My parents arrived in Berkeley in 1969, just as city cops were storming People’s Park. They took an evening photography course in a crumbling studio not far from the Bay Bridge. After each class, their teacher, a failed portrait photographer who had turned to Native American hallucinogens in an attempt to revive his work, would prepare a communal meal for the half-dozen students, using the same solvent-stained pots and pans that he had just used to mix photo-developing chemicals. Phenidone and potassium bromide were somehow acceptable foodstuffs, my parents reasoned, but brown soda, processed cheese and red dye No. 2, no way.
