Too Much Pressure Triumphs Plus Sentimental Memories

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And lets hear it for Too Much Pressure – second place winners in Atlas Bowl’s Wednesday Trivia Night!

We didn’t get the one hour of free bowling. But we did get to take home a shitload of designer beer!

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I was very saddened by the news that a grassfire is threatening to take out Grizzly Peak Boulevard in Berkeley.

All throughout the 70s and the early 80s, this was my stomping grounds. Back then, I rode my bicycle something like 150 miles a week: I’d start out on Spruce Street, cut south on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, come down from the Berkeley Hills on Claremont, and then peddle home on the city streets.

In my mind, this time in my life is suffused in a golden haze – although if I think about it unsentimentally, this was not a golden moment: I had a serious drug problem and the angst, which is always a constant in my psyche, had not yet been shown its seat at one of the tables farthest from the podium.

But in my golden sentimental memories, the Grizzly Peak Boulevard parkland I sped through, hunched over my handlebars, is a place out of time. I just know if I close my eyes and squeeze them hard enough, I can go back there. Bibbit will be beside me, it will be a glorious summer day, and the two of us will be singing, Someday My Prince Will Come and laughing hysterically.