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# Berkeley Might Be the Citadel of Free Speech but Jimmy Crossed the Line.
- URL: https://crawdaddy.synaps.media/berkeley-might-be-the-citadel-of-free-speech-but-jimmy-crossed-the-line/
- Published: 2026-09-03T15:36:24.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-03T15:36:24.000Z
- Author: william c. crawford

**Flaunting Free Speech In Berkley Earns Jimmy Pro An Ironic Library Ejection.**

  
**Mario Savio, in his heyday, might have been highly pissed off.** 

**Berkeley, after all, offers up extensive historical DNA that supports free public expression. We landed up in the Public Library on a rainy March afternoon. We had a little time to kill browsing the perfectly catalogued shelves. I pulled down a classic Ansel Adams, and Jimmy disappeared only to return with a Jack Kerouac gem written south of the Border. But libraries ain’t what they used to be, and Jimmy’s enthusiasm for Kerouac sometimes gets in the way of his better judgment.**

**“Mexico City Blues” is a Beat poem circa, 1955-59\. Kerouac was chronically ripped when he composed these 242 Choruses or stanzas. He wrote under the perpetual influence of booze, marijuana, and morphine. Chorus length was dictated mostly by the size of Jack’s notebook pages. He could fit right in today within this Library whose table bound patrons were mostly of the street, nodding off impassively on heroin and methadone.**

**Jimmy wryly observed that we and the staff were the only people present speaking in complete sentences. That paradoxical fact would ultimately be our downfall. The Library, over time, had been transformed into an extension of the Berkeley underbelly. As devoted writers and photographers, we were both perfectly at home here, and, simultaneously, far out of our everyday element.** 

**The Free Speech Movement of the 1960’s anointed Berkeley as the campus cradle of civil rights and anti war activism. Mario Savio led student protests that challenged presidents, congress, governors, and the Board of Regents. Berkeley was always, simply put, a hotbed of constitutionally protected dissent. As I trudged the rain drenched streets earlier, I mused silently as to what Savio might have done if he were confronted with the current political paralysis on gun violence.**

**Now, in a quiet reading room, I began to doze ever so slightly, falling victim to the brilliant but tedious narrative of Ansel Adams describing his tortured path to the perfect photographic print. Jimmy for his part was transfixed by Kerouac’s lyrical but cryptic words from Mexico City. Jimmy loved going “on the road” just like Jack and his Beat pals. Indeed, our interlude in Berkley was actually part of our larger, roving photo shoot in The City Of Light. Jimmy religiously spent his evenings ensconced in our hole in the wall, Nob Hill hotel scratching out poetry in his dog eared spiral notebook. Thankfully, he was operating on far less chemical stimulation than the late, tormented Kerouac.** 

**Suddenly now, the choppy rasp of Jimmy’s deep voice shook me back awake. He is a working performance poet back in Sydney. His reading of his verse is a dramatic, stage worthy event. Now, oblivious to the enforced silence of the ‘bary, Jimmy was belting out the Mexico City Blues, starting mysteriously with the 113th Chorus—**

  
**Got up and dressed up**

 **and went out & went out and got laid.**

**Then died and got buried**

 **in the coffin in the grave.**

**Man—**

 **Yet everything is perfect,**

**Because it is empty,**

**Because it is perfect**

 **with emptiness,** 

**Because it is not even happening.**

  
**Jimmy wasn’t exactly shouting, but the clicking of fast approaching heels portended a staff intervention. She was 55, dressed in a proper business suit, and officious in a kind sort of a way. She’s wasn’t at all flummoxed by the force of Kerouac’s heady verse. The faint smile creasing the corners her lips hinted to me that she might have previously encountered the 113th Chorus in some more fitting venue.** 

**“Sir, your voice is a dramatic, melodious delight,” she cooed coyly to Pro. “But I can hear you all the way back at my work station!” “Did she work way over in North Beach?”, I mused sarcastically to myself. Nonplussed, Jimmy concocted a vibrant, spontaneous, dissertation level defense of Kerouac’s writings which reached a near crescendo over the next ten minutes. Finally, her hand snapped up like a stop sign! “Your loud monologue is disturbing our other patrons,” she observed sternly.** 

**I rolled quickly right trying to hide and muffle my guffaw. The other patrons were stoned and oblivious to this bizarre banter as they nodded off in their foggy personal haze, mumbling only a bit here and there. The librarian fixed her gaze intently on me and snarled, “Sir, this no laughing matter!” “You must leave the building immediately.”** 

**The wisdom of Jimmy’s initial observation hung ironically in the air. “We are the only ones in here speaking in complete sentences”, he had noticed. Even the tawdry Bowery was gentrifying back East, but in Berkley, the ‘bary was now a public sanctuary for displaced persons. Free expression, long protected here by massive student demonstrations, had given way to the public library’s now changing social mission. Had Jimmy been rapping about the merits of needle exchange, then he would still be talking!**

**Soon we were slap ass back in the rainy downtown street headed for the nearest bar. Jimmy laughingly riffed that Kerouac would have turned this funky debacle into a ribald novella. However, all I can muster, as a much lesser man, is this shit kicking flash short.**