When you are actually in Berkeley, it can be pretty darn Berkeley. Just check out these books …

This was at a block sale, not too far from my parents’ house, where it looked like someone was getting rid of their entire book collection, dating back to at least the early ’70s … leaning heavily towards the feminist, radical, and groovy.

I grew up here, so this was all pretty familiar territory. After all, it wasn’t until long after leaving the Berkeley Unified School District that I learned that most places didn’t get a day off on March 8th for International Women’s Day.

It was fun to dig through the books.

Sometimes even the back covers were good reading.

As easy as it is to poke fun at this stuff, I think it’s awesome that people were self-publishing their own freaky stuff back in the day — or even today! But that doesn’t mean that some of it isn’t kind of ridiculous.

Like this guide to communes. Can you spot the naked dudes? How about the guy rocking the turtleneck with no pants?

It’s not just a list of communes (including the Hog Farm: “about 75 people living on 14 acres of land in New Mexico, all taking care of each other and this one hog and her friend … and 15 chickens that lay ten eggs a day on methedrine”), it also has articles like “How to Make Group Marriage.”

This is the end of the article. Is that the answer?

Another magazine had some pretty great classified ads.

And of course, there were guidebooks on how to build your own geodesic dome.

Honestly, I was surprised that it hadn’t been cleaned out by book dealers, and I sort of hoped whatever was left over would get donated to a library, because a lot of that stuff was super obscure and interesting. We left a lot behind, but between me, my husband, and my dad, we ended up with a bit of a pile …