Day Tripping in Berkeley

Wednesday I took a trip outside of San Francisco to Marin County, north of the city, and Berkeley in the East Bay. I couldn't have picked a day with worse weather. Wednesday was gray, cold, and rainy unfortunate for a college town with hip streets to walk down and allegedly some of the most picturesque towns with some of the most stunning views of the Bay.

My day started out with a (free!) drive across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. I drove through Sausalito, which I previously knew only from the Pepperidge Farm cookies with the same name. It looked nice, and apparently has great views of the bay, but all I say was a wall of gray. I moved on to Berkeley, home of the flagship campus of the University of California. Coming from the "Berkely of the Midwest", and friend to several current and former Cal students, I was keen to see what the place was like. I walked around a bit on Telegraph Avenue, the hub of student shopping and dining. I then went onto the campus itself. First I checked out the anthropology museum, where there was a great exhibit about brewing traditions around the world. The exhibit touched on the fact that almost everywhere that agriculture arose, brewing arose concurrently, which only gives further credence to the idea that our ancestors just wanted to get drunk and forming civilizations was almost completely a byproduct of their decision to band together to more easily brew beer. Probably not widely accepted, but fun to think about. I also checked out the Physics department, where my friend DY is a student; unfortunately for me, he is in Switzerland at CERN. Baller. I also tried to check out Nobel laureate George Smoot's office, but he wasn't around.

Before I left Berkeley, I stopped by the Berkeley Bowl grocery store, on the recommendation of my brother's Girlfriend. As anyone who has seen my OkCupid profile knows, grocery stores are one of my "happy places". This one was like the Shangri-La of grocery stores. Though it was pricey at points, it was a cook's dream. I went in to grab some steak to go with the wine I had brought up from Santa Barbara and walked out with an entire menu, plus some fresh citrus fruit for the road. The orange/tangerine section of this place was almost as big as many other grocery stores's entire produce sections (photo to come).

I finished my day trip with a visit to the Cheese Board pizza. On one of Berkeley's busier streets, the Cheese Board is a fromagerie with a pizza shop attached. Some will recall my fondness for the simplicity of In N Out's menu, and it doesn't get any simpler than Cheese Board pizza: they make one kind of pizza each day; a slice is $2.50, a half or whole pizza is four or eight times that, equal to the number of slices you get. The day I went they were making roasted potato, pasilla pepper, feta, mozzarella, and cilantro. I had a Boont Amber to go with it as I enjoyed my half-pizza while listening to live a live trio playing in the restaurant. On a rainy Wednesday, people were lined up out the door the entire time I was there; when the indoor seating filled up, patrons sat outside, albeit under an awning, to enjoy their slices. A cool place, and apparently a Berkeley tradition.