Berkeley, California

There's more to Berkeley than the University of California. While the campus may be the city's economic and cultural nexus, Berkeley's neighborhoods are as distinctive as they are diverse. From the scruffy, countercultural appeal of Telegraph Avenue to the Olympian grandeur of the hills and the post-industrial hip of Fourth Street , the communities of Berkeley all celebrate the city's iconoclastic but self-assured character.

University of California Campus

Perennially ranked among the top three universities in the country, the University of California at Berkeley has much to offer visitors as well as students: museums, libraries, superb views from the campanile, public lectures by Nobel laureates, world-class entertainment and NCAA sports. The main campus is situated with a compact elegance at the base of the rugged hills that are home to the Strawberry Canyon recreational area and the Lawrence Hall of Science . Campus life for Cal's 35,000 students centers (inasmuch as it centers at all) on Sproul Plaza and Sather Gate. In the sunny plaza in front of the administration building, you can find dozens of student organizations staffing tables at lunchtime. Though nowadays you will be far more likely to see the Christian Students Ministry recruiting undergraduates than the Spartacist Youth League, a plaque on the stairs in front of Sproul Hall (which marks the spot where Mario Savio launched the Free Speech movement in 1964) serves as a reminder of Berkeley's place in American social history.

Telegraph Avenue & South Berkeley

Telegraph Avenue, for three generations the engine of Berkeley's countercultural tendencies, is a vibrant, living anthropological museum. Still-angry activists draft leftist tracts in cafes, aging hippies sell tie-dye and macrame from sidewalk tables next to Rastas offering knit tam o'shanters and hemp advocates hawking bumper stickers. Knots of disaffected youngsters in black leather set up camp on the curb. The inevitable "Berkeley Crazy" floats through the crowd, talking animatedly to unseen companions. For the thousands of undergraduates who do their business on "The Avenue," however, it is all just background (or foreground) to the eateries, record barns, clothing outlets and bookstores lining the four blocks between Bancroft and Dwight. Rasputin , Amoeba Records and Moe's have ardent, extra-dedicated followings after decades in business on Telegraph Avenue. Street merchants sell their wares weekdays and weekends alike on the sidewalks. History buffs can see People's Park by wandering up Haste Street or Dwight Way 300 feet or so east (toward the hills), but in truth the scruffy and overgrown lot tends to attract a rather seedy crowd and is best avoided, especially at night.

Further south, Telegraph Avenue widens and begins to feature more conventional businesses such as doctor's offices, photo finishing labs and gas stations. South Berkeley as a whole, with its quiet neighborhoods of small bungalow homes, lacks the multicultural action of the area near the campus. There are scattered attractions for the visitor, however: epicures and organic food lovers flock to the large Whole Foods at the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Ashby Avenue and to the landmark Berkeley Bowl (justly famed for its voluminous produce section) at the corner of Shattuck and Oregon streets. At the Ashby BART station, the Saturday flea market has been drawing big crowds of bargain hunters for 30 years.

Downtown Berkeley

A mere block from campus, downtown Berkeley has been trying for years to shake off the brown-brick fustiness of a college-town mercantile district. Its retail clout has been outstripped by the far hipper Fourth Street Shopping Area . The city's cultural and civic nerve center, and home to the Berkeley Repertory Theater , downtown Berkeley seems to be finding its stride again as an entertainment and dining center. In truth, it has long served that function; the grand old movie houses along and just off Shattuck have made a successful transition to multiplexes, drawing crowds every night. Cheery, casual dining, particularly on Center Street, is the style here. Around the corner on Shattuck, successful brew pub Jupiter packs in the crowds on weekends with live music.

As Berkeley's main east-west thoroughfare, University Avenue makes up in sheer traffic what it lacks in style. At the Shattuck and University hub, bicycle dealers, inexpensive ethnic restaurants and computer stores (emphasis on the Mac here: Berkeley is the home of the world-renowned Berkeley Macintosh Users Group [BMUG]) are foremost. The ethnic restaurant theme continues down University Avenue through patches of Central America, Thailand and China until eventually settling on India. Lower University Avenue has in fact been called Little India: dozens of Indian restaurants, sari, grocery, video and utensil stores cater to the East Bay's large East Indian community. Among the best and most user-friendly of these is Bombay Bazaar, whose selection of foods, spices, clothing, incense, musical instruments and books attracts Indian and non-Indian alike.

Fourth Street

Formerly a rugged, gritty industrial district, Fourth Street between Hearst and Cedar streets now generates more retail tax revenue for the city than the whole of downtown Berkeley. Fourth Street has become the apex of yuppie style. The racks of its boutiques tend towards a certain unstructured, natural look. Epicurean gardeners, home decorators and the ubiquitous foodies are all catered to here as nowhere else. Fourth Street has become successful, many feel, not just by featuring the right things, but by creating the right environment. The shopping area is attractively styled, pedestrian oriented, and encourages gathering. Without as much fanfare as the Fourth Street Shopping District , but equally indicative of West Berkeley's economic transformation, a slew of new residential and office space has also taken shape along Fifth Street and west of University Avenue as far as Emeryville. Industrial materials like corrugated aluminum and a deconstructed design program have created a neo-Bauhaus look, favored by the architects, designers, new media studios and young professionals who have moved into the area.

The Berkeley Hills

The resolutely residential redoubt of the Berkeley Hills offers some of the finest views in the entire Bay Area. Homes here are handsome but not showy. The attraction is the aforementioned view of lower Berkeley, San Francisco, Marin and the bridges, as well as the Olympian feeling of being literally above it all. The only thing approaching a commercial establishment in the hills is the Lawrence Hall of Science , a beautifully laid out, hands-on science museum with years of experience at kindling scientific wonder in the younger set. Tilden Regional Park , just beyond the crest of the hill, is the jewel of the East Bay Regional Park District. Hiking, mountain-biking, lake swimming and a miniature steam train can all be enjoyed within its hundreds of wild, undeveloped acres of scrub oak and manzanita country. On the other side of Grizzly Peak Road, U.C. Berkeley's extensive holdings drop through eucalyptus groves down to the main campus, offering students and visitors miles of challenging hiking and running trails.

If you want to explore the hills, expect a cardiovascular workout or simply bring a car, and expect to get lost. Except for Centennial Drive and brutally straight Marin Street, streets here wander upwards in an aimless, criss-crossing, spaghetti-like fashion. Do not attempt this for the first time in the fog.

The Elmwood

The commercial face of Elmwood , a genteel alternative to the countercultural hurly-burly of Telegraph Avenue, is confined to a scant three blocks around College and Ashby Avenues. The Elmwood's culinary status, however, is out of proportion to its size, with a wildly popular Italian trattoria ( Trattoria La Siciliana ), a fine Italian deli ( A.G. Ferrari ), a bakery ( Nabolom ), a cafe offering hot entrees ( Espresso Roma ), two excellent taquerias (Gordo's and La Cascada), a kosher spot ( Holy Land ) and artisan ice cream ( Ici )—to name but a few—within two blocks. Nor is there a shortage of specialty retail establishments—four or five businesses sell antiques and oriental rugs, Sweet Dreams Candy Store offers toys, fashion and (if all else fails) candy for kids, and the Tail of the Yak has a gift selection as indescribable as its name suggests. The quiet side streets of the Elmwood are filled with stately, dark-shingled homes inspired by West Coast Arts & Crafts architects Green and Greene and Bernard Maybeck. At the upper end of Ashby one comes upon the white-towered, fairytale splendor of the Claremont Resort and Spa , which caters equally to meeting-goers and tennis players.

North Berkeley

At the geographic and spiritual center of North Shattuck street's famed Gourmet Ghetto is Chez Panisse , Alice Waters' shrine of California Cuisine. Within a block or two of Chez Panisse are wildy popular Cha-Am, The Cheese Board , Vegi Food China (home to what may be the best sweet and sour walnuts in the world), the exotic produce section of Monterey Market, epicurean Andronico's, and FatApples, whose Brobdingnagian pies are the stuff of legend. Book lovers also flock to independent Black Oak Books for readings, slightly superior salespersons and a broad selection, both new and used. Residentially, North Berkeley, favored by U.C. professors, is the quiet, unfussy, but attractive continuation of the Berkeley Hills—indeed, Euclid Street, if patiently followed to its end, leads onto Grizzly Peak Road, and thence back around to Tilden Regional Park .

Solano Avenue, skewing across the border between Berkeley and Albany, continues North Berkeley's culinary focus, with an array of restaurants surely daunting to the indecisive. Ajanta, Fonda and Rivoli are among the many draws that make this such a challenging area in which to park. Pegasus Books is another new and used favorite.

Emeryville

In the last decade, working class, industrial Emeryville has burst onto the scene as the hot place to build a concept mall, hotel complex or dot-com office. The Emery Bay Public Market, with its highly successful international food court, Border's Books & Music and art-deco inspired decaplex theater, helped kick off the city's renaissance—along with a nearby "big box" shopping center, where Home Depot and OfficeMax ring up high volume sales and create traffic problems. Adding to the fun along the I-80 corridor is Emeryville's gargantuan IKEA store and the Bay Street Shopping Area. While Emeryville's residential demographics are still predominantly low-income, dot-commers and other young professionals are moving into the new condominiums and neo-Bauhaus lofts sprouting up near the design studios, new media enterprises and software companies that hug the I-80 highway. Emeryville's go-go business climate, in stark contrast to development-phobic Berkeley next door, has attracted not only IKEA, but also Sybase, PeopleSoft and a number of other expanding hi-tech businesses looking for new headquarters.