Target on Telegraph? Berkeley mayor's thinking about it
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-ponders-Telegraph-Ave-upgrades-4314110.php
Determined to clean up the iconic strip south of the UC campus, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates is embarking on a makeover of Telegraph Avenue, looking at everything from traffic laws to the retail mix....
Telegraph Avenue, for decades the heart of UC Berkeley student life and a symbol of the city's radical past, lately has fallen from grace. While Berkeley's other commercial districts have thrived, even in the downturn, sales tax revenues on Telegraph have plummeted, and empty storefronts abound. The intersection of Haste and Telegraph is marred by two vacant lots, and the former Cody's bookstore - once a hub of intellectual life - has sat empty since 2006....
"I know Berkeley's big into local businesses, but the fact is, they're overpriced," said Jael Cook, 23, a Chicago native who graduated last year and lives in the Telegraph neighborhood. "I hate to say it, but I'm a chain store girl. I like Target. That's what I'd like to see on Telegraph."
This would break the hearts of my two favorite Berkeleyites, who live a block off Telegraph. Not to mention the guy I met at Yale who sold "Cosmic Rats" (clay yo-yos with a foam rat shell) on Telegraph for a time in the '80s.
edit: The puff piece somehow fails to mention the devastating fire that burned out decades-old student hangout Raleigh's and neighboring properties a couple of years ago.
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May the gods forgive us. This is truly tragic and sad.
I have never seen a generation so completely and utterly out of touch with even their most immediate history.
They would rather have cheap shit from China and shiny iDevices than to preserve even a small part of the local history of Telegraph Avenue by degrading it with a damned Target. 
about a half-mile away.
ChinaMarts are relatively scarce throughout the Bay Area, until you get to San Jose.
Let's be sure to have many of them wherever there are none now. 
She witnessed this very thing happen in Emeryville. What was once local color, artists, ethnic food, and interesting became sanitized corporate crap.
I watched the same thing happen here in Tempe on Mill Ave. When I moved here, there were local ethnic restaurants, local book stores, and a street teeming with homeless people as well as colorful college kids. Not any more, the street is lined with PF Changs, Chili's, Border's, Hooter's, and all the colorfulness is gone.
I am old enough to remember when downtown's and main streets died as malls full of corporate chains sprung up. Then downtown's and main streets had a revival. Small businesses and restaurants replaced locked doors and empty buildings. Now the damned corporate mall is spreading like a plague and will replace downtown's and main streets with the same corporate chains, 'Made in China' trinkets, and the endless parade of iDevices (any 24/7 attached at the hip technological device that separates us from the reality of human interactions).
Sad, very sad.
