Bay Area Photo Community Rallies Around Beloved Berkeley Shop After Smash-and-Grab

Jen Waicukauski’s phone blared just after 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning, warning of a break-in at their Berkeley camera store. Waicukauski and their partner rushed out the door in pajamas, watching through Waicukauski’s phone as burglars hustled cameras, film and equipment out of the store.

An hour later, they arrived in front of Looking Glass Photo & Camera, a fixture of the East Bay’s photography community for more than 50 years. Waicukauski said it looked “like a bomb went off.”

“To see [that] the entire front of the building ultimately had been completely destroyed, I burst into tears,” they told KQED.

Looking Glass’ dual glass doors, surrounded by a grid of windows, had been rammed in by a vehicle, which pounded into the storefront four times. Shards of glass showered the floor of the main showroom, and inventory left behind was rustled through and knocked off of shelves.

“I just wasn’t prepared for that level of damage and then to come in and then see just the sea of glass,” Waicukauski said. “There were just pieces of the building hanging. The glass was still falling.”

They said the moment was overwhelming — “I just didn’t quite know what to do,” Waicukauski recalled. But almost immediately, people started showing up to help.

The next day, the store reopened for business — operating mostly from a temporary back counter — and long-time customers and enthusiasts have raised more than $50,000 to go toward Looking Glass’ recovery.

Waicukauski said the support the store has received in the days since has been humbling.

“I guess I just never am sure if we deserve all the love that people have given us, so it just means so much to know that what we do actually matters,” Waicukauski said. “I like to think that it does, but when everybody shows up, it’s like, ‘OK, that’s cool, that’s amazing.’”

A challenging path ahead

As a construction crew and employees sifted through the damage on Sunday, the financial reality of the burglary began to set in.

“Everybody [was] just starting to calculate in their minds the actual cost of what this is going to take to get up and running again and how much we have lost,” Waicukauski told KQED. “Many of them also know what we’ve been through as a business over the years and just how hard our industry is.”

Looking Glass is one of the only small camera stores still operating in the Bay Area, in part because of the slim profit margins on selling cameras. And during the pandemic, other services such as rentals, classes and demos weren’t possible.

The store also just finished a move into a new Fifth Street location, which was expensive and interrupted business over the summer. On top of all that, it is in the midst of a transition in its operations, reviving rental services and moving away from demonstrations and displays — which Waicukauski said have gotten more dangerous because of smash-and-grabs like the one that happened Sunday.

Still, when workers cleaning the store floated the idea of a GoFundMe page to jumpstart recovery, Waicukauski said they were hesitant.

“It’s weird to ask for help. We’ve always asked for the support of our community,” they said. “But to literally go out and do a GoFundMe where you’re asking people for their hard-earned dollars to help us make it through a really tough time?

“My partner and I had this conversation where it was, ‘Are we prepared for nobody to really contribute?’ We can’t expect people to do anything, but we can’t not ask for help right now either.”

‘The whole freaking planet is showing up’

Since a fundraiser was started for the store, though, hundreds of people have raised more than $52,800 toward its extensive repairs. A social media page managed by the trust of famed Bay Area photographer Ansel Adams amplified the effort, and Waicukauski said people have been showing up in person to place orders and volunteer their time.

“The whole freaking planet is showing up right now,” they said. “I cannot believe the way that it has been shared, the people that are just coming in, [asking] ‘What do you have that I can buy?’”

Ginger Fierstein, who works at Looking Glass’ film developing partner next door, said the store is a major part of the local photography network.

“Looking Glass has done so much to foster community and be this core hub,” she said. “I would see some people come in and just yap to some of the employees.”

Photo Lab, where she works, develops all of the film dropped off next door at Looking Glass. Even when the store was in its previous locations further away, Fierstein said people often took the extra step to take their film there.

“You can come to the [Photo] Lab directly and get your film back a little faster or your digital scans developed by email instead of USB, but people still loved going to Looking Glass,” she said. “Despite the slight inconvenience, they would make it like a ritual to go there and really build that into a part of their art practice.”

Marin Stuart, who interned at the store in 2015, said the community made it worth getting caught in rush hour traffic from El Cerrito to go work at Looking Glass after long days in high school.

“I just loved the vibe of the store, a lot of people who came in were characters,” said Stuart, who still makes photographs as part of her job with the city of Eugene, Oregon.

“Having the ability to talk to other photographers, the other staff,” she continued. “They were all super kind and nice and all were really invested in my development, both for my career and as a photographer. And so, just getting to chat with them and talk photography with all these different people who were into different kinds of photography all over the place was super cool. And Jen was super pivotal in my growth.”

What’s next

While the first few months in the Fifth Street space have been challenging, Waicukauski said the smash-and-grab hasn’t changed their path for revamping Looking Glass.

“It was starting to make sense and starting to look like a sustainable plan moving forward,” they said of the time just before the break-in. “This is feeling like we’ve made the right choice, people are responding to it well, and we’re developing something really kind of cool. A new version of a camera store.”

That’s going to include a new website reviving Looking Glass’ rentals program, which Waicukauski said will be a top priority as they begin recovery efforts.

“Even though [rental equipment] is something that will likely be covered by insurance, I don’t know when that check is coming,” Waicukauski said. “Any money that comes in now will be going towards rebuilding that, which will then get funneled into the other costs that are coming.”

They also hope to lean into the relationships a camera store can foster, introducing a community platform meant to help local photographers connect in person. Some of Looking Glass’ classes and workshops have given rise to groups who now photograph together, Waicukauski said, and they hope to host more events like a Women’s Photo Walk in December.

“We are working on a way to help people find friends to just go out and take pictures with because it is not safe to do it by yourself — that’s part of it — and it’s also nice to have company and connect around a shared interest,” Waicukauski said.

“Having people to go out and do stuff with and having a reliable source to find those people, that’s one of the things that we want to do in a bigger and more meaningful way as we move forward.”