In the 1960s, a storefront in a one-story, commercial building at 2136 San Pablo Avenue was home to the Steppenwolf bar, a well-known night spot run by local activist Max Scherr. Students, professors, chess players, and whoever else wandered in were served on tables made from wood planks over barrels. Beer cost $1.25, the lighting was dim, the air, smoky, and the classical music, loud. One night, I walked in to the emotional pleading of a Shostakovich violin concerto at full blast.

Painted on the north side of the exterior wall of the building were lines from Hermann Hesse’s, Der Steppenwolf, referring to the sign over a door in the novel that protagonist, Henry Haller, sees during a walk in the old quarter of his town: “Magic Theatre—For Madmen Only—Price of Admission—Your Mind.”  The words aptly express the essence of this off-beat club that was a part of the energy of the time.

Max Scherr was best known for his Berkeley Barb, a counter-cultural New Left voice of everything from politics to sex to rock music, that circulated both locally and nationally. Bill Miller, proprietor of a Telegraph Avenue head shop, The General Store, and one-time Berkeley mayoral candidate, later managed the business.

When I worked at the Steppenwolf, Bill was the owner. Mario Savio worked there, too. Mario and I had an undergraduate philosophy class together before he dropped out to become the eloquent spokesperson for the Free Speech Movement that was so much a part of the 1960s paradigm shift in cultural awareness.

Over time, the Steppenwolf morphed from a place to hear Shostakovich to a well-regarded popular West Coast venue for country, folk, rhythm and blues, and rock—one of a number of such clubs along San Pablo Avenue. One night, when I was working the door to collect a couple of dollars admission for the Loading Zone, a Berkeley rock-soul band, Bill told me to reimburse Ralph Gleason, the widely respected music critic of folk, pop and jazz, whom I had unwittingly charged.

The doors of the Steppenwolf were closed by the time I left for Alaska in 1975. When I returned, I could still make out the faded letters of Hesse’s works, but just barely.