Berkeley’s Telegraph Holiday Street Fair nearly canceled over new city fire code

By John Ramos

As the Bay Area gears up for the holiday shopping rush, one tradition in Berkeley almost came to an end. The annual Telegraph Holiday Street Fair was nearly canceled for running afoul of a new city fire code. But in what feels to some like a Christmas miracle, the city has backed down.

The Telegraph Avenue Holiday Street Fair was gearing up for its 42nd year, offering homemade gifts and live music, when it got the bad news.  

The city said the event would have to move because of a state fire code that requires 26 feet of clear roadway on streets with buildings over 30 feet high. That’s to allow ladder trucks to utilize their stabilizing outriggers in case of a fire.  

Berkeley resident Charles Siegel co-authored an op/ed piece appealing to the city’s common sense.

“That doesn’t really work in Berkeley,” he said,  “because in Berkeley, the typical street has only 22 feet of clear roadway.  And it’s not realistic, it’s not going to happen.  We’d have to remove parking on one side of the street for almost all the two-lane streets in downtown and south campus, and all the residential streets that have apartment buildings.”

Siegel discovered that the state’s 26-foot rule was optional and that the code wasn’t being enforced the rest of the year, just during the Telegraph street fair, and for the Juneteenth parade on Adeline Street. Siegel was upset that the enforcement seemed selective and arbitrary.

“City staff said, we’re applying the law and we’re moving the street festival away from Telegraph Avenue,” he said.  “And the Telegraph Avenue Street Fair will be on this block of Adeline Street, where there are no buildings over 30 feet tall.”

But the Telegraph Avenue businesses think the Telegraph Avenue Holiday Fair needs to happen on Telegraph Avenue. Doris Moskowitz owns Moe’s Books and she also wrote a letter of complaint to the city.

“I understand it’s important to be safe,” she said, “but I also think it’s important to be happy and to have a little bit of hope and feel good this time of year.  And the people are looking to Berkeley as a place where people have a sense of what’s actually reasonable.”

Perhaps Doris’s letter did the trick. Or maybe it was all the other people who complained, but the city relented and approved the permit for the street fair to happen on Telegraph.  

Louis Cuneo is one of the street vendors, selling artistic photographs, and has been participating in the Holiday Fair since the 1980s.  He said people feel the street fair is important to give the city life.

“It was too much of an outcry against it,” he said about the reversal. “The city has to be a little open to possibilities.”

“I think in Berkeley we need to make room for everybody, you know?” said Moskowitz.  “And if the vendors who’ve been coming here for over 40 years want to come here, we need to make that possible.”

So, the 42nd annual Telegraph Holiday Fair will continue.  And Siegel said it’s his understanding the city is crafting a new fire code that may include an exemption for street fairs, citywide.  He said the city is expected to take up the matter of the updated fire code at its December 3rd meeting.  Meanwhile, the holiday street fair will take place over three weekends, beginning on Saturday, Dec. 6 and ending on Sunday, Dec. 21.