More on the Telegraph Ave Location of Art Music

 For Record Store Yesterday I headed up to Telegraph Ave and Amoeba Music. While in the neighborhood I did a little more investigation into the location of Art Music, the record store where Philip K. Dick worked in the late forties and early fifties. The most recent bit of my search began when I found this picture of the corner of Channing and Telegraph in an article about an East Bay Walking tour. 

Kind of amazing how Ferris Fremont's men are occupying the intersection in some fracas likely related to People's Park. Anyhoo, in that shot you can see the sign for the record store. Yesterday I recreated the shot above: 

It's obvious the building on the corner is still there. In the older shot it looks like the record store occupies the second store from from the corner. In 2024 that's the aptly named vintage clothing store "Mars Mercantile."

Here's a shot of the inside:

They were busy selling vintage clothes to college students and hipsters, but I asked an employee what they new about the location. They said that it was their understanding that the current location was subdivided into three separate retail businesses. I mentioned that I was researching science fiction author Philip K Dick and another employee turned and said, "You think he worked here?" 

Looks like I'm going to have to make a pilgrimage to the History Room at the Berkeley Public Library after this semester from hell is over to confirm. 

A Picture of Art Music in Berkeley, At Long Last

I've been looking for a picture of Art Music where Phil worked in Berkeley for more than a decade, and at last I've found it. The photo comes from an East Bay Times walking tour guide, and clearly shows the record store where Phil worked in the early 1950s. The caption reads, "California National Guard troops occupy the intersection of Telegraph Avenue and Channing Way in Berkeley, Calif. during the People's Park riots in 1969. (William Crouch / Oakland Tribune Archives)"

Sure it's fifteen years after Phil worked there, but at least now we know where it was. Many, including myself, have mistakenly believed the Rasputin Records across the intersection to be the location, but now we know. What a feeling! As you can see, Berkeley has always been a hotbed of political activism and overreactive police responses. 

PKD's Berkeley Houses: 1711 Allston Way

This is the house Philip K. Dick lived in during high school. Exact dates are tough, but Phil and Dorothy moved into this house 1711 Allston Way sometime after Phil sent the letter to Amazing Stories in March of 1944 and December of 1947 when Phil moved out of his mother's house and into a shared apartment with poets Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan. 

According to Sutin, Dorothy's room was upstairs, Phil's downstairs. Dorothy would often come home late and simply retire to her bedroom. As a result Phil enjoyed some relative freedom and had an active social life with friends coming over. 

It was while living here most likely that Phil began work at University Radio. 

After Phil moved out, Dorothy moved away sometime before 1950 when census records indicate she was living about ten miles north in El Cerrito. The census from that year also seems to indicate that Dorothy had taken another job in charge of personnel at the Federal Department of Agriculture. 

PKD's Berkeley Houses: 1411 Arch St.

 

Today's house is an interesting one, mostly because none of the biographers seems to have known about 1411 Arch St, where Phil apparently lived at least in 1944. In fact, we learned of Dick's residency only because the special folks at SFFaudio found and Tweeted a letter from sixteen-year-old Philip K Dick to Amazing Stories published in March of 1944. The letter to the editors demonstrates that Dick was a careful and knowledgeable consumer of SF stories, who clearly had a sense for what they liked and dislike. 

In the letter young Philip bemoans the current state of SF in the monthlies, stating the most recent issue of Amazing was the first that didn't "come up to par." 

Not because the editor can't pick good stories, but because "We all realize that most of your best men have gone to war." 

If there's an income gradient in Berkeley from the blue-collar "flats" as they're called to the 1% at the top of the Berkeley Hills, this house on Arch St. represents Dorothy and Phil's high water mark. In fact the house is less than five hundred feet from Ursula LeGuin's amazing house at 1325 Arch St! 

Records are scarce on this house, and I suppose it's possible young Phil wrote a fake address to the magazine, but that seems less likely than him living in the house without it making it to the biographies. While we don't know when exactly Phil and Dorothy moved in or out of this house, we do know that they were living on Walnut St in 1940 and by 1946 had moved to 1711 Alston Way, which I will write about tomorrow. 

PKD's Berkeley Houses: 1212 Walnut St.

For my week of visiting PKD's childhood homes in Berkeley, yesterday I visited 1212 Walnut St. According to the very useful chronology in Paul Williams' Only Apparently Real, Phil and mother Dorothy moved into this house sometime around the summer of 1940. Sutin describes the residence as a cottage in the backyard of a larger house on the lot. 

Redfin doesn't mention the second house. According to the website the residence hasn't sold since the 1980s (when it sold for $67k!). This is a nice house in an absolutely amazing neighborhood. This suggests that unlike prior to the move to Washington DC, Dorothy and Phil were enjoying a little bit of financial security. This house is a substantial step up from 560 Colusa where the pair lived previously.  It may have been the job in Washington D.C. with the Bureau of Children within the Department of Labor was a significant step up for Dorothy and allowed her to then get her job with the US Forestry Service and enjoy a thoroughly middle class lifestyle through the 1940s. 

Today, what greets visitors is a wooden gate at street level and then a long, winding staircase down to a house. I can't tell if this is the larger house or the cottage behind it. Regardless, this is the house where young Phil followed the details of World War II as it raged across Europe. 

The house is also in an absolutely idyllic setting, just next to Berkeley's Live Oak Park. The five and half acre park is absolutely gorgeous, even today, and features playgrounds and the famous cement slides which magically transports lots of kids to emergency rooms, while teenagers sit on the grass and explore the outer reaches of inner space, if you know what I mean. 

Dorothy and Phil were living in this house when they took the 1940 census, which provides a lot of additional information. Dorothy apparently owned the house (I assumed they were renting) which was valued at $4000 at the time (a little over $87k in 2023 dollars) and Dorothy listed her income as $2000 for 1939 ($43.5k).  

PKD's Berkeley Houses: 560 Colusa

 

I'll be in north Berkeley every afternoon this week, so I've decided to visit Phil's houses in the area in chronological order. 

Yesterday's spot was 560 Colusa. Phil and his mother Dorothy moved into this bungalow in December of 1938, after relocating to the Bay Area after a three-year stint in Washington DC. My pictures aren't great, because I don't want to seem like a creepy weirdo taking pictures of people's houses. I'd rather be the creepy weirdo who pulls up in his car, snaps a couple shots, and drives off, at least for now. 

It looks like the house was more than two and a half miles from Hillside Elementary, where Phil (who was using the name "Jim" at the time) was a fourth grader. The house is deceptively large, or has been added on to, clocking in at 1600 square feet with three bedrooms and two baths. Dorothy had enough money saved to put a down payment on a house out in Concord (a dusty suburb about a half hour into the foothills from Berkeley), but Phil "threw a fit" and refused. 

For orientation, this house is just about a mile north of the tiny little guitar school where Joe Satriani gave Kirk Hammett guitar lessons. 

Dorothy arranged a job for herself at the US Forestry Service, a job she would keep until she retired. My guess is that Phil was glad to be back in Berkeley. He complains in his 1968 "Self Portrait" of the terrible weather in DC. But also, he was reunited with his maternal grandmother, Meemaw, and her sister, his aunt Marion. 

It's even possible that young Phil, an avid cowboy enthusiast (at least at age 4) would have had the opportunity to meet "Tex" Conley, a "bullwhip expert" who toured Europe with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. "Tex" married aunt Marion in January of 1937. But Phil would have to be quick, by 1940 "Tex" was back in Texas, and by 1941 Marion had met and married fellow artist at the San Francisco Artist's Cooperative, Joe Hudner. 

Phil presumably lived here until the summer of 1940, when he was twelve years old and moved to 1212 Walnut, which I'll visit today. 

William Sarill Chronicles His Dick-Fest Experience

William Sarill, the name sounds vaguely familiar, right? Perhaps you've been reading Maze of Death and remember the little introduction by Dick explaining that the novel is borne out of late night discussions of religion with, you guessed it, William Sarill. Or maybe you've been looking at that picture of PKD and Nancy (the one where it looks like PKD's got a ponytail), that was taken by William Sarill. No doubt Sarill was one of the more interesting grain patterns to step out of the woodwork for the PKD Fest, peppering the crowd with anecdotes and insights about Phil Dick and his work. Now Bill has written up his thoughts for the Boston Phoenix. Read it here. And check out that awesome illustration (I pasted it above). It's quite a nice article about PKD, written by flesh and blood.

Sarill writes: "It's that spiritual yearning for answers that drew me to him in the first place — that and an appreciation for his wonderfully weird ideas and the occasional brilliance of his characterizations, so unlike those of other science-fiction writers of his era."Amen, brother.

If you're not in our Facebook group, you've missed a bit of hullabaloo introduced by Bill, regarding Dick's time rooming with Duncan and Spicer. I don't think we've talked about this. Interesting, eh?

Perhaps we can liven up the comments section with a little old fashioned debate.