Everyone should see Berkeley
I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic for London recently. Not for any particular part of it, but rather the familiarity of even the most mundane aspects — a streetscape or a shop I patronized regularly.
So it’s good to hear that people who should know have decided that Berkeley is one of the “25 amazing places in the world that everyone should see”.
The founders of the Lonely Planet travel guides, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, who recently sold a majority of their company to the BBC, put it this way:
“Bezerkeley” has been described as “the only city in America with its own foreign policy” and we lived there for a year in the mid 80s. It’s only a short drive across the Oakland Bay Bridge from San Francisco (or a quick ride on the BART, San Francisco’s high tech tube system), but it’s another world. This is a city which nearly took its police force off the roads because the city council couldn’t find petrol they could buy with a clear conscience.
With a university where, so the urban legend goes, there are parking spaces reserved for Nobel Prize winners. Furthermore you can combine protest with stylish cuisine; Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse is consistently cited as one of the best restaurants in the US.
Apart from questioning whether BART is really that “high tech”, I agree with their summation. And given that others on the list include Lizard Island, Australia, Kathmandu, Nepal and Okavango Delta, Botswana, Berkeley should be holding its head up high. But I would wager the Wheelers would notice some changes since they lived here 20 years ago.