A nice article on picking the local wild blackberries (which grow
in profusion here in the San Francisco area) is in the current
issue (18 August 2000, vol. 22, no. 45) of the (East Bay) "Express,"
a free weekly newspaper.

You can read the article online now at:

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/food/essay_current.html

The above URL will likely work for only a few days, and will be
replaced
by next week's food article sometime in the middle of the week. If you
want to read the article after that, you might be able to access
it via the homepage of the site above, clicking on the "Past Issues"
link and selecting the issue for the date given above.

It's a nice article, worth reading (in my opinion). It mentions
some of the challenges one faces in picking "wild" fruit, though
the Himalayan blackberry is an invasive plant (a weed) and grows
vigorously in urban settings as well as the wild.

Tom Billings
http://www.beyondveg.com