InBerkeley

The Daily Californian reports that Berkeley’s usual summer slump is unsurprisingly worse this year:

At the end of the spring semester roughly 20,000 students leave Berkeley for summer vacation and local businesses lose roughly 20,000 potential customers. Almost all see a downturn, of course, but the extent of the impact on these businesses-and the ways in which they cope-varies from shop to shop.

“It’s a cycle that Berkeley is quite used to dealing with,” said Cynthia Kroll, Senior Regional Economist at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, part of the Haas School of Business.

Although they have come to expect a drop in profits, businesses say the current recession is making this year’s downturn more severe.

“This (summer) is the worst and I’ve been here 28 years,” said Stan James, manager of Bill’s Footwear on Telegraph Avenue.

Business, Issues, Retail

InBerkeley’s favorite cyclist, Sylvia Paull, lacks a television. So she took decisive action to make sure she could see the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong’s attempt at an eighth victory.

Sylvia has agreed with the Meridien International Sports Cafe (founded by Bayani Flores, a competitive swimmer from Cal) to show the race every day from 5 to 7 p.m. on their seven screens. Cyclists from any of the East Bay’s clubs — Berkeley Bicycle Club, Grizzly Peak Cyclists, Norcal Mountain Bike High School League, Albany Strollers and Rollers, Bike Alameda, and the East Bay Bicycle Coalition — will be offered a free drink. The sports cafe is at 2050 University Avenue, just around the corner from the BART bike station.

Le Tour opens on July 4 and ends, as always, in Paris on July 21.

Photo by Stocks Photography from Flickr

Events

Wild turkeys, we’ve seen a few. But peacocks? Berkeley hills resident Dana Welch reports on her new neighbor:

A male peacock has taken residence in the Berkeley hills above the Claremont hotel.  Well, maybe not Berkeley — it’s that slice of Oakland that has a Berkeley mailing address and where everyone considers themselves Berkeley residents.

The peacock can be seen strolling from driveway to driveway, yard to yard, pecking out its meals like a chicken.  Unclear if it is a domesticated peacock roaming or a wild peacock spawned from a domesticated flock.

Residents either love it  — daily view of plumage, iridescence beyond description; or hate it — cawing that actually sounds like loud mewing  tends to wake one up at the most inconvenient hours.  But all are unified in a concern with his safety as he wanders obliviously on streets where cars fly by and dogs and cats proliferate.

But proof can be had that peacocks do fly — or at least can catapult.  He narrowly escaped an encounter with my wildlife-loving dog by leaping twenty feet in the air to land safely on a roof, honking at the startled canine to show who’s the new boss of the neighborhood.

Hyperlocal, In the wild Hyperlocal, In the wild