While reading Charles Perry’s account of Haight Ashbury in the 1960’s, I’ve become curious about the “Berkeley Barb”, which he mentions extensively. There is actually this website, which however disclaims any relationship with the old paper. What I’m actually interested in finding out is how long the Barb had been around by the time the late 60’s arrived, and what the “Barb” in the title was supposed to mean. I had always assumed that it was supposed to suggest a “prickly” or “stinging” editorial style. But “barb” has also been used as a pejorative term for students who don’t belong to Greek letter societies, or “Greeks”, and “barb” obviously comes from “barbarian” in this case. I don’t know if this type of usage was current at Berkeley at the time. It’s actually very old; I learned of it when I read of Herbert Hoover’s Stanford days, in the early 1890’s.
So are there any Berkeleyites or San Franciscans from that era who can clear any of this up for me?
