We’ve had 429 posts since then on a bewildering variety of topics, and over 1,500 comments. Thank you to everyone who has been reading and contributing.

But our interests in the site have diverged. We’re going to leave InBerkeley exactly as it stands. Lance is starting a new site, Berkeleyside. He hopes readers, writers and commenters will follow what develops there with as much enthusiasm as they had here. You can subscribe to Berkeleyside’s feed or follow it on Twitter as well.

In a post on scripting.com, Dave said: “Other projects are consuming more of my time. And in the last couple of months, family stuff has taken me away from Berkeley, and I’m not at all sure where my attention will be drawn in the future. So a big part of my decision to move on is personal.”

He goes on to explain what he learned about hyperlocal from the InBerkeley experiment, and wishes Lance well, and may even contribute to the new site.

Did any InBerkeley readers hear the concert and wish to comment?

Update One attendee posted a recording of Gonna Change My Way of Thinking:

Photo: UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley’s Oliver Williamson has shared this year’s Nobel prize for economics* with Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University. Williamson was awarded the prize “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm”.

Williamson is the fifth Berkeley economist to win the prize, and the university’s 21st Nobelist. The eight Nobelists currently on the faculty are unique in the university in that they get the greatest award of all: a reserved parking place on the campus.

The best quick analysis of Williamson’s contribution to economics is at Marginal Revolution. Read the whole thing, but the intro gives some of the flavor:

In Adam Smith there is the pin factory and the market and from that beginning we trace the long literature in economics focused on the twin questions, What price to set?  How much to produce?  Following Coase, Williamson asks different questions, Why a pin factory?  Why are the 18 steps to make a pin performed by a single firm rather than two or more?  Why are there many firms instead of one large firm?  Why does the pin factory not vertically integrate upwards to buy the steel factory and downwards to buy the retail hardware shop?

For those who believe in the wisdom of crowds, both Williamson and Ostrom were 50:1 in the betting at Ladbrokes on this year’s prize.

Update You can also read a good analysis by Paul Krugman. And one by Steve (Freakonomics) Levitt. Also Ed Glaeser.

Update 2 The headline I should have written.

* For any pedantic readers, the economics prize is not one of the traditional Nobel prizes. It’s awarded by the Swedish central bank in memory of Alfred Nobel, rather than by the Nobel Foundation. The official name is The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

We did not have the required permission to use the photo and we have taken it down.

Books Inc opened its Berkeley store at 1760 Fourth Street today. The doors opened early to welcome the crowd that had gathered outside eager to experience a new book store after witnessing so many go the other way in recent years.

Co-owner and president Michael Tucker told Carolyn Said at the Chronicle: “I’m a Berkeley boy, so for me it was absolutely anathema that there wasn’t a general-interest bookstore left here.”  Said’s story also explores why an independent chain like Books Inc has managed to survive against the odds. Read it here.

o Books Inc coming to Fourth Street – August 6, 2009

West Berkeley by Lee Otis, Flickr.

Berkeley Hillside Club
LECTURE—Friday, October 9 at 6 pm

ART SHOW & SALE—Saturday–Sunday, October 11–12, 11AM–6 PM
Free admission
The Hillside Club is pleased to present the Fourth Annual Landscape Art Show and Sale and a special lecture by Thomas Reynolds on the long tradition of collecting California landscape paintings. Thomas Reynolds is the owner of Thomas Reynolds Gallery in San Francisco, an authority on early California landscape art, and a supporter of local bay area landscape painters. He will also give a tour of the show and discuss the exhibited paintings.

The lecture will begin at 6 pm on Friday,
October 9th.

The show and sale will continue Saturday through Sunday, October
10 through 11 from 11am to 6 pm.

The Hillside Club is located at 2286 Cedar Street, at Arch in Berkeley.

For more information contact 510-848-3227.

Artists presenting their work include:
* Bryan Mark Taylor     * Christin Coy
* Daniel McCormick     * Dean Holland
* Dennis Ziemienski     * Douglas Morgan
* Elaine Carpenter     * Erma Wheatley
* Jack Cassinetto     * Jerrold Turner
* Julie Nunes     * Julie Seelos
* Kevin Courter     * Mark Farino
* Nikki Basch-Davis     * Paul Kratter
* Ray Carpenter     * Robin Moore
* Tim Horn     * Tom Soltesz
* Zenaida Mott

Now, having a son who attends Berkeley High, and is of course very attractive, my immediate reaction was to go on the defensive. However I admit I have never actually experienced the lunchtime rush — I do know around 3,000 teenagers need to find a place to buy lunch and be back in their classrooms in about 40 minutes.

And I can appreciate that having huge numbers of big — for they are invariably big — possibly unruly, teenagers bearing down on you when you are just popping into town to get a replacement battery for your camcorder at RadioShack might be intimidating and a tad unpleasant.

But Berkeley High has been at its current location for 108 years. (The first public high school classes in Berkeley were held in 1880 at the Kellogg Primary School at Oxford and Center Streets adjacent to the campus. In 1901, construction began on the northwest portion of the present site of the high school.)

If anything, the rest of downtown has evolved around it and the UC campus. And, I ask myself, is it not healthy for educational establishments to be at the heart of cities? Or should they be banished to the outskirts so good citizens don’t need to encounter teen spirit up close and en masse on a daily basis?

I’m worried about my kids crossing Ashby at Pine Avenue in the Elmwood. But a wild turkey just ambled placidly down my street and crossed without so much as a by your leave.

OK so Berkeley is not exactly chic on the street. Love it though we may, we do not usually think to turn to the city’s thoroughfares and gathering spots for sartorial inspiration.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t stylish people out there. You just have to know where to look, and the Cal campus is – perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not — a good place to start

A group of undergraduates recently launched a fashion magazine and a blog to explore “fashion as more than just cloth on a body”. It’s called Bare (Bear/Bare, get it?) and the students “aim to represent creativity and inspiration, ingenuity, and passion. Passion for art, passion for the aesthetic, and passion for one’s own tastes, biases, and self-expression.”

The blog might dissect the look of a student who is photographed on campus, suggest ways to put together an outfit, or report on the retro fashions on TV series True Blood.

So far it’s all lookin’ good. Check out Bare’s website here.