InBerkeley

I’m regularly struck by how many times our little city of only 100,000 people appears in other media. It seems to be a rule, for example, at The New York Times, that Berkeley’s Alice Waters has to be mentioned at least once a week. So I thought it might be fun to track these sightings from time to time on InBerkeley.

Here’s Bookride looking at character types in the book business:

The polymath. A few are to be found in the trade. Ridiculously over educated, versed in several languages with the ability (usually) to decipher titles in Russian, Greek, Arabic, Chinese and even Japanese. Their natural home is Berkeley California. Often of unkempt appearance; their books, too, are sometimes a little scruffy. Colleagues in the trade, some barely literate, urge them to go on ‘Who Wants to be Millionaire’ but their trash knowledge (or lack of it) would let them down.

Sounds fairly accurate on a certain class of Berkeleyites, but I suspect the steady disappearance of bookstores in Berkeley hasn’t yet reached the London-based bookseller who writes Bookride.

In the wild

One of my fondest wishes for InBerkeley is for us to use maps in a range of beautiful and useful ways. I’ve already mentioned how Berkeley needs something like Oakland’s Crimestopping interactive map. But I’m beginning to develop my map ideas. Consider the following.

Every photo on InBerkeley is geotagged. Automagically, when a photo is posted to the site the InBerkeley map updates with a marker showing where the photo was taken. Similarly, each story that is location specific, like Dave’s recent accounts of vacant stores, gets a geotag and updates to the map. Over time, the map becomes one of the ways in which users can access the information on InBerkeley.

Say, for example, that you want to know what restaurants InBerkeley writers and readers recommend on Center Street downtown. Click on the map and you’ll see, together with links to the relevant posts and comments.

I know this is technically possible, even if it would require us behind the scenes to add information to our posts that isn’t yet collated. But I haven’t really seen it done as I see it now in my dreams. Certainly something for the InBerkeley wish list.

By the way, fellow map lovers probably know that I stole my title from a wonderful book by Hugh Brody. Highly recommended. And the quixotic image at the top of this post is from Strange Maps, one of the most regularly inspiring blogs I know.

General

Questions remain over the abrupt departure of Bill and Judy Fujimoto (above) from Monterey Market in north Berkeley which caused more than a few shockwaves in the local community.

The couple, who have run the fine-produce store for many years, resigned on June 3. An estimated  200 people gathered on the street outside Monterey Market to show their support for the couple when they left.

Bill Fujimoto has been a central figure in Northern California’s small farm food revolution over the past 30 years.

The Oliveto Community Journal, a website run by Oliveto’s restaurant in Rockridge, has been reporting on developments and describes the issue as “terribly serious and important”. Check in with the Journal for updates.

Update Commenter Ryan Tate points to a thorough article on what’s happened with the Monterey Market and the Fujimotos on Ethicurean.

Food

One of InBerkeley’s Twitter followers, Roger Jenn, asked whether Berkeley’s Juneteenth celebration was happening. The festival, to mark the end of slavery, was not held last year, and there have been on again, off again reports. It looks like Juneteenth will take place tomorrow from 10 to 5 on Adeline, between Ashby and Alcatraz. 

Roger Jenn has created a truly scholarly bibliography of Juneteenth for the curious. 

The Live Oak Park Fair is also held this weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday.

Events

At Hopkins and Carlotta around noon on Friday.

General

1885 Solano: Between Noah’s Bagels and Khana Peena restaurant, just uphill from Cactus and the Oaks movie theater.

1831 Solano: Next door to Peet’s, the former Three Goddesses, a pretty huge space, perhaps the perfect location for the InBerkeley newsroom given its proximity to Peet’s?

General