California: Berkeley

I suppose at this point I can only claim Berkeley as one of many "second" homes, but it does still feel a bit like that, like coming home. My family has always had a lot of friends and family here and visited periodically; I even lived here for a summer, in a crazy, wonderful hippie co-op. (That was a great summer!)

In Berkeley, so many people talk a certain, familiar way, and wear big drape-y shawls, and let their hair go gray. It makes me nostalgic.


("Great Books – Minds Meeting – Hot Scholarship – Handwoven Kilims – Heavenly Wildboars." No idea. On the side of the University Press bookstore.) 

Of course, Berkeley also has a disturbingly high rate of homelessness, and plenty of other problems besides, I'm sure. Just biking north along Shattuck, from the Oakland part to the Berkeley part, is illuminating and a little bizarre, watching how the street gives way from cheap stores to smartphone-toting young folks and eventually to the fancy restaurant district.

But I couldn't help being charmed to be back on Telegraph Avenue (Oh my goodness, the overwhelming reek of incense!) and check out old favorites like Amoeba Music and Moe's Books. Spent a large (for me) amount of money on used books and used CDs, and came away euphoric and a little stunned, having combed through  every part of Amoeba I could possibly think to comb through.

(When I went to the counter to pay, the staff were just having some sort of debate about whether or not they should make a reality TV show about the store, and the guy who rang up my purchases asked me, "If there were a reality TV show about Amoeba Music, would you watch it?" I said, "Well, I don't watch reality TV shows, ever...but if I did, one about Amoeba would be more likely."

"That's a diplomatic response," he replied, and didn't seem to realize I meant it. I love that place.)


(How much do I love that Amoeba has one section called "Unusually Experimental"?)

Even before that, though, the first evening I arrived, I also let myself go a little wild at the grocery store, buying all those American foods I miss, avocados and cheddar cheese and Ben and Jerry's and Milano cookies and Reed's ginger beer... Not to mention going out for the traditional upon-arrival-in-California burrito!

It's nice to be in a place so familiar, to know exactly where to go to get my burritos and my eclectic music and my English-language books.


(Endless Ben and Jerry's!)

And of course, of course, I walked out of the grocery store and ran into someone I knew from college, and hadn't seen in at least six years. That always happens to me in Berkeley (though not usually within an hour of arrival).