Features

With over 100 new vendors and live musical entertainment, the 17th annual Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair hits the street this weekend.  

The street will be transformed into a pedestrian mall, closed to traffic between Bancroft and Dwight ways for the fair, which runs Saturday, Sunday and Dec. 21-24 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.  

Linda Hall, coordinator and promoter for the holiday fair, said it should be interesting fitting the over 300 vendors onto the avenue.  

Hall was in charge of recruiting the new vendors, some of whom are coming from outside California, and said she has been forced to turn away interested vendors away for the past month. 

Hall said vendors will be selling every type of hand-made craft imaginable including jewelry, bead work, gift-boxes, soaps, stained glass, pottery, drums, wind chimes and mobiles. 

“You name it. We’ve got it,” she said.  

All vendors are screened and licensed by the city to ensure that they make the products they sell and don’t buy them.  

Susan Rodriguez, marketing and promotions coordinator for the street fair, said even the homeless of Berkeley benefit. They are hired for security and clean-up work.  

Russell Chatman who, along with his wife Lee, has been selling women’s jewelry along Telegraph for the past 10 years said he looks forward to the fair every year because Berkeley is such a diverse community.  

“Everybody’s happy and they can walk right up the middle of Telegraph and not get hit.” he said.  

Chatman said as it gets closer to Christmas, he sees more and more vendors on Telegraph. Any other time of the year there would be perhaps 50 vendors on the street each day, but this week he said there have been 100 or more vendors there selling their wares. Chatman said his business quadruples during the holiday season. 

He said he wouldn’t be out on Telegraph on a Tuesday if it were not the holidays. 

Loraine McMurray, who sells high quality stones, necklaces and earrings on Telegraph, has taken part in all 17 of the Berkeley Holiday Street Fairs. McMurray said the fair is a nice place to get hand-made specialties that you can’t get anywhere else.  

The mood of the fair is “very positive, mellow, and fun,” she said, adding that it’s nice to have the street blocked off because it makes it like a festival.  

Rosamund Hansen has come to Berkeley from Twisp, Wash., to sell her scented products at the holiday fair for the past several years.  

“I have found the true spirit of Christmas is here,” she said, adding “Everybody likes to come to the Bay Area, it’s a special place. It’s nice to plug into a multi-cultural community, it inspires me.” Hansen said that over the years of participating in the holiday fair she has had many repeat customers. 

Former street artist Gianna Ranuzzi, who now works for the Telegraph Area Association, a nonprofit community development corporation, described the holiday fair as “a gathering of the tribes.” The TAA has sponsored a free shuttle service that will run between downtown Berkeley BART and Telegraph Avenue every 15 minutes between 10:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. 

The TAA has also worked with Mark Weinstein of Amoeba Music to coordinate live music for the fair. Musical entertainment will be provided on the weekend days of the fair between noon and 4 p.m. at the corner of Haste Street and Telegraph Avenue and on the Sather Mall of the UC Berkeley campus.  

Performers include the Len Patterson Trio, the Dave Slusser Trio, Clifton Burton Quartet, and Rhythm Kitchen.