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Billie Jean Walk (Path #40)

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From our pages on Path Stories:
Billie Jean Walk
By ADAM RANEY Special to the Planet
(October 24, 2003)

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Bille Jean Walk by Karen Kemp
Berkeley Path Wanderers Association Newsletter -- Summer 1999 -- Vol. 2 No. 3

Hot and tired from the bike ride up Euclid, I passed right by Billy Jean Walk and the huge Sycamore lofting up to the sun which marks the entrance to her stairs. At the curb under the Sycamore sits a black Chrysler DeLuxe, with its front split windshield, gearshift on the wheel, bench seats (the weave frayed considerably with cotton peering out to the world)—from 1952. And next to Billy Jean Walk, in a garage, sleeps a gray-corral 1962 Chrysler New Yorker polished like a race horse and covered with yellow and mint green blankets.

Billy Jean is the grand entrance to three homes and inside one dwells the owner of these two cars (it’s also a pub­lic path). Of the ’52 he said “It’s a reli­able car, use it for all my local errands.” The ’62 New Yorker is a bit of Berkeley history and is part of the reason he bought it. The original owner, Mrs. Kristine Grosfemay lived near the Marin Circle, and for years taught typing at Berkeley High School.

Then he went on to tell me about other historical notes: in his house, built around 1935 he discovered a beautiful scripted signature under the original wallpaper hanging in the kitchen; the tramway at the top of the path was built in 1969. And of Billy Jean Walk he said, “The path is kind: it helps hold the land in place and allows the water to pour down the steps, keeping it away from the houses.” He showed me a 7˝ gap where the lower stairs are pulling away from themselves, evidence of how the bottom of the hillside wants to slide down to the shore, while the high side just wants to stay put. He truly loves living on the path.

The path was built sometime before 1931. That year a beautiful article appeared in the San Francisco Examiner dedicating the path to a baby girl, Billy Jean Harris. “A little girl who has a street of her own. A street of steps reaching up from Euclid to Hilldale.” Her father, Joe Harris, who owned the House of Harris Haberdashery, was a very successful mer­chant and very active in Berkeley politics. He said Billy Jean was adopted and “brought sunshine into the lives of myself and my wife, that we’d like to spread a little of our happiness by having this path named as a tribute to babyhood.”

Walking the path itself is like walking through sunshine. Upon arriving at the top of the first flight, a sloping pathway veers under light shade from Pittosporum and Bottlebrush which lean toward each other and peer over the cool cinder block wall. A pocket of sun waits at the end of this pass, moths and butterflies dancing in the bright green as Billy Jean jogs to the right and hides away behind the last of the trees. A hummingbird scratches out her tune.

Here the ivy bank glides upward under more canopies. And from under the apple tree and potato vine, alongside a beautifully woven, tawny fence, you can look up at the quietly, confident last rise of steps. It is held aloft toward the blue sky by the Nasturtium and Vinca Major, and crowned by what in its day must have been a golden gondola, with swiss-like painted patterns on its curved sidewalls and suspended by a red cable. Don and his wife built the tramway to cart groceries from the top of the hill to their home midway on the path. She now lives a few houses down the road.

Billy Jean Walk was named long before the ’62 Chrysler New Yorker was purchased by the Berkeley High school teacher, long ago when the hillside was bare to the sun. And it has been a long time since Billy Jean has lived in Berkeley. But occasionally she comes back for a visit and sometimes she is caught having her photograph taken under her sign. She said “People ask me, ““Why are you taking that picture?”” —everyone of course thinks it’s named after Billy Jean King—and so the path makes me feel really happy, because I wouldn’t be known otherwise.”