Seth Kugel
Students on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
I've long held a grudge against graduates of the University of California, Berkeley. As the graduate of a pricey private university in the wintry northeast, I've never been able to shake the uneasy feeling that they got a similar education at a fraction of the cost in far nicer weather.
So during my recent visit to the Bay Area, I decided to spend a day in Berkeley to see if such ill will was merited.
Twenty-four hours is not enough to get a true feel for a place. But in college I was pretty good at cramming for tests (thanks, Jolt Cola); these days I'm pretty good at cramming for low-cost tourism. In a college town, that means meals under $10, cheap activities (including a campus to explore), a rental bike instead of car and lots of time in the free outdoors.
I arrived on a Tuesday from San Francisco on the BART train ($3.75), walked from the North Berkeley stop to the cheapest lodging in town ($74.10, including tax, at the dingy Berkeley Inn), and then stopped into Berkeley Bikes and Skateboards (berkeleybikesandskateboards.com), just a few blocks away. The cheery and gracious owner set me up with a close-to-new KHS Ultra Sport 2.0 hybrid. At $30, and $5 for a helmet and lock, I've had cheaper rentals, but never better service — and the bike was a good match for the hilly college town.
By the time I was settled, it was time for lunch. I had heard a rumor that in the area of town called the Gourmet Ghetto, there was a fancy cheese shop with an attached pizzeria that offered daily one-off vegetarian pizza creations for $2.50 a slice, live music included. The idea of free live music at a pizza shop seemed far-fetched, but it was absolutely true: after a 10-minute ride, I locked up my bike outside the Cheese Board Collective (cheeseboardcollective.coop), where a three-man band was playing its blues-and-roots tunes, as everyone from toddlers to retirees chomped on slices topped with mozzarella and feta cheese, cremini mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, garlic oil and parsley. (Beer is $3 and wine $5; my choice, water, was self-serve and free.) Three take-aways: every cheese shop should have an attached pizzeria, every pizzeria should have live music, and feta cheese is a far underused pizza ingredient.
Still, it was a small lunch, so I went back to the cheese shop side to look for a snack to eat later. The shop, which opened in 1971, has great service, but its cheeses aren't bargains. That is, except in the little bin marked "Bargains," where little orphan chunks that are the gourmet equivalent of Kraft Singles get wrapped up and sold for cheap. I picked up a $1.85 chunk of Cambozola Classic, a triple cream, blue-veined beauty, and a still-hot $2 sourdough baguette; I planned to combine them at an ad hoc picnic on the Berkeley campus.
I picked up a map of the university (at the city's visitor's center) and wandered. It looked like a pretty normal campus to me, though I was impressed by the greens, an actual grove of redwoods in the campus botanical gardens, and especially a lack of the neo-Gothic pretension of many universities back east. I paid $3, did the standard trip up to the top of the 307-foot bell tower known as the Campanile to take in the view of the hills and the bay, then engaged in two of my favorite college campus activities.
First, attempting to take pictures worthy of an admissions brochure. Blue skies and the green grass of Memorial Glade, set just in front of the Campanile, made for a great backdrop. But the group of multiethnic friends I had hoped to find sprawled out studying, the Campanile perfectly framed in the background, must have been congregating elsewhere that day. It also served perfectly as my picnic spot.
Second, observing college students in their native habitat. That was more successful, first at the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, a contemporary building striking for the 4,200-square-foot Asian-inspired bronze screen on the exterior and, inside, tapestries, filtered sunlight and dramatic overlooks from upper floors. I plucked out a Japanese book of lusciously colored Asian prints, sat down at a desk and thumbed through it as students around me tapped on laptops.
Then it was on to Caffe Strada, a mostly outdoor student haven for espresso ($1.55) and Wi-Fi (free). To my left, students discussing a science course made jokes I didn't get about radioactivity; to my right, an undergraduate met with a teaching assistant to discuss a paper on undocumented immigrants; behind me, a guy flirted impressively with a young woman at the table next to his.
For some odd reason, no students wandered up and invited me to a raucous Tuesday underground party. (Their loss: just think of the stories of college life in the '90s they missed out on!) So after a stop at Café Durant for Taco Tuesdays ($1 tacos and $2 Coronas; similar deals are available at other spots around in town), I went to see if I could score a $20 rush ticket for the Aurora Theater's production of Amy Herzog's highly regarded play, "After the Revolution."
I scanned cultural listings in town and on campus, but found nothing free and little within my budget. Tickets at the Aurora were $35, and although rush tickets were released 30 minutes before showtime for $20, I could see online that there were only three tickets left. I risked it anyway and scored a prime seat for the very Berkeley-appropriate play about three generations of a radical-lefty family during the blacklist era. The crowd seemed riveted — the traditional intermission restroom race was delayed as audience members all around me burst into discussion of the characters.
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