Berkeley, California – Everything From A to Z

Berkeley will surprise those who recall it as the counter-culture center of the Sixties. Free Speech and flower power are forever in the city “DNA,” but Berkeley has evolved into a culinary and cultural travel destination with a “green” soul. You’ll still see more tie-dye per capita in Berkeley, but a deeper look reveals a dynamic city filled with superb theaters, restaurants, and shops.

Learn more at the city’s official travel website, http://visitberkeley.com

Authentic

Berkeley is one of the “50 Most Authentic Places on Earth,” according to British Airways’ inflight magazine, High Life. In a cover story, Berkeley joins Los Angeles as the only California destinations (and one of only four in the U.S.) honored by an expert panel of travel journalists including Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler, who penned Berkeley’s entry: “Right across the Bay from San Francisco (you can clearly see it except when the fog rolls in), this is a place that firmly believes in doing things its own way. After all, it is ‘the only city in America with its own foreign policy’ and they do say UC Berkeley has parking spaces reserved for Nobel Prize winners.” The article leads with this: “Authenticity in travel and tourism is something to celebrate.”

Berkeley Repertory Theatre

The Berkeley Repertory Theatre is on a roll and its 2011/12 season looks like it will stay that way, with Anna Deavere Smith, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rita Moreno, Dael Orlandersmith, Chay Yew, and Britain’s celebrated Kneehigh Theatre Company coming to town. Berkeley Rep has grown from a storefront stage to a national leader in innovative theatre. Known for its core values of imagination and excellence, the nonprofit has provided a welcoming home for emerging and established artists since 1968. With two stages, a school, and a Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, Berkeley Rep is proud to premiere exhilarating new plays. In the last six years alone, the company has helped send six shows to Broadway: American Idiot, Bridge & Tunnel, Ghetto Klown, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), Passing Strange, and Wishful Drinking.

Culinary Adventures

Famous for student activism during the Sixties, Berkeley is still “counter-culture,” but with an entirely different flavor. The city is a culinary “theme park,” with adventures and experiences around every corner and across every counter. Berkeley is known for its European-style marketplace of specialty shops offering fresh baked goods, cheeses, handmade chocolates and fine wines. Take Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto Culinary Walking Tour for a great (and filling!) introduction to it all. Brew tours are available all across the city, including Pyramid Brewery & Alehouse, Trumer Pils, and Takara Sake. Inspired? Sharpen your skills with a cooking class at Kitchen on Fire in North Berkeley’s Epicurious Garden, then get what you need at Sur La Table on Fourth Street or The Spanish Table to become a home chef hero.

Downtown Berkeley

Downtown Berkeley exemplifies a best-practices trend that is sweeping the country: the transformation of city centers from “9 to 5” commercial hubs to stylish, 24/7 “live/work/play” destinations. The Downtown Berkeley Arts District is a nationally-recognized model of “arts led” downtown revitalization. Once lined with auto body shops, the Arts District now “rolls” with live theatre, live music, and performing arts education. Here, you’ll find the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Aurora Theatre Company, Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, and The Marsh Berkeley. Recently, over $150 million has been invested to renovate historic buildings and construct new projects, further changing the face of Berkeley’s downtown. Downtown hotels are experiencing a renewal of their own, led by the multi-million dollar renovation of the historic Hotel Shattuck Plaza.

Epicurious Garden

An only-in-Berkeley culinary experience, Epicurious Garden is a food court with a fresh, local and sustainable twist. The “Garden” is a North Shattuck haven of retail stores and gourmet take-out stalls including Alegio Chocolate, Lush Gelato, Picoso Taqueria, Kirala Japanese Cuisine, Soop, Mint Leaf, Kitchen on Fire, and Imperial Tea Court, with a Zen-style garden where diners can brown-bag it, Berkeley style.

Flower Power

A pair of world-class botanic gardens is located in Berkeley. The University of California Botanical Garden’s 34 acres contain plants from around the world arranged by region. Famous for its large number of rare and endangered species, it’s located on the UC Berkeley campus in Strawberry Canyon, overlooking San Francisco Bay. Set in Tilden Park’s Wildcat Canyon, the East Bay Regional Parks Botanic Garden is dedicated to the native plant life of California’s many clearly defined floral areas, such as seacoast bluffs and coastal mountains, interior valleys, arid foothills, alpine zones, and two kinds of desert.

Golf

Tilden Park Golf Course is a scenic, challenging 18-hole championship test that unfurls through a canyon high in the Berkeley Hills. It is one of the Bay Area’s finest public courses and a great place to walk through sylvan woods, striking a little white ball as you go. Tilden GC’s Bay Area Golf Learning Center is renowned for its instructional programs and prowess.

Holidays

Berkeley is alight with high-quality holiday experiences to celebrate the season. Joy, Berkeley style includes the simple pleasures of finding a parking space, the absence of bridge tolls and metering lights, gourmet food nearly everywhere one turns, and an abundance of spirit and cheer. All across town, local artists and artisans open their studios in December for the Artisans Holiday Open Studios. All work is handcrafted, and many pieces are one-of-a-kind.

Indian Rock Park

Indian Rock Park is one of the best places to go rock climbing in the SF Bay Area. The park’s facilities include a large rock formation with carved steps, outcroppings for rock climbing, and inviting perches for savoring the panoramic SF Bay view. How’s this for credentials: Dick Leonard, the “father of modern rock climbing,” and David Brower, Sierra Club legend and founder of Earth Island Institute and Friends of the Earth, earned their rock climbing chops at Indian Rock.

Jupiter

Serving handcrafted beers and ales along with award-winning wood fired pizzas, sandwiches, and salads, Jupiter is a spirited downtown gathering place. Housed in a restored 1890s livery stable, the two-story venue is always hopping, with a dozen house brews as well as another 20 local and regional craft beers representing the best of California and the West.

Kites

The shoreline of the Berkeley Marina features a walking path and grassy areas that may offer some of the best kite-flying conditions in the West, with predictably strong cross-bay breezes blowing in from the Golden Gate. The Berkeley Kite Festival and West Coast Kite Championships soar here each summer. Frisbees fly well here, too.

Lawrence Hall of Science

Set high atop the Berkeley Hills with a panoramic view of San Francisco Bay, the UC Berkeley Lawrence Hall of Science puts the focus on interactivity to make science fun and accessible for all. Lawrence Hall’s outdoor science park, “Forces That Shape the Bay,” enables visitors to divert a river, trigger an earthquake, move tectonic plates, and learn about ocean creatures. Picnic tables and lawn areas make Lawrence Hall a great place to dine al fresco.

Music

Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2008, is the longest-running full-time folk and traditional music venue west of the Mississippi River. Its listening-room atmosphere, along with the quality and cultural diversity of the performances, has earned the Freight a stellar reputation from artists and audiences alike. The Freight & Salvage recently relocated to an expanded new, acoustically sparkling, 440-seat, green and LEED-certified venue in Berkeley’s Downtown Arts District.

North Shattuck

Also known as “Gourmet Ghetto,” Berkeley’s North Shattuck neighborhood is anchored by world-famous Chez Panisse, owned and operated by culinary luminary Alice Waters. The village, eminently pedestrian-positive, also features the Cheese Board Collective (one of the nation’s oldest worker-owned cooperatives) offering fresh cheeses, breads, and other baked delights. The Cheese Board also runs a popular, line-out-the-door pizzeria one door down with live jazz piano. North Shattuck is also the home of the original Peet’s Coffee & Tea; the Vine Street Peet’s features a sweet little coffee museum. Just across Vine, and how appropriate, is the Vintage Berkeley Wine Shop, stocked with direct-from- the-vineyard, small production, hard to find, and affordable wines. North Shattuck is where Berkeley’s all-organic Farmers’ Market takes place every Thursday and serves as the setting for the annual Spice of Life Festival, an epic culinary fete held each October.

Organic

Shopping at some of Berkeley’s revered food markets can feel like a “u-pick-em” farm tour. Check out Berkeley Bowl (two locations), Andronico’s, Whole Foods, and Monterey Market for fresh organic produce and some fruits and vegetables you may never have seen or heard of before. An open-air option is Berkeley’s Farmers’ Markets, held Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Paths

Walking in Berkeley is a cherished pastime. The city’s greenbelts, gardens, parks and groves invite ambulation. Pick up a copy of the Downtown Berkeley Architectural Walking Tour brochure at the Visitor Information Center and take a step back in time. The Berkeley Path Wanderers Association offers an extensive network of more than 130 pedestrian pathways, winding up into the Berkeley Hills and many offering spectacular glimpses of the Bay. Pathway Maps are also available at the Visitor Information Center.

Quiet

Visitors in search of a place for quiet contemplation will not have to venture far in Berkeley. Most of the city has grown up around, in between and among grand green spaces, ranging from pocket parks to regional reserves.

Visitor Information Center

Visitors can collect a wealth of free information at the Berkeley Visitor Information Center, open Monday — Friday 9 to 5 downtown at 2030 Addison Street, suite 102, one block north of the downtown Berkeley BART station. A wide variety of brochures and literature is available, and visitors can ask specific questions of the center’s superbly informed staff.

Rose Gardens

One of Berkeley’s many city parks, the Berkeley Municipal Rose Garden is considered by many to be the finest rose garden in Northern California. This beautiful setting is graced with 3,000 rose bushes (250 varieties). The roses are pruned in January in preparation for Mother’s Day when the garden is bursting in bloom. The benches at the top of the garden offer a fine place to view the sunset behind the Golden Gate Bridge. And as if the place needed another reason to visit it… there are four tennis courts, maintained in club-level condition, open to the public. The Rose Garden Inn is another wonderfully thorny spot, and a historic lodging option located on Telegraph Ave.

Sather Tower

Sather Tower – known popularly as the Campanile – may be the most prominent landmark in the East Bay. Built in 1914, the 307-ft. tower it is modeled after St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice, Italy. An elevator takes visitors to the observation platform for a panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay Area. Carillon concerts take place every day at 7:50 a.m., noon and 6:00 p.m. Longer concerts are conducted Sundays at 2:00 p.m.

Tilden Regional Park

Set high in the Berkeley Hills above Grizzly Peak Road, Tilden Regional Park offers a variety of recreational pursuits across more than 2,000 acres. Favorites include hiking the Laurel Canyon Trail; swimming at Lake Anza; riding on Tilden’s Herschell-Spillman merry-go-round, a splendid antique carousel with hand-carved and beautifully painted wooden carousel animals; climbing aboard the Tilden Park/Redwood Valley Railway, an operating narrow gauge steam railway; hand-feeding livestock at The Little Farm; and playing through the tree-lined fairways of Tilden Park Golf Course.

University of California

Every year thousands of people visit the Berkeley campus. It is renowned worldwide for the distinction of its faculty and students, the scope of its research and publications, and the quality of its libraries. The campus is an urban oasis that preserves much of the tranquil beauty of California’s early years. The wooded, 178-acre property is known for its architectural and historical landmarks as well as the scenic passage of Strawberry Creek traversing the campus from end to end. The UC Berkeley Visitor Center is located in 101 Sproul Hall near the intersection of Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue.

Waterfront

Berkeley’s bayfront is a recreation hub with many activities for all ages. The Berkeley Marina is headquarters for boating, fishing and fresh air. Fine dining restaurants provide breathtaking views of San Francisco Bay and the working marina; bay and dining cruises embark for fun-filled voyages. Outdoor recreation opportunities include the Adventure Playground, the Shorebird Nature Center, an off-leash dog area, and a 3,000-foot long pier for fishing (no license required) and walking out onto the Bay. Low-cost sailing and windsurfing opportunities are offered at the Cal Sailing Club or Cal Adventures. Both are open to the public. The Bay Area Bay Trail, 90-acre Cesar Chavez Park, and a 17-acre off-leash dog park are all popular with locals and visitors alike. The Doubletree Hotel Berkeley Marina offers deluxe waterfront accommodations.

Axe, The

UC Berkeley students and alumni revere the axe as the trophy for the winner of the Cal/Stanford football game. It has been known to be stolen by one side or the other and is an enduring symbol of the intense but generally good-natured rivalry between the two academically-heralded institutions.

Young & Restless

The Adventure Playground at the Berkeley Marina is an innovative destination for kids of all ages. Many unusual kid designed and built forts, boats, and towers are the main attractions here. Riding the “zip line” is another crowd pleaser. The Berkeley Skate Park, located at Harrison Park, is an 18,000 square foot park that contains a large oval bowl and, fun box and areas for beginners. The park is free and open 7 days a week.

Zellerbach Auditorium

Zellerbach Auditorium is the home concert and performing arts venue for Cal Performances, the performing arts presenter and producer for UC Berkeley. Zellerbach’s technical merits – lighting, stagecraft, and acoustics – attract headlining artists of dance, music and theater throughout the year. In addition, Cal Performances manages Zellerbach Playhouse, Hearst Greek Theater, Hertz Hall and Wheeler Auditorium. With events to rival that of the major artistic capitals of the world, including New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo, Cal Performances brings a compelling collection of artists and genres to Berkeley audiences.

May 12, 2011   Posted in: United States West