Photo by Nacio Jan Brown for San Francisco Express Times (1969)

“Monsieur Big Bill Miller, former provo, currently a candidate for city council, pictured with comrades above, has been ordered to vacate The Store by the man who holds the lease, Mr. Yarmo, owner of Yarmo’s dress shop, next door to the store on Telegraph Avenue.

The Store is a teenage hangout-haven. They created it, they seem to run it. Selling old clothes. Talking tactics. The Store, like Moe’s books across the street, stays open long into the street war, letting people rest in temporary safety.

Bill is willing to find another location so that Yarmo can have his shoe department. But Yarmo is in a hurry. On February 18th, Bill was informed that he had three days to get out or start paying $1000 a month rent. Last summer, Yarmo kept a cool head. He felt he needed police “protection” and urged other merchants to cooperate with the authorities. Bill suggested that protection from the police was more like it.

Tete a tete. Nose to nose. Bill told me: “I understand Mr. Yarmo’s been threatened and I’m sorry about that…”

Meanwhile, as Bill and I spoke, a Berkeley prowl car double-parked out in front of Pepe’s, three doors down. Kids whisked by the door. Bill excused himself. I followed him out.

Two young cops grappled with a longhair in the tiny space between their car and a parked car. He would not go. Not for “spitting on the sidewalk” as the cops said. Forty Avenue hips surrounded the car. Kicked in the headlights. Flattened the front two tires. The police could barely control their prisoner. A strawberry malt splattered across the lovely brown uniform. They hobbled off in their crippled car, with prisoner, to the peppery tune of bottles heaved in crossfire, accompanied by loud unforced laughter. Word of the incident flashed down the street.

The following day, street brothers joined campus militants in the first major skirmish of 1969.”