Berkeley Now --and Then
Its radical heritage aside, Berkeley today is in the vanguard of upscale shopping, dining and real estate as much as anything else.
One symbol of Berkeley’s hippie era, Peet’s Coffee, is now a chain with publicly traded stock, threatening to become to Starbucks what Burger King is to McDonald’s. For better or worse, that kind of change is what drew me north last month.
My Berkeley memories come mainly from 1980s college road trips with raggedy fellow travelers. We protested what we could, scavenged for food and crashed on someone’s floor for the night.
That still sounds like an appealing weekend to me, but my wife, Shiru, would kill me for even suggesting it. Our 2-year-old daughter wouldn’t be too happy either.
So the consumerist side of Berkeley beckoned. Its genteel pursuits would be agreeable to a graying and softening (physiologically and ideologically) family man. Now that I can afford plane tickets, a hotel room and food from sources other than vending machines, they would be accessible too. Maybe bourgeois Berkeley would fit bourgeois me.
After flying from Ontario to Oakland to get the cheapest fares and avoid LAX crowds, we checked in late one Friday at the Bancroft Hotel, a 22-room converted clubhouse across from UC Berkeley. The Bancroft’s chief attractions were location, price ($119 per night plus tax and parking) and its Arts and Crafts charm, with lots of stained glass, tile fireplaces and dark wood.
Our third-floor walk-up room (there is no elevator) was tidy but small. With the queen bed plus a squishy rollaway ($10 extra), there was little room to walk. We slept in Saturday morning, then fueled up on coffee, fruit, muffins and croissants, all included in the rate.
Before plunging into upscale Berkeley, I also wanted to find a few unique spots that would give my daughter some sense that not all places in America are alike.
La Pena Cultural Center on Shattuck Avenue fit the bill. A nonprofit performance space and cafe, La Pena maintains an almost daily schedule of live music, poetry readings and political forums, much of it with a Latin American theme. It also holds weekly Saturday morning children’s programs, perfect for our rainy weekend.
On display at La Pena were some of the amusing quirks of the Berkeley left. In a place devoted to multiculturalism, the audience of 100 was about 90% white.
I also got a kick out of two wall posters. One proclaimed “Cultural Activism for Social Justice,” while just below was another, “Please Watch Your Valuables.”
We watched our valuables as Gary Lapow, a local singer-songwriter for children, took care of the activism for justice. Lapow’s songs preach compassion, and his performances always include one number in American Sign Language. With his bouncy style and slightly nasal voice, Lapow looked to me like a lefty Richard Simmons.
From the concert, we drove north on Shattuck toward Cedar Street, a couple of miles but a world away, to the neighborhood called the gourmet ghetto. It’s the home of Chez Panisse restaurant, where Alice Waters pioneered the use of organic produce and seasonal ingredients.
Across the street from Chez Panisse is the Cheese Board Pizza Collective, an extraordinary cheese store and pizza shop in two storefronts. Like Peet’s Coffee, the Cheese Board has been in the neighborhood since the late ‘60s. The store takes its decentralized structure and collective decision-making (there is no manager) very seriously, upholding ‘60s ideals while meeting a very modern demand.
A board above the counter lists about 280 kinds of cheese, from Abondance to Wensleydale. The pizza shop, by contrast, produces only one kind of pizza, with toppings that change daily but are always vegetarian. A slice sells for $2, a half for $8 or a whole for $16.
The pizza of the day was covered with mozzarella, onion, sun-dried tomato, pesto, yellow squash, zucchini, feta cheese, olive oil, garlic and parsley. The thin-crusted pie was topped in the right proportions, not top-heavy despite the variety of vegetables. The tab for all of us was $10.50--less than what we spend at fast-food joints.
A woman deftly pecking out jazz on the house piano, the aroma of baking pizzas and my glass of Cote du Rhone formed one of those perfect moments when food, sound and scent make you feel that you’ve taken in the essence of a place all at once. I’ve felt that way with my wife at makeshift food stalls in Seoul and Taipei, with hot bowls of noodles cooked on an open fire well past midnight. As Elly stood on her chair and swayed to the music, happily munching her pizza crust, I realized it was the first time I’d had one of those moments with my child.
After lunch we strolled through the neighborhood, which prides itself on its lack of chain stores. The sentiment may be anti-corporate, but the shopping is far from populist. The natural fiber clothing boutiques, sensible shoe shops and jewelers are almost all expensive.
Our next stop was the 4th Street shopping area. Unlike the gourmet ghetto, 4th Street makes no pretense of being anything but a collection of pricey chain stores. Like Old Pasadena or Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, 4th Street is a high-end outdoor mall built in a formerly down-in-the-dumps area. A Crate & Barrel outlet, Sur la Table and Discovery Channel Store are among its offerings.
I was unable to book a table at Chez Panisse on short notice. (It’s best to try a month ahead.) So we had dinner Saturday at Rivoli, another innovative, organic-and-seasonal-ingredients kind of place in another fashionable Berkeley neighborhood, on Solano Avenue in the northern part of the city.
We started with one of the house specials, portabello fritters with lemon aioli, Parmesan, arugula and caper vinaigrette. The thick slices of meaty mushroom fried in a light batter were a perfect finger food for Elly. We also tried the mushroom, leek and potato soup, which was heavy with cream.
Entrees were elaborate. Shiru had a roast eggplant and potato cake stuffed with goat cheese. I had sour cabbage with shrimp, steelhead, lobster sausage and fingerling potatoes. For Elly we ordered saffron angel hair pasta with tuna, green beans, tomato and olives. Everything was done just right. Though a bit crowded, Rivoli’s dining room was comfortable and looked out to a lovely garden, where Elly enjoyed watching two cats having their own meal.
We took an evening stroll on Telegraph Avenue, the shopping area just off campus. I was surprised at how dead it was on Saturday night and amused by the “Drug Free Zone” sign posted on the street. We picked up ice cream at a small shop and took it to La Strada Cafe next to our hotel, where we ordered hot apple cider, steamed milk and some cranberry upside-down cake to go with it.
Our flight schedule didn’t leave us much time Sunday, especially since we were told to arrive at the airport two hours early for security checks. Skipping the hotel breakfast, we returned to the gourmet ghetto for Masse’s Pastries on Shattuck. We got a brioche, a chocolate croissant and four cookies--gingersnap, chocolate, macaroon and one called a cappuccino thin, all of which were fabulous.
We left Berkeley after finding much of what I had expected--plenty of fine food and a few funky holdovers. Unexpectedly, I also found an answer to a great life question. It was on a sign at the Cheese Board explaining its senior discounts. Customer older than 60 get 10% off, 70 and older get 15% off, and so on. For those 100 and older, the policy read, “What you see is what you get.” I used to wonder why anyone would want to live to 100. In Berkeley I found an answer.
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Budget for Three
Round-trip air fare, Ontario to Oakland...$240.00
Bancroft Hotel, two nights...280.16
Car rental and gas, two days...84.29
Lunch, pizza at the Cheese
Board...10.50
Dinner, Rivoli...96.00
Pastries, Masse’s...6.00
Other meals, snacks...46.00
Parking, airport...20.00
FINAL TAB...$782.95
Bancroft Hotel, 2680 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704; (800) 549-1002 or (510) 549-1000, fax (510) 549-1070, www.bancroft hotel.com.
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Peter Y. Hong is a reporter on the Metro staff of The Times.
