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Berkeley, California, is unique. In the 1960s it was hippie heaven. Anti-war political protests and the Free Speech movement flourished. Near the University of California, Berkeley, sidewalk vendors on Telegraph Avenue offered tie-dyed shirts, hand made jewelry, posters, art, knit ware, bumper stickers. The shops sold books, hookahs, water beds, Indian bedspreads, vintage clothing. Copy shops were everywhere; for $5 one could print 200 leaflets and start a movement. Although times have changed, we in Berkeley still appreciate individuality and diverse life styles. To this day, visitors to Berkeley can encounter experiences totally foreign to them. I’ve hosted visitors and am often amused by their take. At times, I am also stunned.  

It was at the height of anti-war protests; Women in Black stood vigil to oppose the Vietnam war at the entrance to UC Berkeley on Telegraph and Bancroft Avenues. For the 1972 presidential election I was registering voters when I spotted two tall blond women fashionably dressed in heels and skirts; I asked them where they were from and if they were registered to vote. They were completely stupified; they were from Walnut Creek and had never voted. Their first encounters in Berkeley on Telegraph Avenue were political.  

In May 1969 UC Berkeley students objected to a proposed UC building on a site a block off Telegraph Avenue where UC had leveled rent-controlled housing. In protest, they practiced civil disobedience, appropriated the land and called it People’s Park. In response, Governor Ronald Reagan sent in the National Guard; it became a civil-military confrontation that covered all of Berkeley. My friend’s father travelled to Berkeley to make sure his son, a student, would not get involved. To our amusement, the father, while shopping on Shattuck Avenue a half mile from Telegraph, was arrested and jailed when the National Guard came through. So much for good intentions.  

In the 1970s, a friend from Cincinnati, Ohio, arrived with a camera anxious to photo our Berkeley ambiance. At that time, water beds—large vinyl mattresses filled with heated water (aka The Bed of the Sexual Revolution)—were a novelty. To show her one, I took her to a shop on Telegraph Avenue that featured waterbeds, beads, headbands, all the hippie accoutrements. The colors were psychedelic, the people with full afros and beards. At the back of the shop a waterbed was displayed neatly made up with striped Indian bedspread, and sound asleep on the bed was a grimy young woman, barefoot, complete with dreadlocks, caftan and fringes. The ultimate experience.  

Berkeley lawmakers initiated legislation in 1964 to eliminate racism in housing and other areas; we cherish our anti-racism. In the 1980s a friend from Ohio and I went to eat at Fat Apples, a local hangout. We waited in line for a table at the entrance along with a couple and a young blonde woman. Suddenly, her African American friend rushed in, he had been parking, and gave her a big kiss. My friend’s reaction was visible, astonished at this public interracial interaction—not unusual in Berkeley but not where she was from.  

International House at UC was funded by the Rockefeller’s in 1924 to house students from around the world. A friend at International House asked me to show a visitor from India around for a couple of hours before he was to attend an event. This came as somewhat of a surprise, so I asked him if he would mind if I had my car washed before we drove around. I took him to a drive-through tunnel car wash where the water poured down over us and the car was wiped with giant brushes. He was amazed, and wondered if we had that kind of rain in Berkeley during the monsoon season. I had to tell him that we only have a rainy season in California; alas, monsoons would be most welcome.  

In the 1990s, Berkeley was somewhat tamed down from the hippie years. After telling a carload of visitors from Detroit what an ordinary city we had become we neared the corner of University and Oxford Streets, turning left at the signal. There, in front of us, in the bus stop shelter, a seated young woman stripped off her shirt to become nude while she changed into another shirt. I had the impression that one did not see that in Detroit; I had not seen it before in Berkeley either.  

In 2019, my grandson came to visit from Virginia; he needed to take one semester of a foreign language in order to graduate from college. A fan of anime, he came to UC Berkeley to take Japanese at summer school while staying with me. Every day he came home saying “I just had the best ever pizza…the best cup of coffee…the best hamburger,…the best sushi.” He was in gourmet heaven. But he also had a life changing experience. At UC Berkeley he was, for the first time, surrounded by very smart students who knew how to study, work very hard and have fun. And he did too. And continued to do so after he left; he went on for a Master's’s degree. 

Berkeley is lined with paths through the hills. Before the Bay Bridges, Berkeley’s street car lines served commuters. The city was designed so people could walk downhill from their homes on paths to street cars, which would take them to the wharf where they could ferry to work across the bay to San Francisco. Now, visitors to Berkeley discover the paths, climb the heights to view the entire bay, a three bridge view of the Golden Gate, the Dumbarton and the Bay Bridges. Sharing the paths are turkeys, deer, coyotes, dogs and cats. Along the way, visitors find poetry, plaques and mementos. 

While on a path in the hills, my visitor from Michigan discovered a plaque imbedded in the walk across from the Berkeley Rose Garden: “L’esprit de l’escalier, Euclid Avenue. On this spot, May 12th, 2014, David Kavitz finally thought of a witty rejoinder after that dreadful dinner party a week earlier. Mr. Kavitz had wished to say at the time, ‘Some suffer in silence, but others make everyone suffer each time they open their mouth,’ to that loud-mouthed Ms. Pearlman.” An emotion worthy of a plaque, for sure. 

Another visitor found a hand written poem on lined paper posted outside the Poetry Garden at Milvia and Lincoln streets. Mason, a first grade student at Whittier School wrote “Peace feels like giving. Peace tastes like ice cream. Peace smells like cookies. Peace looks like birds. Peace sounds like music.” A true Berkeleyite in Grade One. 

I’ll never forget the time I flew across the United States and to my surprise, local newspapers in every airport had an article about Berkeley. We continue to make news now as in the past. We originated dog parks, the Free Speech Movement, organic restaurant fare e.g. Chez Panisse, curbside recycling, domestic partner legislation, and more. Although Berkeley has changed with the times, we remain The People’s Republic of Berkeley, reveling in our uniqueness and individuality. Visitors, enjoy! Viva Berkeley!