[Dixielandjazz] Blake's Wake

[Stephen G Barbone]

 From the Berkeley Daily Planet. The band at the wake, Spirit of 29,  
is run by an old banjo playing buddy of mine, Elliot Kenin, who spent  
some time gigging in Philadelphia before moving back to the left  
coast. Folks in the San Francisco Bay area may well have visited Larry  
Blake's joint in Berkeley near the University of California there. It  
was relatively famous.

I visited the joint in the 1960s when we lived first in Sausalito and  
then moved to the Oakland hills.


Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonesttreetjazzband


Berkeley's Blake Wake Revives Memories
as Telegraph Braces for Another Closing;
Bona Fide Hippies Dance to Dixieland
By Ted Friedman
Saturday February 12, 2011

Reporters and cameramen outnumbered dancing (historic) hippy  
celebrants as Larry Blakes on Telegraph Avenue was laid to rest  
Saturday. Cause of death may have been suicide.

Blake's ailing business survivors on Teley are calling their doctors  
as La Fiesta, a mainstay on the Ave. for 50 years, just announced its  
impending sale.

Blake's survived several ownership changes in three decades. But  
recent changes, perceived declines in food and service, and a south of  
Market nightclub scene may have contributed to its own three-strikes  
demise.

While a weeping chorus of Teley businessmen complains often and loudly  
of conditions on Telegraph, Blake's, with its raucous early morning  
crowds blocking the sidewalk, may have shot itself through the head.

La Fiesta had moved a few years ago from its historic site at Teley  
and Haste to its catering site only a stone's throw away on Haste, but  
according to a source close to the owner, the daily operation of the  
business had become too much for its elderly owner.

Blake's, founded in 1940, is survived by such elder businesses as the  
Med,'56; Moe's,'56; the Print Mint,'65; Lhasa Karnak, '70; Bill's  
Clothes,'61; Annapurna,'67; Jim the Tailor, 62; and Fondue Fred's  
circa '70 at the former C.J.'s Garage.

As the Spirit of '29 Dixieland band drew on-lookers, the wake swelled  
to as much as 20 at its peak. Lynn Danielle, 67, the wake's organizer  
recalled her parents taking her to Blake's when she was only eight.  
She noted that U.C. alumni visiting campus from afar would first stop  
at Blake's before "setting a foot on campus."

Larry Blake, Blake's founder, who died in retirement in 1992, was  
recalled as an impresario, who rented an elephant and trainer to  
"walk" across the Bay Bridge adorned with the sign: "if you haven't  
been to Blake's, you haven't been to Berkeley."

Danielle recalled that Blake originally hired student waiters with  
what today would be called, “ ‘tude," who wore outlandish clothes and  
had their way with the customers. The sawdust-covered rathskeller  
floors were innovative at the time.

According to Danielle, Blake prepared his famous Caesar Salad every  
day for years, based on his own "secret" recipe.

According to the S.F. Chronicle, the "rathskeller" was Larry Blake's  
trademark, a subterranean beer hall where some of the Bay Area's best  
blues, jazz and R&B bands performed over the decades. The whole  
Berkeley clan gathered there, from Abbie Hoffman to Joe Kapp, from  
graduate students to campus janitors."

As the last famous Teley businesses die off--Sather Gate Jeweler's,  
site of filming on "The Graduate, 1969" was the most recent casualty-- 
Berkeleyans are wondering where are the Larry Blakes of the future.