Today I was sifting through my referrer logs, and discovered that someone had come across my site through the Google search term "berkeley campus arcade." Curious as to what exactly the results of such might be, I entered it in, and there, above the link to my site, was an article on the closure of the BEARcade, UC Berkeley's campus arcade. I read it carefully, and it made me think. I decided that I, too, should write on my reflections on the experience. In doing so, I hope to delineate and explain my past actions and possibly to gain closure.

I, too, was greatly troubled by Associated Students of the University of California President Manuel Buenrostro's decision to close down the BEARcade, in order to establish a new location of Gelateria Naia, an ice cream chain with a location a block west of campus. However, unlike Pat Miller and the many others who suffered from the loss of the BEARcade and the community it represented, I was a fairly recent arrival to the community, and could not rightfully claim to have felt the same pain they did. My burden is of a different nature, albeit no less odious. Added, for me, to the loss of the arcade itself is the crushing pain of betrayal and defeat. It is the feeling of having months of hard work repaid with empty hands and a knife in the back.

In September of 2005, I was sitting in the office of the Daily Californian, UC Berkeley's campus newspaper, where I was working as a writer at the time. Someone casually mentioned that the ASUC was planning to close down the BEARcade and replace it with an 'ice cream lounge.' At first I was incredulous, then I started telling all of my friends, thinking that people would naturally see the inherent illogic of replacing the only arcade in the city with another location of a business a block away from campus, as well as the hypocrisy of UC Berkeley in particular doing so, and thus that simply spreading awareness would be enough. I was met largely with indifference. Some people even welcomed the move with open arms, such as one co-worker of mine at the Daily Cal:

Him: ...I'm kind of a supporter.
Me: How can you support this? The shop they want to replace it with is a block away.
Him: But dude, gelato!
Me: Look here, people from Japan have come to play at the BEARcade. Do you think people from Italy would ever come to eat at Gelateria Naia? Especially when there's one a block away already?
Him: Maybe!
Me: Don't you care that the BEARcade is the only arcade in the city?
Him: Dude, just get a Playstation 2.
Me: It isn't the same experience.
Him: ...But, gelato!

Another co-worker of mine told me, at a Halloween party, that she didn't understand why I disapproved of Buenrostro's plans, that I was "too old for that sort of thing." I was speechless, shocked at the blatant stigma that laced her comment. The following day, I resolved to write a conclusive, comprehensive manifesto of my feelings on the matter. Supplementing facts garnered from fellow opponents of the ice cream lounge proposal with my own research, I wrote A Homogenized Campus, under the pseudonym Grant Wabel (an anagram of my name) to protect my identity from my then-employer, which is not known for its tolerance of dissidence. (Although at first the article was entitled "Last Rites of the Arcade," I soon decided that "A Homogenized Campus" would be better, as it would reflect the diversity-based argument set forth in the article while making a pun on ice cream.) I immediately set to work distributing both electronic and hard copies.

About this time, I began to drift away from the Daily Californian, with which I became increasingly disgusted as time passed. Their editorial on the BEARcade gleefully lauded Buenrostro's plans with a mix of stereotypes and half-truths, and when I ran into two Daily Cal editors one night on my way to the BEARcade, they joked that I was the one person who went there regularly. Their coverage on the progress of the BEARcade's supplanting was slanted to an unprecedented degree; although I was always told to present the viewpoints of all sides in my articles, not one BEARcade patron or supporter was quoted in the articles following the initial story announcing Buenrostro's plans. And while the BEARcade was constantly referred to as "seldomly used," not one mention was made of Gelateria Naia's proximity to the campus, or of the city's abundance of ice cream stores. Even after the closure of the BEARcade, the Daily Cal continues, to this day, to use intentionally misleading parlance, insisting that the BEARcade had been "revamped" or "overhauled," not wiped from the face of the campus. And, of course, it has continued to enthusiastically applaud Buenrostro for his initiative.

But I digress. I continued to distribute my article; some people even agreed with me, and to them I owe a great debt for keeping my hopes up in the face of an apathetic populace and the openly antagonistic employer from which I hid my activities. I even met one person who had called Buenrostro himself to protest. At one point, I fixed up the arcade's banner in a symbolic gesture; the rope I used to do so is still in my closet. I also signed the petition in mid-October to save the BEARcade, and encouraged everyone I knew to do so as well; the petition garnered 600 signatures in two days (but was wholly ignored by the ASUC.) For a while, I bought tokens for my friends in an attempt to buoy up the BEARcade's business and make it more attractive to the ASUC.

Yet, despite the conviction displayed by myself and others, the dreaded day came. On November 18, 2005, I and many others stayed in the BEARcade all evening. I was playing Guilty Gear XX--as Dizzy, against somebody's Slayer--when the lights and games were cut off for the last time. As we filed out, in my shock I forgot to thank the BEARcade staff for their hard work through the years. For all of us, it was a night that would not soon be forgotten. For Manny Buenrostro, it was Friday.

The closure of the BEARcade left me angry and depressed. At first, I poured my feelings into a comic that remains on my wall today, then I realized that not all hope was lost; the ASUC still owned the arcade machines. I contacted then-ASUC Senator Oren Gabriel, a friend of mine from the previous year. He was very supportive, helping me contact the rest of the ASUC Senate and ultimately get an audience with the Senate in person. On November 30, I attended the ASUC Senate's meeting and delivered an address; a few former BEARcade patrons came to listen. I explained to them the unfairness of their action and the difficult situation into which it had placed the competitive gaming community of Berkeley and beyond. I implored them to remember the Berkeley ideal of providing a rich and diverse experience to its students, and to consider the minority interests too. Several ASUC senators came to me afterward to compliment my courage and initiative. I went home confident that I had touched the humanity of a bureaucracy. And I continued to distribute my article.

The winter break came and went. Around early February, I wondered why I hadn't heard anything from the ASUC, and got in touch with Gabriel. After navigating a trail of ASUC staff (including Buenrostro himself,) I came to the corner office of John Rolle, who confirmed for me, with a "Sorry..." and a "what can I do?" look, that the BEARcade's machines had been sold off. I went home despondent in the knowledge that I had completely failed. For all my writing, drawing and speaking, for all my courage, conviction and determination, I had not made a difference at all. Buenrostro's plan had gone off without a hitch. In my anger at the ASUC for surrendering UC Berkeley to commercialism, and my anger at the Daily Californian for throwing aside its commitment to objectivity and equal representation in the name of ice cream, I ended up doing something I would come to regret.

I launched a covert flyering campaign against the new Gelateria Naia location (which didn't seem to be enjoying much business anyway.) The flyers proffered a quick rundown of the facts surrounding the replacement of the BEARcade by Gelateria Naia. Eventually, Gelateria Naia manager Trevor Morris contacted me. If he knew I was the perpetrator, he did not say so; he simply wanted an audience with the former BEARcade community, and decided to use me, a vocal figure within that community, as a messenger. I granted his request, and was surprised to learn that the BEARcade community disapproved of the flyering, agreeing with Morris that it was the ASUC's decision, not his, and that attacking Naia made BEARcade patrons look bad. They were right, of course; I stopped the campaign and quietly slipped away from the community, too ashamed to either maintain contact or admit that I was behind the flyers. And I tried to forget.

The Student Action party, the party of Buenrostro (and, ironically, Gabriel) would not let me forget. In late March, in anticipation of the coming ASUC elections, they put up self-promoting flyers claiming credit for, among other things, "Gelato Lounge on Sproul." Seeing this as an insult (perhaps irrationally) to the memory of the BEARcade and the efforts to save it, and wanting people to know the whole truth, I drew another comic lampooning the flyers. As election day approached, I wrote another article reminding readers of Student Action's role in the destruction of the BEARcade, and urging them not to vote for Student Action.

When I showed the article to my friends, many were surprised that I was still concerned with the matter. One friend, who had been sympathetic at the beginning, told me outright that I needed to "get over it." Perhaps he was right. But every time I see a gloating Student Action poster, every time I see Buenrostro all but deified for "bringing the Gelato Lounge to campus," every time I see one of the Gelateria Naia signs plastered all over Lower Sproul Plaza in such amounts that "Naia Plaza" would be a more fitting name for the area, I feel a certain pain inside. While I stew in my utter failure and my mistakes, I imagine Manny Buenrostro basking in praise somewhere, genuinely believing his misdeed to have bettered this campus, perhaps enjoying a cup of Gelateria Naia ice cream. My resentment for him, as well as my disenchantment with the school and the newspaper I once loved so dearly, will be the legacy of my time at Cal.