a purple hippie commune in Berkeley

Fairview House is a cooperatively owned house developed by the Northern California Land Trust. A friend of mine was involved in its creation, then he lived in it a long time, maybe as long as thirty years. Then he fell in love with a woman who owned a house on top of a hill with panoramic views of the bay, a gigantic sloping backyard perfect for a gigantic food garden. And she came with grandchildren!  My friend scored. When he first moved out he kept one share in Fairview House. It was hard to let go.

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Fairview House is actually two houses. First they turned the three-story maybe-Victorian grand old house on the corner into a co-op. There was a derelict duplex next door. The hippies kept seeing that derelict building. I can just imagine my friend, who seems able to do everything from high technology programming to construction and construction management to great process consulting, community activism and just generally being a very good person. He talked his co-op and the N. California Land Trust into buying the derelict house.

He told me when they closed on the purchase, the roof had fallen in so rain fell throughout the house. The whole house was a mess. And he personally, with his own hands, did a lot of the rehab. It was soon a comfortable part of the co-op with two bedrooms in each, and some living space in each. One living room was the co-op TV room. Another living room was the co-op music room.  My friend rented two bedrooms on the top, one to use as his office, one for his bedroom. He was proud to have been a part of creating that co-op.

And this was not his first hippie dippie home. He was also a founder of Black Bear Ranch, a commune still chugging along in way north California in a rural area.

I am proud to know this guy.

Today, walking past his old Fairview House co-op, I saw it was purple. I have stayed in the Fairview House guest room. I have visited Fairview House many times when my friend use to live there. I had never noticed it was painted purple.

I painted my dining room, in the last house I owned 'poet's purple'. I painted each room a different color. One day I realized I wanted to be surrounded by color so, wall by wall, I added color. I really wanted to paint a mural on my dining room wall with my daughter but she never had any juice for that project. I thought it would be educational, artistic and good family fun. Never happened, though.

I did get the dining room to be poet's purple.

My daughter's father entered that house once. Just once. I let him in when he delivered a new laptop for our daughter to start college with.  I figured shelling out a couple grand for that laptop allowed me to cut him some slack and let him in my home. He's such an odd duck. He almost inspected my house, walking up close to most things to scrutinize them closely. This was about 10 years after we had divorced, I had moved 500 miles away. He had nothing to do with me getting that house. yet there he was, snooping and sniffing.

When he was done, he said "It seems just like you that you would paint your dining room purple. What were you thinking?"

It truly was a poetic purple. More of a lavendar than a true, full-blown purple.

Fairview house is mostly a deep lavendar with dark purple trim. If I had been asked, which of course I was not and I did not know my co-op creating friend when he created the co-op, I would have advised against it. It is so Berkeley, to have a hippie commune in the city painted purple.

Purple? It's still a poor neighborhood, very rough edges, although gentrifying quickly. I saw several new buildings on my walk today.

I wonder what all the poor African Americans thought when the hippies first painted that gigantic corner house with the three-story round tower on the corner lip of the lot purple?!!

Purple?  I am sure it was fun to choose purple. I would have gone with a different palette. Included purple if that pleased some co-op owners, sure, but touches of purple with some other color, like a painted lady in SF is what I would have done. That's what I did with my Victorian in Minneapolis: I used a bunch of colors. No purple on the outside but I have elaborate trim on the front and back deck. I painted each band on each stick of the fencing surrounding the porches different colors. My predescessor had painted some of the trim a dark maroon which was nothing close to purple.  I painted my front door periwinkle. The carved dowls in the fencing were gold, navy blue, maroon and beige. Each dowl painted identically, in the same order. Many of my neighbors complimented me on the hard work.

It turned out painting elaborate dowels spun on a wood shaping tool, all identically shaped, was easy. You just taped above and below each bit of color, let that color dry, the then again. It was fun, not work at all.

And everyone loved the periwinkle door, which didn't match anything else on the house.  I chose blue for my front door because in Mexican blue doors signify happiness in the home with a blue door.


The periwinkle was close to a kind of purple but that was as daring as I got.

A whole purple house in what was, when the co-op created in the sixties, a rough, very poor neighborhood? It must have been fun making that decision. And not the direction I would have gone.

I had never noticed Fairview House was purple so I called my friend who used to live there to tell him "Fairview House is purple." He said "Wasn't it always?" I could only admit that I did not know, that I had only noticed its purple today. I would have sworn it was stucco colored years ago.

Purple. Poet's purple.

I can paint walls in my apartment if I get permission. Maybe I should paint a wall purple for old time sake. And to be more Berkeley.