PAGES : Berkeley Travels ‘On the Loose’

The battle of the budget travel guides is heating up. This fall, when Fodor’s publishes “The Berkeley Guides,” it hopes to give the best-selling Harvard University “Let’s Go” series a run for its money.

Printed in soybean-based ink on recycled paper and with a way West Coast vernacular, the politically correct guides are compiled by low-budget, trekking UC Berkeley students. The first “On the Loose” guides will cover Mexico and Eastern Europe.

“Berkeley was chosen because it represents everything that Harvard isn’t,” says director Andrew Barbour. The 32-year-old “Let’s Go” series, by St. Martin’s Press, has hogged the budget travel market too long, Barbour says, adding: “Theirs is a very long blueblood Boston nose looking down at us.”

Barbour says his guides give new meaning to travel writing: A bad beach “bites it,” a poor restaurant is “yucko” and a hotel can “suck.” There are tidbits on the environment and politics; notes for gay, lesbian and disabled travelers, and off-the-beaten-track vignettes.

“I see this as a cynical copy of ‘Let’s Go,’ ” says Harvard publishing director Pete Deemer. “We have had listings for gay and lesbian travelers for more than two decades. Theirs may be more environmentally friendly, but ‘Let’s Go’ won’t get thrown out as much.”

Deemer welcomes competition: “This sounds kind of obnoxious, and I balk at saying it, but it is kind of lonely at the top.”