last 24 hours of berkeley
May. 14th, 2005 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nibotMy strange, epic, little Berkeley venture is over now and I am in Orange County for the weekend. The last 24 hours shaped up something like:
Friday 9am -- Met with George Proper (pronounced with a long "o", not like 'manners'), general manager of the USCA (the big co-op in Berkeley), asking tips about co-ops and generally establishing diplomatic contact. I wrote up a summary of what he had to say. The USCA has really grown over the last seventy years—from a loosely organised boarding house to a 20-house, 1300-member collective with an eight million dollar annual budget. For George, growing up with the co-op, it turned into a career. The Green Book introduces him as a member of Barrington Hall in the 60's:
10:30am-1pm -- Went to the lab where I most recently worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab to visit with Ken Downing and everyone else. It's always funny going back... "Hey... how long are you here for? We have this thing..." There is a new postdoc working there, for about as long as I've been gone, an Icelandic woman who is very nice, and also very attractive. When I visited in August she had just arrived in Berkeley and was eagerly exploring it, although at that point she didn't yet know southside from northside. Fast forward a couple months, and now she's living with a bunch of other grad students and post docs in a shared house up in the Berkeley hills, thriving in a sort of co-op environment; she has red streaks in her hair and bluejeans and already raves about the place, how there is always something happening, and there are people... I find it really inspiring how quickly people take to the place, make it their own. Like Kenny, Michelle, and Heather took to Chateau and the co-ops and Berkeley in general.
1-2pm -- Taking a nap at the Oscar Wilde House
2pm--meet Mischa as he steps off the F bus (Transbay!) at Bancroft and Piedmont, up by the I-House. Venture down to Telegraph for Naan and Curry (yuum!). I love that restaurant, although it has gotten more expensive. Now it's $9 for chicken tikka masala, naan, and a mango lassi. Mmm. Still, that would be at least $15 at a sit-down restaurant in Rochester and not as good. I like the informality of the place--go and collect your own flatware and water, and sometimes it's so crowded that strangers are compelled to share tables and make new friends.
4--Shannon comes up to visit at the Oscar Wilde House.. She, Mischa, and I walk up Dwight and up along the trails in the hills. The trails are all overgrown and invisible but I was pleased to be able to find them without any difficulty. Climb up into the hills, sit in that Eucalyptus grove up there overlooking the bay. Wander down through Clark Kerr Campus. Someone's set up what looks like a really awesome skate park in a basketball court there.
6--we wander down again to get Tapioca pearl tea at some place in the old "potato restaurant" on Bancroft just below Telegraph. Green apple boba drink is $1.50.
7:15--KennyJensen and I go to see Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd at Zellerbach. By chance I'd seen a copy of the Daily Californian open in the wind to the full-page ad for the event placed by the Graduate School of Journalism and the Chancellor's Office, and then been pleased to find that my old student ID would still get me a ticket. I think it's telling that school's been out for a week and there are still awesome speakers coming to campus--another thing that's made me a Berkeley addict. In the recent past I've gone to see Robert McNamara (secretary of defense), Daniel Ellsberg (pentagon papers), Linus Torvalds (linux), Peter Jennings (newsanchor), Ehud Barak (former prime minister of Israel), and I don't know who else.
9:30--Back at the oscar wilde house. I drink a beer on the porch with Jeff, and then there's a marathon session of hottubbing, for, like, two hours. There are a couple groups of simultaneous hottubbers, something like eight people. Fortunately it's an eight person hot tub! I'm waiting for Arom to arrive so we can go to the House of Chicken and Waffles.
12:30--Arom arrives! Then suddenly there are twice as many people who want to go to HoChiWa.. another car is found, but then more people want to go. For some reason I end up driving Arom's boyfriend's new Honda Civic Hybrid--I think we were in Oakland before I knew it was a hybrid, and then only because I realized people were talking about it being a hybrid. Only then did I notice the exotic displays on the dash--a "charge"/"assist" meter for one. We ended up with fourteen people at HoChiWa and HoChiWa--I guess Arom discovered the place originally--lived up to its billing as a House of Chicken and Waffles. It's open till 4am on weekends, and, oddly, they have a bunch of Security folks all dressed up in tuxes. Just outside of Jack London Square, and definitely recommended.
3:45-5am--Arom was completely exhausted from an unspecified number of allnighters-- in fact I was impressed about just how little sleep any of the undergrads were getting. I had forgotten the whole frenzy, people up all night working on N papers and cramming for M final exams. Glad I'm out of that rat race(ha!). She dropped us off at Wilde and then drove off with Pete mysteriously into the night. I lounged in Alex's room in conversation until 5am, when it was time to run downstairs and catch my taxi...
5:08am-- Bayporter pulls up outside of Wilde.. toss my duffelbag in the back.. I think I'm unconscious before it hits the intersection with Dwight.
5:40am--Arrive at Oakland airport... the airport is really surprisingly busy, with people at all the ticket counters and a long line from security sneaking back behind all of the baggage claims. It surprises me how small of an airport Oakland is--and yet, it serves a major metropolitan area, has lots of flights, and seems to operate quite smoothly. By 6:15 I'm through security and walk onto my flight--Alaska Airlines #372. I'm asleep before it takes off. I wake up briefly, opening my eyes to see the grey water Bay below us, ... ships, .. the Peninsula. I hope for a lack of "mechanical difficulties" and then drift off to sleep again.
8am--Next thing I know, we're on the ground at Orange County and people are standing in the aisle of the plane. (They call it "John Wayne Airport" for reasons that are completely unknown; the airport code is SNA which stands for "Santa Ana".) Mom meets me at the airport.. Every vehicle in the parking lot seems to be an identical SUV, the difference being only whether it's white, black, or grey. The air is warm, a little hazy, and palm trees swaying in the breeze.
Friday 9am -- Met with George Proper (pronounced with a long "o", not like 'manners'), general manager of the USCA (the big co-op in Berkeley), asking tips about co-ops and generally establishing diplomatic contact. I wrote up a summary of what he had to say. The USCA has really grown over the last seventy years—from a loosely organised boarding house to a 20-house, 1300-member collective with an eight million dollar annual budget. For George, growing up with the co-op, it turned into a career. The Green Book introduces him as a member of Barrington Hall in the 60's:
George had truly come up from the ranks, in the classic co-op manner. He had been athletics manager, kitchen manager and a two-semester house manager in Barrington, the first ever. He had overseen the 1967 change from all-male to co-ed (a "special study" had called for the change) and, since the University had abandoned its Approved Housing program, the U.S.C.A. had done so. He had also ran the U.S.C.A. one summer.Walking home, I'm briefly worried that I'm becoming obsessed with co-ops. Just as quickly I realize that it's now my job to be obsessed with co-ops, and suddenly I'm very happy about that.
10:30am-1pm -- Went to the lab where I most recently worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab to visit with Ken Downing and everyone else. It's always funny going back... "Hey... how long are you here for? We have this thing..." There is a new postdoc working there, for about as long as I've been gone, an Icelandic woman who is very nice, and also very attractive. When I visited in August she had just arrived in Berkeley and was eagerly exploring it, although at that point she didn't yet know southside from northside. Fast forward a couple months, and now she's living with a bunch of other grad students and post docs in a shared house up in the Berkeley hills, thriving in a sort of co-op environment; she has red streaks in her hair and bluejeans and already raves about the place, how there is always something happening, and there are people... I find it really inspiring how quickly people take to the place, make it their own. Like Kenny, Michelle, and Heather took to Chateau and the co-ops and Berkeley in general.
1-2pm -- Taking a nap at the Oscar Wilde House
2pm--meet Mischa as he steps off the F bus (Transbay!) at Bancroft and Piedmont, up by the I-House. Venture down to Telegraph for Naan and Curry (yuum!). I love that restaurant, although it has gotten more expensive. Now it's $9 for chicken tikka masala, naan, and a mango lassi. Mmm. Still, that would be at least $15 at a sit-down restaurant in Rochester and not as good. I like the informality of the place--go and collect your own flatware and water, and sometimes it's so crowded that strangers are compelled to share tables and make new friends.
4--Shannon comes up to visit at the Oscar Wilde House.. She, Mischa, and I walk up Dwight and up along the trails in the hills. The trails are all overgrown and invisible but I was pleased to be able to find them without any difficulty. Climb up into the hills, sit in that Eucalyptus grove up there overlooking the bay. Wander down through Clark Kerr Campus. Someone's set up what looks like a really awesome skate park in a basketball court there.
6--we wander down again to get Tapioca pearl tea at some place in the old "potato restaurant" on Bancroft just below Telegraph. Green apple boba drink is $1.50.
7:15--KennyJensen and I go to see Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd at Zellerbach. By chance I'd seen a copy of the Daily Californian open in the wind to the full-page ad for the event placed by the Graduate School of Journalism and the Chancellor's Office, and then been pleased to find that my old student ID would still get me a ticket. I think it's telling that school's been out for a week and there are still awesome speakers coming to campus--another thing that's made me a Berkeley addict. In the recent past I've gone to see Robert McNamara (secretary of defense), Daniel Ellsberg (pentagon papers), Linus Torvalds (linux), Peter Jennings (newsanchor), Ehud Barak (former prime minister of Israel), and I don't know who else.
9:30--Back at the oscar wilde house. I drink a beer on the porch with Jeff, and then there's a marathon session of hottubbing, for, like, two hours. There are a couple groups of simultaneous hottubbers, something like eight people. Fortunately it's an eight person hot tub! I'm waiting for Arom to arrive so we can go to the House of Chicken and Waffles.
12:30--Arom arrives! Then suddenly there are twice as many people who want to go to HoChiWa.. another car is found, but then more people want to go. For some reason I end up driving Arom's boyfriend's new Honda Civic Hybrid--I think we were in Oakland before I knew it was a hybrid, and then only because I realized people were talking about it being a hybrid. Only then did I notice the exotic displays on the dash--a "charge"/"assist" meter for one. We ended up with fourteen people at HoChiWa and HoChiWa--I guess Arom discovered the place originally--lived up to its billing as a House of Chicken and Waffles. It's open till 4am on weekends, and, oddly, they have a bunch of Security folks all dressed up in tuxes. Just outside of Jack London Square, and definitely recommended.
3:45-5am--Arom was completely exhausted from an unspecified number of allnighters-- in fact I was impressed about just how little sleep any of the undergrads were getting. I had forgotten the whole frenzy, people up all night working on N papers and cramming for M final exams. Glad I'm out of that rat race(ha!). She dropped us off at Wilde and then drove off with Pete mysteriously into the night. I lounged in Alex's room in conversation until 5am, when it was time to run downstairs and catch my taxi...
5:08am-- Bayporter pulls up outside of Wilde.. toss my duffelbag in the back.. I think I'm unconscious before it hits the intersection with Dwight.
5:40am--Arrive at Oakland airport... the airport is really surprisingly busy, with people at all the ticket counters and a long line from security sneaking back behind all of the baggage claims. It surprises me how small of an airport Oakland is--and yet, it serves a major metropolitan area, has lots of flights, and seems to operate quite smoothly. By 6:15 I'm through security and walk onto my flight--Alaska Airlines #372. I'm asleep before it takes off. I wake up briefly, opening my eyes to see the grey water Bay below us, ... ships, .. the Peninsula. I hope for a lack of "mechanical difficulties" and then drift off to sleep again.
8am--Next thing I know, we're on the ground at Orange County and people are standing in the aisle of the plane. (They call it "John Wayne Airport" for reasons that are completely unknown; the airport code is SNA which stands for "Santa Ana".) Mom meets me at the airport.. Every vehicle in the parking lot seems to be an identical SUV, the difference being only whether it's white, black, or grey. The air is warm, a little hazy, and palm trees swaying in the breeze.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-16 08:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-16 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-16 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-16 05:25 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Airport
no subject
Date: 2005-05-16 05:29 pm (UTC)"The OC airport"-- *vomits*
The letters in the airport code SNA come from "Santa Ana"--I think the airport has always had the code SNA.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-16 05:39 pm (UTC)I never hear John Wayne-Orange County Airport referred to as anything but "Orange County" anymore.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-17 01:03 am (UTC)I like the way the John Wayne Airport has an inverted triangle as its logo. I don't know if the triangle is pink though.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-17 01:04 am (UTC)