Berkeley Barb
The
Berkeley Barb was an
underground newspaper which was published in
Berkeley, California, from
1965 to the early
1980s. It was one of the first and most influential of all the counterculture newspapers of the late 1960s, covering such subjects as the anti-war and civil rights movements as well as the social changes advocated by the youth culture.
The newspaper was founded in August,
1965 by
Max Scherr.
Quill Max was editor from the newspaper's inception until the mid-1970s.
One of the
Barb's most famous covers showed a boy with a chain around his mind. Another interesting cover showed in green ink the body of a dead hog. The headline read
Pig Slain!. This issue sold rapidly as readers sought additional information on what they thought would be an article on a cop-killing. Search as they might, there was nothing in the paper that related to the cover. The entire thing was to sell more papers, and it worked.
In March 1967 the
Barb, hoping to trick authorities into banning bananas, ran a satirical story which claimed that dried banana skins contained "
bananadine", a {fictional) psychoactive substance which, when smoked, induced a psychedelic high similar to opium and psilocybin. (The
Barb may have been inspired by
Donovan's 1966 song "
Mellow Yellow", with its lyric "Electrical banana/Is gonna be a sudden craze"; Donovan, in turn, was inspired by a banana-shaped
vibrator.) The hoax was believed and spread through the mainstream press, and was perpetuated after
William Powell included it in
The Anarchist Cookbook. Runs on bananas at supermarkets occurred, reminiscent of those that had occurred with morning-glory seeds a few years earlier. A
New York Times article on illicit drugs by
Donald Louria, MD, noted in passing, that "banana scrapings, provide— if anything—a mild psychedelic experience."
[Louria, Donald (1967), "Cool Talk About Hot Drugs" The New York Times, August 6, 1967 p. 188] The
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was forced to make a serious investigation, and concluded that banana skins are
not psychedelic. Interestingly enough, the skins do contain a measurable amount of touene, which is also found in airplane glue. It was thought at the time among certain quarters that the so-called bananadine may have been a hoax, but since sniffing airplane glue most definately did supply the user with a high, smoking the skin of a banana would release enough touene to give one a high. It usually only took one cigarette of dried and toasted skins to give one a high roughly equivalent to a marijuana cigarette, although the effects did not last as long. This might have simply been a placebo effect or even oxygen deprivation since toasted skins did not burn very well.
An aspect of the
Barb and similar papers was it's use as a means to obtain eating money by the street people. One could stand in line in the wee hours of the day until the office opened. Then you would show them something you valued, usually your backpack with your clothing, poems and such. If they felt your goods were valuable enough that you would return to get them, they would hand you a bundle of papers to sell on street corners. The paper sold for 15 cents and you got to keep half of that. When all your papers sold you would return to the office, buy back your backpack and another bundle of papers, and then return to the street corner to sell enough to buy some food. Since fish and chips cost 30 cents for a single portion and 60 cents for a double, this business was a good way to make sure you didn't starve or otherwise become too sick to last on the street.
In the early 1980s the numerous sex-ads were separated out into a separate publication,
The Spectator.
The Barb went out of business,
The Spectator continues to this day.
