Street, about two blocks west of Telegraph Avenue. As they built barricades, lit fires and taunted police, the students were joined by many other young people from the largely student neighborhood four blocks south of the campus. Police formed lines on each end of the block and another in a parking lot across the street from Barrington. They held their ground for more than an hour and let the fires burn as high as 20 feet in the air. The students turned the event into a street party and danced around the barricades yelling obscenities and making obscene gestures at police. After the crowd thinned, police gradually moved forward and firefighters began hosing the flames, but they quickly retreated when they were met with volleys of rocks and bottles. Firefighters then sprayed demonstrators and the building. The confrontation remained in a stalemate for about an hour as police advanced, then retreated....}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Students Seek Probe of Clash With Police |newspaper=] |date=March 5, 1990 |quote=Several UC Berkeley students involved in a violent clash with police during the weekend said they plan to ask the city's Police Review Commission to investigate. The students claim police used unnecessary force during a five-hour confrontation at Barrington Hall, a controversial campus residence.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Berkeley Riot Trial |newspaper=] |date=March 7, 1990 |quote=Four people charged with felonies in connection with a series of confrontations Saturday between students and police at Barrington Hall in Berkeley....}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Berkeley Mayor Wants Talks: Friday's student riot at Barrington Hall |newspaper=] |date=April 10, 1990}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news |title=Victim Identified |newspaper=] |date=March 13, 1990 |quote=The Alameda County Coroner's Office has identified a student from the University of California, Berkeley who died after a fall from a problem-plagued residence hall as 20-year-old Juan Mendoza. Mendoza was found early Saturday morning in the parking lot of Barrington Hall at 2315 Dwight Way. He was taken to Alta Bates hospital, where he later died, according to a Berkeley Police Department spokeswoman. Mendoza lived in Barrington Hall.}}</ref> The final eviction of all residents took place in September 1990.

The former Barrington Hall now serves as privately operated student housing.<ref>{{cite news |title=Barrington Hall Sold by Co-op |newspaper=] |date=September 13, 1990 |quote=Barrington Hall, a student residence that has long been controversial because of wild behavior, has been sold by the UC Students Cooperative Association. The structure at 2315 Dwight Way has a capacity for 182 students. Barrington was known for punk rock concerts during the late 1970s. Neighbors recently have complained about alleged drug trafficking. The asking price for the building was $2.75 million. Buyers Roger and Laura Huddlestone reportedly plan to continue operating it as student housing, beginning in January 1991.}}</ref>


==Musical history== ==Musical history==
Before legal ] with the neighbors in 1984, Barrington was a launching pad and petri dish for Bay Area Punk, and bands played frequently.<ref>{{cite news |title=Entertainment in the Co-ops |newspaper=Toad Lane Review |date=May 23, 1980 |quote=Barrington, every semester, threw several wine dinners and various huge bashes where hundreds of people flooded the dining rooms, hallways and suites, drank alcohol, partook in illegal drugs like LSD and cocaine, listened to very loud punk or rock music and generally partied very hard. People who never knew Barrington as a student cooperative saw Barrington only as a place where huge parties, outstanding bands and mass quantities of drugs were found.}}</ref><ref>American Arbitration Association Report on the Arbitration Matter of Ellsmere Apartments Claimants and Barrington Hall Respondents, Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley</ref>


In the early 1980s, the house band for several wine dinners was the Lemmings,<ref name="Lemmings"></ref> whose song "I'm on Sound" described the Barrington experience, with the chorus of the Onghh Yaangh tenet, "Those who say don't know. Those who know don't say." This song appeared on their eponymous first record, and the album's cover art, by Barry Spencer, was reproduced as one of the many murals on the Hall's walls.
Before legal ] with the neighbors in 1984, Barrington was the launching pad/petri dish of Bay Area Punk, and bands played frequently.


The song "]" by the band ] as well as the theme of their album, ''Tales From the Punchbowl'', was inspired by a party, called a "Wine Dinner," held at Barrington at which punch laced with ] was served. The pop group ] played at one such "Wine Dinner" in 1988-89, under the name Vampire Can Mating Oven. ], ], ], ], and ] played at Barrington in the 80s, along with hundreds of other punk rock bands. The song "Barrington Hall" by ], released in 2002, is all about Barrington, and includes the lyrics "Just when I had thought I'd seen it ah ah all, I stumbled 'round the corner into Barrington Hall. Does anyone here remember Barrington Hall? They care not for wrong or right, they electrocute the night, the people that live in Barrington Hall . . ." The song "]" by the band ] 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 ] was served.<ref>"Seven hospitalized after 'acid punch' party, house chief quits", ''The Daily Californian'', October 16, 1987.</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Problems at Berkeley dorm |newspaper=San Francisco Examiner |date=October 26, 1987}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=City council members call for big change at Barrington Hall |newspaper=The Daily Californian |date=October 22, 1987}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=LSD Use May Close Co-op |url=https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-10-22-mn-15544-story.html |url-access=subscription |archive-url=https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Farchives%2Fla-xpm-1987-10-22-mn-15544-story.html#federation=archive.wikiwix.com&tab=url |archive-date=2023-09-04 |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |date=October 22, 1987 |quote=An 'acid punch' party that sent seven people to a Berkeley hospital resulted in new demands that a controversial student housing cooperative be closed or taken over by the University of California.}}{{cbignore}}</ref> The pop group ] played at one such "Wine Dinner" in 1988–89, under the name Vampire Can Mating Oven. ], ], ], ], ], Operation Ivy and ] played at Barrington in the 1980s, along with hundreds of other punk rock bands. The song "Barrington Hall" by ], 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...."<ref name="musictoday"> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070107183315/http://stores.musictoday.com/store/dept.asp?band_id=362&dept_id=833&sfid=2 |date=2007-01-07 }}, Club Basterdo. Retrieved January 24, 2007</ref>


The legal arbitration restricted Barrington to three parties a semester with "amplified music," and so bands could only perform at Wine Dinners after that. 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 the mid- to late-80s Barrington house band Acid Rain (later renamed Idiot Flesh) went on to perform with ], ] and ].<ref>{{cite news |first=Todd |last=Meister |title=Voodoo Muck: From the mixed-up files of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum |url=http://www.eastbayexpress.com/music/voodoo_muck/Content?oid=283046 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130121195636/http://www.eastbayexpress.com/music/voodoo_muck/Content?oid=283046 |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 21, 2013 |newspaper=East Bay Express |date=December 26, 2001 |access-date=16 February 2009 |quote=... it helps to know that two of its members are from the now-defunct 'art rock' band Idiot Flesh, a highly theatrical band that developed at Berkeley's infamous Barrington Hall in the mid-1980s. Idiot Flesh shows were like a musical circus. 'Idiot Flesh did have a surround element,' says Rathbun, bassist for both Idiot Flesh and now Sleepytime. 'To be at an Idiot Flesh show was to be surrounded by visual things: people hanging from the ceiling, somebody on the rear balcony doing an interjection—strange things were always happening....' }}</ref>
Musicians in Barrington house band ] went on to perform with ], ] and ].

In the 70s, ] were the Barrington house band. {{fact}} A large mural of one of their album covers&mdash;depicting cars driving off a cliff&mdash;adorned the lounge on the ground floor.


==Murals== ==Murals==
Much of the building, which was four stories high and a block deep, was covered with ] and ].<ref>{{cite news |title=Legendary Berkeley Dorm Will Close |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |date=November 11, 1989 |quote=After a decade of controversy over drug use and wild parties, voters in a University Students Cooperative Assn. voted to close graffiti-strewn Barrington Hall....}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Barrington Saved from Shutdown |newspaper=Toad Lane Review |date=May 10, 1984 |quote=The outside walls of Barrington were covered with unsightly graffiti. The spray painted words read 'terrorist' and 'this is Barrington, get used to it.'}}</ref>
::"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."<ref>Obituary for {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120720120456/http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0059022 |date=2012-07-20 }} in Slingshot! '''59''' published by the Slingshot Collective</ref>
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 ]. As times changed, so did the murals; the 1980s murals were more ]. But old murals were considered sacred by house by-laws,<ref name=misc>Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.</ref> and so the artistic expressions of several decades adorned Barrington, making its walls a living history of late 20th-century ] in the U.S.<ref>{{cite news |title=Campus Life: Berkeley; Student Co-op Votes to Close Dorm With a Past |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/12/style/campus-life-berkeley-student-co-op-votes-to-close-dorm-with-a-past.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=November 12, 1989 |access-date=16 February 2009 |quote=Home for many University of California students who seek an alternative life style, the walls of its hallways are covered with bright murals painted by past generations of Barringtonians.}}</ref> One mural from the 1970s was of ]. A prominent mural from the 1980s, painted in a neo-psychedelic style and with Japanese ] characteristics, made reference to 1950s icon ]. 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."<ref name="barringtonvideo">Clark Morris and Mahlen Morris '''', a video panorama of murals and graffiti in 1988; hosted at YouTube.com</ref>


Graffiti was a tradition that 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."<ref name="barringtonvideo" />
Much of the building&mdash;which was three stories high and a block deep&mdash;was covered with ] and ]. The tradition of murals began in the 60s, and many of the "original" murals were painted by ]s, such as a large mural of the Beatles ]. As times changed, so did the murals&mdash;the 80s murals were more ]. 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 ] in the US. One mural from the 70s was of ]. A prominent mural from the 80s, painted in a neo-psychedelic style and with Japanese ] characteristics, made reference to 50s icon ]. 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 80s, 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." Debate arose over whether graffiti could be or should be "muralized," which meant that it could not be painted over. Anyone who wanted to nominate a ] for mural-status could bring the matter to a general house vote. A lot of graffiti was muralized.

==Insect banquet==
For many years, there was a yearly insect banquet at Barrington Hall at which ] was practiced.<ref>{{cite news |title=Partying Like it's 1982 |newspaper=The Daily Californian |date=October 13, 2003 |quote=... when punk rock was taking off in San Francisco and Berkeley's Barrington Hall was serving ants for dinner and hosting orgies.}}</ref> It was often mentioned in ]'s column in the '']''.


==New Member Disorientation== ==New Member Disorientation==
{{Unreferenced section|date=July 2023}}
At the beginning of every semester in the 1980s, a new member orientation, called the "New Member Disorientation", was held for incoming students. The Fall Disorientation required all incoming members endure a legendary party where two films competed against hours of ] provided by The House. One of the ]s was "Leo+Phred"; an under-grad assignment, it represents an homage to the spirit of radical, enduring friendship in spite of political differences. Leo+Phred portrays two students engaging in ] while miming support for Nicaragua's Freedom Fighters with an abundance of illegal party-favors; and screened alongside an original electro-acoustic soundtrack composed on campus. Disorientation also required the memorization of a 1980 ] work: "The Onngh Yanngh Movie", featuring the impenetrable ]ic wisdom of Barrington's resident-spirit who reveres ]: "those who tell don't know, and those who know don't tell." The film humorously reveals the origin-myths of Onngh Yanngh in the "land of Fremont". Eventually when the neighbors filed a lawsuit against the USCA under the ] (RICO) for drug sales in the building, one of their allegations was that Barrington actually did have a code of silence.


]
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 ] was procured for a big party. One of the films was a ] called "Leo and Phred," which depicted Leo and Phred engaging in sex acts and doing ] to the tune of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" by ]. The other film was a ] film which featured "Onngh Yanngh." Onngh Yanngh was the legendary ] of Barrington. His motto&mdash;adopted from a famous quotation of ]'s&mdash;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 tried to persuade the city to prosecute Barrington under the ] 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 ].


==Notable Barrington Residents== ==''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.<ref>, accessed 24 January 2007{{dead link|date=January 2017|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref><ref></ref>
*Famous mathematician ], inventor of ].
*Poet ], author of ''Madonna anno Domini'', ''The Totality for Kids'', and a critical monograph on '']'' for the ]. Published three times in ].{{Fact|date=January 2007}}
*Journalist and documentary filmmaker ], author of the Iraq war memoir ''American Hostage''.
*], co-founder of eclectic band ].
*Classical composer Belinda Reynolds
*Film and television director ]
*Michael Tigar, lawyer for the ]. [http://www.law.berkeley.edu/alumni/events/CAD/


==Heroin==


In 1986, the house manager admitted to being addicted to heroin.<ref name="New York Times">{{cite news|title=Campus Life: Berkeley; Student Co-op Votes to Close Dorm With a Past|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/12/style/campus-life-berkeley-student-co-op-votes-to-close-dorm-with-a-past.html|access-date=3 May 2016|newspaper=New York Times|date=12 November 2016}}</ref> According to George Proper, Manager of the USCA in 1987, residents of Barrington Hall had started to use heroin by 1985. In 1986, the USCA threatened to close Barrington after two heroin overdoses, and after it became apparent that nearly a dozen residents were using heroin.<ref>{{cite news|title=Years of Diversity Over for Notorious Barrington Hall|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-11-29-mn-25539-story.html|access-date=3 May 2016|newspaper=New York Times|date=29 November 1987}}</ref>
==Barrington graffiti==
*"You're persona non grata in my hippy van, bitch." {{fact}}
*"Better living through chemistry." {{fact}}
*"You can't fistfuck with nuclear arms." {{fact}}
*"Only seven more shopping days 'til Armageddon."{{fact}}
*"Everybody is alienated but me." {{fact}}
*"Is the nightmare real or did someone paint the window black?{{fact}}
*"Squat or rot." {{fact}}
*"Fuck the Dead" {{fact}}
*"Time is a crutch, eat mandarin oranges."{{fact}}


==Barrington Bull== ==Lawsuits==


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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/965/965.F2d.783.90-15750.html |title=Ruth E. Oscar; Charles Spinosa, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. University Students Co-operative Association; George Proper, et al. No. 90-15750. |publisher=United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit |access-date=2009-02-15}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=US Court Rejects Renters' Suit Under Racketeering Law |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |date=June 5, 1992 }}</ref> The U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant a writ to consider whether to reinstate the federal lawsuit against Barrington on plaintiffs' theory that nuisance damage actionable as property damage under state law can, for purposes of finding a federal RICO violation, serve as the property damage necessary to such a federal action.<ref>{{cite news |author=Laurie Asseo |title=High Court Won't Weigh Racketeering Suit Against Wild Neighbors |publisher=The Associated Press |date=December 7, 1992 |quote=The Supreme Court today refused to reinstate a federal racketeering lawsuit against a Berkeley, Calif., student housing co-op by neighbors who said its drug dealing and wild parties harmed property values. The federal court, declined to grant review of the neighbors' argument that RICO allowed to sue in federal court for property damage in the form of nuisance. Ruth Oscar and Charles Spinosa have lived since the mid-1980s in rent-controlled apartments next door to Barrington Hall, part of a non-profit housing cooperative run by University of California at Berkeley students. According to graffiti on its walls, Barrington Hall was 'an oasis of madness in a world gone sane.'}}</ref>
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 24th, 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. '' In the 60s, a tradition of giving each issue a theme began. Some themes from the 70s include: The "Onngh Yanngh" Bull, Spring 1978 The "Wasted" Bull, May 1978 and "The Hippie Ghetto" Bull, Fall 1979.


The state court action continued after the federal courts declined to allow a federal racketeering suit. In 1989, the co-op voted to close Barrington. Its managers accepted the decision writing co-op members in November, 1989 that: "Although other co-op houses have had problems and difficult periods, the intensity and duration of the Barrington 'problem' is unprecedented."<ref name="New York Times"/>
==Barrington collective==


==Notable Barrington residents==
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 Berekely provides to new students.
*
* ], columnist, broadcast personality, co-host '']'' show{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}
* ], co-founder of avant-rock band ].<ref name="kqed">{{cite news |url=http://www.kqed.org/w/baywindow/speakingfreely/local/jewlia_eisenberg_interview.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021228172948/http://www.kqed.org/w/baywindow/speakingfreely/local/jewlia_eisenberg_interview.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2002-12-28 |title=Speaking Freely: An Evening with Remarkable Women] - Interview with Jewlie Eisenberg |publisher=KQED |quote=We all lived together in this big anarchist co-op, Barrington }}</ref>
* ], mathematician specialising in the areas of geometry, topology, and mathematical physics; inventor of ]<ref name=misc/>
* ], professor of anthropology at Princeton<ref name=misc/>
* ], Journalist and documentary filmmaker, author of the Iraq war memoir ''American Hostage''<ref name=misc/>
* ], author of numerous science fiction novels<ref name=misc/>
* ], poet and author of critical study of ]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.readinglocal.com/2009/01/27/books-by-portland-authors-rodney-koeneke/ |title=Books by Portland Authors: Rodney Koeneke |year=2009 |access-date=2009-02-16}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://modampo.blogspot.com/2007/07/8-fun-facts.html |title=Modern Americans |year=2007 |access-date=2009-02-16 |quote=Lived in Barrington Hall, Berkeley's Misplaced Pages-worthy co-op, for last two years of its existence. Was there when news crews descended after notorious acid punch party of '87, which passed for a national story in the dog days of Reagan. ONNGH YANNGH.}}</ref>
* Film and television director ]<ref name=misc/>
* ], physicist who was prevented from working on the ] with ], due to ] surveillance<ref>{{cite book |title=Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller |last=Herken |first= Gregg |year=2003 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=0-8050-6589-X|page=61|quote=Not surprisingly, the best of the young theorists at Berkeley worked for Oppenheimer. Many shared not only their mentor's passion for physics but likewise his affinity for progressive causes. One such student was Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, who arrived in Berkeley from Oklahoma in the late summer of 1940, a month before his nineteenth birthday. Big, extroverted, and cheerful, Lomanitz had been immediately swept up in the radical politics and bohemian culture of the place. He attended rallies opposing the deportation of labor leader Harry Bridges and joined the Student Workers Federation on campus. Moving into Barrington Hall, a dormitory that attracted students with similarly left-wing views, Lomanitz met other kindred spirits... }}</ref>
* ], CNBC reporter since 1990{{Citation needed|date=October 2010}}
* Journalist ], author of two books of nonfiction stories about Mexico,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://samquinones.com/bio.asp |title=True Tales from Another Mexico (Sam Quinones) |access-date=2009-02-15 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090715153742/http://www.samquinones.com/bio.asp |archive-date=2009-07-15 }}</ref> now with the ''Los Angeles Times''<ref>{{cite book |title=True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx |last=Quinones |first=Sam |year=2001 |publisher=University of New Mexico Press |location=New Mexico |isbn=0-8263-2295-6 |page= |quote=Barrington Hall remains for me one of the great liberating experiences, a place that encouraged me to create a life of my own design. |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/truetalesfromano00samq/page/336 }}</ref>
* ], Professor of Anthropology and scholar and author of Ancient Mesoamerican writing and religion.{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}
* ], lawyer for the ]<ref>"One of the contributors to that last issue, with a devastating satire of the Council, was Mike Tigar, who later worked for KPFA for {{sic|awhile|expected=a while}} & most recently was heard from as one of the lawyers for the Chicago 7 who were tromped on by the judge.)" From a first hand account of ''The Barrington Bull'' . Retrieved January 24, 2007</ref>
* ] co-founder, Apple{{citation needed|date=January 2017}}
* ], Barrington Hall<ref name="Our House">{{cite magazine |last1=Boone |first1=Alastair |last2=Adler |first2=Sarah |date=Spring 2017 |title=Our House: Chaos and Creation in the Berkeley Student Cooperative |url=https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2017-virtue-and-vice/our-house-chaos-and-creation-berkeley-student |magazine=California Magazine |location=Berkeley, California |publisher=California Alumni Association |access-date=January 18, 2019}}</ref>


==See also== ==Footnotes==
{{reflist|2}}
*]


== References == ==References==
*Thompson, Chris. "Tale of Two Animal Houses" East Bay Express. Published 5/4/2005. Retrieved at EastBayExpress.com on 12.11.05


* ''''; a compilation of two sources. The first, '''', was completed in 1971 by Guy Lillian as part of a U.S.C.A. funded project. The second, '''', was completed in 2002 by Krista Gasper.
*
* apRoberts, Alison. , ''California magazine'', November 2003, 114 (2)

* "A Long Strange Trip", ''East Bay Express'', December 15, 1989
*Roberts, Allison. "Living with Pink Cloud" Berkeley Alumni Association Newsletter. Published 2003.
* "Barrington Policy", U.C. Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Barrington miscellany, 308W.U592.bar

* "Onngh Yanngh on Campus", ''Toad Lane Review'', February 1980.
*American Arbitration Association Report on the Arbitration Matter of Ellsmere Apartments Claimants and Barrington Hall Respondents, Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
* Report from City of Berkeley Health and Human Services of March 21, 1984, Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

* Peoples' History of Berkeley, #21: "Barrington Hall", barringtoncollective
*`A Long Strange Trip,'' East Bay Express, December 15, 1989
* Steve Rubenstein, "Berkeley Cops Roust Dozens at Big Party", ''San Francisco Chronicle'', November 22, 1989, Section: Daily Datebook; p. E12

* Flyer titled "The following is an account of events at Barrington on the weekend of 3/2-4 as witnessed by civilians that were them", Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
* Wollenberg, Charles. "Berkeley, A City in History" Chapter 9: "Heritage of the Sixties" 2002

*Barrington Hall Constitution and By-laws, Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

*Seven hospitalized after `acid punch' party, house chief quits,'' The Daily Californian, October 16, 1987.

*"Barrington Policy,'' U.C. Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Barrington miscellany, 308W.U592.bar

*

*"Onngh Yanngh on Campus,'' Toad Lane Review, February 1980.

*"Co-op Sanctuary Movement,'' Toad Lane Review, Spring 1985.

*Report from City of Berkeley Health and Human Services of March 21, 1984, Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

*"Expulsion of Barrington heroin users, dealers threatened,'' U.S.C.A. News, February 27, 1986.

*Peoples' History of Berkeley, #21: "Barrington Hall,' barringtoncollective

*"Berkeley Mayor Wants Talks: Friday's student riot at Barrington Hall" The San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 1990, Tuesday, Final Edition Section: News; Pg. E11; Bay Area Report

*Steve Rubenstein,"Berkeley Cops Roust Dozens at Big Party," The San Francisco Chronicle, November 22, 1989, Wednesday, Final Edition, Section: Daily Datebook; E12

*"Police Evict Barrington Holdouts." The San Francisco Chronicle, September 13, 1990, Thursday, Final Edition Section: News; Pg. B6


==External links== ==External links==
{{external links|date=January 2017}}
<!-- See http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Footnotes for an explanation of how to generate footnotes using the <ref(erences/)> tags -->
*
{{reflist}}
*

*
*
* - A defunct group that organized do-it-yourself festivals, free classes, concerts and 'zines in the San Francisco Bay Area.
*
*
*
*,
*
*
* - first-person-account of a "straight" person who lived at Barrington in the 80s, in five parts.
*
* by the Liberal Avenger: first-person account of buying drugs in Barrington in 1989.
*
* first-person-account of living in Barrington in the late 60s, by an editor of the in-house literary magazine, ''The Barrington Bull,'' in two parts.
* was written by ] in the summer of 1971 as part of a U.S.C.A. funded project.
* Dave Ross' blog, which includes links to his films shot in Barrington, "Kitty in the Hobart" and "Bug Snack."
* - ]
*
* - ]
* 1980 poster for show at Barrington.
*
*
* - a memoir by , a neighbor
*
*
*
*


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Latest revision as of 19:11, 26 December 2024

Building in Berkeley, California, USA

37°51′52.85″N 122°15′44.13″W / 37.8646806°N 122.2622583°W / 37.8646806; -122.2622583

The front of Barrington Hall in fall 1989

Barrington Hall was a student housing cooperative in the University Students' Cooperative Association (USCA) (now known as the Berkeley Student Cooperative (BSC)) system in Berkeley, California, from 1935 to 1943 and 1950 to 1989. It is currently privately operated student housing.

The state of what was once known as Barrington Hall, October 2014

History

The original Barrington Hall was a Sigma Nu fraternity house on Ridge Road leased from that fraternity in 1933. In 1935 the lease was allowed to expire and USCA purchased a building located at 2315 Dwight Way, to which the name Barrington Hall was transferred. The building was formerly the largest apartment house in Berkeley and would host 200 men when it opened the same year. 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, which prompted the university to revoke their accreditation on the grounds of acting "in loco parentis".

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 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, some of its members were very active in 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.

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 with the neighbors in 1984, Barrington was a launching pad and petri dish for 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 of the Onghh Yaangh tenet, "Those who say don't know. Those who know don't say." This song appeared on their eponymous first record, and the album's cover art, by Barry Spencer, was reproduced as one of the many murals on the Hall's walls.

The song "Frizzle Fry" by the band Primus 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 was served. The pop group Camper Van Beethoven played at one such "Wine Dinner" in 1988–89, under the name Vampire Can Mating Oven. Black Flag, Flipper, X, The Ophelias, NOFX, Operation Ivy and 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 the mid- to late-80s Barrington house band Acid Rain (later renamed Idiot Flesh) went on to perform with Charming Hostess, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Faun Fables.

Murals

Much of the building, which was four stories high and a block deep, was covered with murals and graffiti.

"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. 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 in the U.S. One mural from the 1970s was of Sacco and Vanzetti. A prominent mural from the 1980s, painted in a neo-psychedelic style and with Japanese anime 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 that 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 was practiced. It was often mentioned in Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

New Member Disorientation

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At the beginning of every semester in the 1980s, a new member orientation, called the "New Member Disorientation", was held for incoming students. The Fall Disorientation required all incoming members endure a legendary party where two films competed against hours of nitrous oxide provided by The House. One of the super 8mm films was "Leo+Phred"; an under-grad assignment, it represents an homage to the spirit of radical, enduring friendship in spite of political differences. Leo+Phred portrays two students engaging in friendly acts while miming support for Nicaragua's Freedom Fighters with an abundance of illegal party-favors; and screened alongside an original electro-acoustic soundtrack composed on campus. Disorientation also required the memorization of a 1980 claymation work: "The Onngh Yanngh Movie", featuring the impenetrable iconic wisdom of Barrington's resident-spirit who reveres Lao Tzu: "those who tell don't know, and those who know don't tell." The film humorously reveals the origin-myths of Onngh Yanngh in the "land of Fremont". Eventually when the neighbors filed a lawsuit against the USCA under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for drug sales in the building, one of their allegations was that Barrington actually did have a code of silence.

Cover art for The Barrington Bull, the periodical created at the Barrington Hall

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.

Heroin

In 1986, the house manager admitted to being addicted to heroin. According to George Proper, Manager of the USCA in 1987, residents of Barrington Hall had started to use heroin by 1985. In 1986, the USCA threatened to close Barrington after two heroin overdoses, and after it became apparent that nearly a dozen residents were using heroin.

Lawsuits

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 grant a writ to consider whether to reinstate the federal lawsuit against Barrington on plaintiffs' theory that nuisance damage actionable as property damage under state law can, for purposes of finding a federal RICO violation, serve as the property damage necessary to such a federal action.

The state court action continued after the federal courts declined to allow a federal racketeering suit. In 1989, the co-op voted to close Barrington. Its managers accepted the decision writing co-op members in November, 1989 that: "Although other co-op houses have had problems and difficult periods, the intensity and duration of the Barrington 'problem' is unprecedented."

Notable Barrington residents

Footnotes

  1. Harper, Will (1973). Cheap Place to Live. John Nishinaga. Retrieved January 17, 2019.
  2. Gasper, Krista (2002). Counterculture's Last Stand: The Fall of Barrington Hall. John Nishinaga. Retrieved January 17, 2019.
  3. ^ Lillian, Guy; Gasper, Krista (2006). A Cheap Place to Live, from The Green Book - A Collection of U.S.C.A. History. Archived from the original on 28 December 2020.
  4. Lois Baker (March 7, 1937). "Cooperatives Band on 159 Campuses; They Report 73,232 Members, With Annual Business of Nearly $3,000,0000". The New York Times. One of them, Barrington Hall, is the largest apartment house in Berkeley.
  5. Charles Wollenberg (2002) Berkeley, A City in History Archived 2007-02-02 at the Wayback Machine Chapter 9, Heritage of the Sixties, hosted by Berkeley Public Library
  6. Gasper, Krista (2002). "The Greenbook: Counterculture's Last Stand". Archived from the original on 2011-07-26. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
  7. Carol Yur (October 21, 2008). "75 Years Later, Co-Ops Keep Up Spirit". The Daily Californian. Several co-ops, most notably Barrington Hall, became leaders in political activism on campus, Finacom said. 'I think every protest movement they had a role-in the Third World strike in the late '60s, People's Park, and as you got into the '80s, the anti-apartheid protest.'
  8. "Co-op Sanctuary Movement". Toad Lane Review. Spring 1985.
  9. ^ Sam Whiting (March 5, 1990). "Cal's Barrington Hall -- home of nude 'wine dinners' -- closes". San Francisco Chronicle. p. B8.
  10. "Expulsion of Barrington heroin users, dealers threatened". U.S.C.A. News. February 27, 1986.
  11. "Ruth E. Oscar; Charles Spinosa, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. University Students Co-operative Association, George Proper, et al". United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. 1991. Retrieved 2009-02-15.
  12. "182 Students Evicted from Berkeley Co-op". San Jose Mercury News. November 22, 1987. The 182 University of California student-residents of Barrington Hall, the drug-plagued housing co-op, are being kicked out of the hall, the largest eviction in the half-century of the Berkeley campus' student co-ops.
  13. Herron Zamora, Jim (April 10, 1990). "Barrington Hall, Once Hotbed of UC Radicalism, Closes". Los Angeles Times. Since 1985, Barrington Hall had been attacked by neighbors over its residents' alleged drug use, noisy parties and generally rowdy life style. Last fall, the 18-house University Students Cooperative Association that operated Barrington voted overwhelmingly to shut Barrington. Added Denise Tukenmez, a three-year resident at Barrington and a biology honors student who dyes her hair bright green, 'Barrington is a place where you learned to accept other ways of thinking and challenge the prevailing ideas in society. There's really nowhere else like it.' Several closure attempts failed, but students in other co-op houses began to lose patience with Barrington after their rents were hiked in order to fight lawsuits.
  14. Steve Rubenstein (November 22, 1989). "Barrington Hall Lived Down to its Billing". San Francisco Chronicle. Barrington Hall of Berkeley is being shut down and I am going to miss it.... When I lived there, it was every bit the rowdy establishment its ticked-off neighbors say it is. I lived at Barrington Hall as a UC freshman in 1969, when Berkeley operated under even fewer rules than Barrington did.... Barrington Hall, a tired four-story building south of campus, was a co-op, not a dormitory. This meant that the people who lived there were supposed to run the place, a concept perhaps ahead of its time.... Soon I got kicked off the maintenance crew and onto the telephone switchboard crew. That job involved fielding incoming calls, often from parents. With suitable bribes, a member of the switchboard crew could be induced to tell parents that a particular student was studying in the library, when she was actually visiting her boyfriend's apartment. The other duty of the switchboard operator involved making long-distance calls on behalf of Barrington residents who all seemed to be using the same telephone credit card number, the one printed in that morning's edition of the underground newspaper.... The food was bad. It was trucked to the hall from the central kitchen in a vehicle we called the slop wagon, which was being kind. At Barrington, residents subsisted on self-serve peanut butter sandwiches from the snack lounge. After dinner, we members of the dish-washing squad wore thick rubber gloves and aprons. We also wore swimmer's plugs in our noses, even though the aroma of the discarded slop was certainly no more unpleasant than the teargas wafting nightly over Sproul Plaza.... Maybe it's true that Barrington has had a less couth and civilized clientele since my time there, but somehow I doubt it. Maybe its day is past. Maybe I should have been kicked out myself."
  15. "Campus Life: Berkeley; 'Squat or Rot': Students Fight Eviction Effort". The New York Times. February 4, 1990. When the University Students Cooperative Association voted to close Barrington Hall last November, the 166 University of California students who lived there were given until Jan. 20 to move out. The residence has a history of drug-dealing, poor maintenance and bad community relations, officials say. Most students left the house, but about 40 students refused to leave the building a few blocks from campus. And 15 of them have retained a lawyer to help them fight the eviction.
  16. Debra Levi Holtz (March 23, 1990). "UC Student Housing Co-op Wins Fight to Evict Tenants". San Francisco Chronicle. The owners of a controversial student housing cooperative in Berkeley received a court order yesterday permitting the eviction of 17 people who refused to leave when the building was closed two months ago. The residents of Barrington Hall will be forced to move within two weeks....
  17. "Police Evict Barrington Holdouts". San Francisco Chronicle. September 13, 1990. p. B6.
  18. Chris Thompson (May 4, 2005). "Tale of Two Animal Houses". East Bay Express. Archived from the original on May 6, 2005.
  19. "The Co-op That Chaos Killed". San Francisco Chronicle. March 5, 1990.
  20. "UC Students, Police Wage Pitched Battle; 8 Hurt, 17 Arrested". Los Angeles Times. March 4, 1990. The 75 students who were driven out of the building gathered on Haste Street, about two blocks west of Telegraph Avenue. As they built barricades, lit fires and taunted police, the students were joined by many other young people from the largely student neighborhood four blocks south of the campus. Police formed lines on each end of the block and another in a parking lot across the street from Barrington. They held their ground for more than an hour and let the fires burn as high as 20 feet in the air. The students turned the event into a street party and danced around the barricades yelling obscenities and making obscene gestures at police. After the crowd thinned, police gradually moved forward and firefighters began hosing the flames, but they quickly retreated when they were met with volleys of rocks and bottles. Firefighters then sprayed demonstrators and the building. The confrontation remained in a stalemate for about an hour as police advanced, then retreated....
  21. "Students Seek Probe of Clash With Police". Los Angeles Times. March 5, 1990. Several UC Berkeley students involved in a violent clash with police during the weekend said they plan to ask the city's Police Review Commission to investigate. The students claim police used unnecessary force during a five-hour confrontation at Barrington Hall, a controversial campus residence.
  22. "Berkeley Riot Trial". San Jose Mercury News. March 7, 1990. Four people charged with felonies in connection with a series of confrontations Saturday between students and police at Barrington Hall in Berkeley....
  23. "Berkeley Mayor Wants Talks: Friday's student riot at Barrington Hall". San Francisco Chronicle. April 10, 1990.
  24. "Victim Identified". San Jose Mercury News. March 13, 1990. The Alameda County Coroner's Office has identified a student from the University of California, Berkeley who died after a fall from a problem-plagued residence hall as 20-year-old Juan Mendoza. Mendoza was found early Saturday morning in the parking lot of Barrington Hall at 2315 Dwight Way. He was taken to Alta Bates hospital, where he later died, according to a Berkeley Police Department spokeswoman. Mendoza lived in Barrington Hall.
  25. "Barrington Hall Sold by Co-op". San Francisco Chronicle. September 13, 1990. Barrington Hall, a student residence that has long been controversial because of wild behavior, has been sold by the UC Students Cooperative Association. The structure at 2315 Dwight Way has a capacity for 182 students. Barrington was known for punk rock concerts during the late 1970s. Neighbors recently have complained about alleged drug trafficking. The asking price for the building was $2.75 million. Buyers Roger and Laura Huddlestone reportedly plan to continue operating it as student housing, beginning in January 1991.
  26. "Entertainment in the Co-ops". Toad Lane Review. May 23, 1980. Barrington, every semester, threw several wine dinners and various huge bashes where hundreds of people flooded the dining rooms, hallways and suites, drank alcohol, partook in illegal drugs like LSD and cocaine, listened to very loud punk or rock music and generally partied very hard. People who never knew Barrington as a student cooperative saw Barrington only as a place where huge parties, outstanding bands and mass quantities of drugs were found.
  27. American Arbitration Association Report on the Arbitration Matter of Ellsmere Apartments Claimants and Barrington Hall Respondents, Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
  28. Some Lemmings tunes here
  29. "Seven hospitalized after 'acid punch' party, house chief quits", The Daily Californian, October 16, 1987.
  30. "Problems at Berkeley dorm". San Francisco Examiner. October 26, 1987.
  31. "City council members call for big change at Barrington Hall". The Daily Californian. October 22, 1987.
  32. "LSD Use May Close Co-op". Los Angeles Times. October 22, 1987. Archived from the original on 2023-09-04. An 'acid punch' party that sent seven people to a Berkeley hospital resulted in new demands that a controversial student housing cooperative be closed or taken over by the University of California.
  33. Official Store: Music Department Archived 2007-01-07 at the Wayback Machine, Club Basterdo. Retrieved January 24, 2007
  34. Meister, Todd (December 26, 2001). "Voodoo Muck: From the mixed-up files of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum". East Bay Express. Archived from the original on January 21, 2013. Retrieved 16 February 2009. ... it helps to know that two of its members are from the now-defunct 'art rock' band Idiot Flesh, a highly theatrical band that developed at Berkeley's infamous Barrington Hall in the mid-1980s. Idiot Flesh shows were like a musical circus. 'Idiot Flesh did have a surround element,' says Rathbun, bassist for both Idiot Flesh and now Sleepytime. 'To be at an Idiot Flesh show was to be surrounded by visual things: people hanging from the ceiling, somebody on the rear balcony doing an interjection—strange things were always happening....'
  35. "Legendary Berkeley Dorm Will Close". Los Angeles Times. November 11, 1989. After a decade of controversy over drug use and wild parties, voters in a University Students Cooperative Assn. voted to close graffiti-strewn Barrington Hall....
  36. "Barrington Saved from Shutdown". Toad Lane Review. May 10, 1984. The outside walls of Barrington were covered with unsightly graffiti. The spray painted words read 'terrorist' and 'this is Barrington, get used to it.'
  37. Obituary for Ian Ray: 1964-1997 Archived 2012-07-20 at archive.today in Slingshot! 59 published by the Slingshot Collective
  38. ^ Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
  39. "Campus Life: Berkeley; Student Co-op Votes to Close Dorm With a Past". The New York Times. November 12, 1989. Retrieved 16 February 2009. Home for many University of California students who seek an alternative life style, the walls of its hallways are covered with bright murals painted by past generations of Barringtonians.
  40. ^ Clark Morris and Mahlen Morris Walls of Barrington Hall, a video panorama of murals and graffiti in 1988; hosted at YouTube.com
  41. "Partying Like it's 1982". The Daily Californian. October 13, 2003. ... when punk rock was taking off in San Francisco and Berkeley's Barrington Hall was serving ants for dinner and hosting orgies.
  42. Google cache of Barringtonhall.org page linking to contents of some Barrington Bulls, accessed 24 January 2007
  43. A few issues of Barrington Bulls
  44. ^ "Campus Life: Berkeley; Student Co-op Votes to Close Dorm With a Past". New York Times. 12 November 2016. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
  45. "Years of Diversity Over for Notorious Barrington Hall". New York Times. 29 November 1987. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
  46. "Ruth E. Oscar; Charles Spinosa, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. University Students Co-operative Association; George Proper, et al. No. 90-15750". United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Retrieved 2009-02-15.
  47. "US Court Rejects Renters' Suit Under Racketeering Law". Los Angeles Times. June 5, 1992.
  48. Laurie Asseo (December 7, 1992). "High Court Won't Weigh Racketeering Suit Against Wild Neighbors". The Associated Press. The Supreme Court today refused to reinstate a federal racketeering lawsuit against a Berkeley, Calif., student housing co-op by neighbors who said its drug dealing and wild parties harmed property values. The federal court, declined to grant review of the neighbors' argument that RICO allowed to sue in federal court for property damage in the form of nuisance. Ruth Oscar and Charles Spinosa have lived since the mid-1980s in rent-controlled apartments next door to Barrington Hall, part of a non-profit housing cooperative run by University of California at Berkeley students. According to graffiti on its walls, Barrington Hall was 'an oasis of madness in a world gone sane.'
  49. "Speaking Freely: An Evening with Remarkable Women] - Interview with Jewlie Eisenberg". KQED. Archived from the original on 2002-12-28. We all lived together in this big anarchist co-op, Barrington
  50. "Books by Portland Authors: Rodney Koeneke". 2009. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
  51. "Modern Americans". 2007. Retrieved 2009-02-16. Lived in Barrington Hall, Berkeley's Misplaced Pages-worthy co-op, for last two years of its existence. Was there when news crews descended after notorious acid punch party of '87, which passed for a national story in the dog days of Reagan. ONNGH YANNGH.
  52. Herken, Gregg (2003). Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: Macmillan. p. 61. ISBN 0-8050-6589-X. Not surprisingly, the best of the young theorists at Berkeley worked for Oppenheimer. Many shared not only their mentor's passion for physics but likewise his affinity for progressive causes. One such student was Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, who arrived in Berkeley from Oklahoma in the late summer of 1940, a month before his nineteenth birthday. Big, extroverted, and cheerful, Lomanitz had been immediately swept up in the radical politics and bohemian culture of the place. He attended rallies opposing the deportation of labor leader Harry Bridges and joined the Student Workers Federation on campus. Moving into Barrington Hall, a dormitory that attracted students with similarly left-wing views, Lomanitz met other kindred spirits...
  53. "True Tales from Another Mexico (Sam Quinones)". Archived from the original on 2009-07-15. Retrieved 2009-02-15.
  54. Quinones, Sam (2001). True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx. New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press. p. 336. ISBN 0-8263-2295-6. Barrington Hall remains for me one of the great liberating experiences, a place that encouraged me to create a life of my own design.
  55. "One of the contributors to that last issue, with a devastating satire of the Council, was Mike Tigar, who later worked for KPFA for awhile [sic] & most recently was heard from as one of the lawyers for the Chicago 7 who were tromped on by the judge.)" From a first hand account of The Barrington Bull . Retrieved January 24, 2007
  56. Boone, Alastair; Adler, Sarah (Spring 2017). "Our House: Chaos and Creation in the Berkeley Student Cooperative". California Magazine. Berkeley, California: California Alumni Association. Retrieved January 18, 2019.

References

  • The Green Book A Collection of U.S.C.A. History; a compilation of two sources. The first, Cheap Place to Live, was completed in 1971 by Guy Lillian as part of a U.S.C.A. funded project. The second, Counterculture's Last Stand, was completed in 2002 by Krista Gasper.
  • apRoberts, Alison. "Living with Pink Cloud", California magazine, November 2003, 114 (2)
  • "A Long Strange Trip", East Bay Express, December 15, 1989
  • "Barrington Policy", U.C. Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Barrington miscellany, 308W.U592.bar
  • "Onngh Yanngh on Campus", Toad Lane Review, February 1980.
  • Report from City of Berkeley Health and Human Services of March 21, 1984, Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
  • Peoples' History of Berkeley, #21: "Barrington Hall", barringtoncollective
  • Steve Rubenstein, "Berkeley Cops Roust Dozens at Big Party", San Francisco Chronicle, November 22, 1989, Section: Daily Datebook; p. E12
  • Flyer titled "The following is an account of events at Barrington on the weekend of 3/2-4 as witnessed by civilians that were them", Barrington Hall miscellany, 308W.U592.bar, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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