Gunshots in South Berkeley

I usually avoid talking about 'bad areas of town' because so often people define those with racist criteria, but my friend's mother got killed near there about five years ago. I was once standing in the window of a house on sacramento not too far from Ashby at 1am and a police was driving by, and he shined a flashlight up and asked me to come out, and asked if I had heard shots recently. Ashby and about King st. is probably the center of drug trade related violence in Berkeley presently. Things look different during day and night. During the day it is just the equivalent of a freeway with cars speeding through town. I wouldn't want to be a little kid at Malcolm elem school and have to deal #1 with the constant fast, impatient traffic, and 2, some of the hopeless people.

I heard it too, over a period of about 3 minutes. I was outside riding my bike up Acton from near Sacramento to the grocery store.

It sounded like large caliber guns. I also heard what sounded like the drone of one or more airplanes. Sounded like at least two different pitches of drone. It all sounded military...

...the sound was a more of a "boom" than the normal "pop" that is occasionally heard in this neighborhood. It did not sound like typical "ghetto" gunfire. It wasn't automatic weapons, it wasn't sustained; but it did sound like a large gun made it. Actually, it sounded like more than one kind of large gun.

Also, I heard this stuff around 9:00pm, not 6:15 when the article was posted, so this was possible a separate incident in the same area.

the word is that it was the survival research labs show by or near the Crucible studio on Murray street. They do something involving robots that shoot off cannons and spit flame and eat 2x4s.

see http://www.srl.org/shows/archive

I don't think it was the SRL show, first
post on this page was at 6pm, SRL show
was from 8pm to 9pm, and it was several
blocks away from Ashby & Sacramento,
it was at the intersection of Hollis and Ashby,
down by OSH hardware. They were running a
machine that makes a very loud booming noise,
an air cannon, but the blast and sound wave
is directed at one spot, and it's a big muffled
boom, it doesn't sound like a gunshot at all.
The cannon shoots about once every 2 minutes,
so you would have heard a boom, every couple
of minutes at regular intervals, doesn't sound
like a gun battle.

it was the Extra Action Marching Band!

The sounds I heard around 9 were not actually at Ashby and Sacto, they were near Ashby, but definitely west of Sacto. It sounded like it was between Sacto and San P, but it could have been at Crucible's space, now that I consider that possibility.





I'm guessing I heard some sort of "grand finale". A bunch of different robots/loud things, along with one or more cannons. In fact, when I heard it, I thought I was hearing mortar fire, which is probably what an "air cannon" sounds like. I was definitely scared, whatever the explanation.