DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE’S A TUNNEL ON SOLANO AVENUE?
a memory tour of berkeley, ca; because i am a big hungry nostalgia monster
(when I started writing this, I was still preparing to move, but I’m finishing this sitting in bed in my new apartment, so suspend disbelief about timelines)
I’m moving out of Berkeley this week. I’ve lived here for five years, which is the second longest duration I’ve lived in any place behind the 18 years spent in my hometown. Four of these five years I’ve spent in apartments on the same block just north of campus. And during these five years, I haven’t been away from Berkeley for more than a month at a time.
None of these details actually means anything, but I find that I try to arbitrarily categorize and quantify time to sort out my big feelings. I know it’s a bit too dramatic, considering I am moving a mere 10 miles away. But life is short — why deny myself a sentimental indulgence? Berkeley is really the only place I can remember being new to me, the only place in which that newness has had the time to peel itself back and reveal a cozy familiarity.
Over the course of five years, I became more myself and fell into and out of routines. I ate lots of fruit and let even more of it go bad in various refrigerators. Except for the times that I didn’t, I loved Berkeley so much. So here’s some sort of abridged memory tour featuring all the silly places that make me feel so tender.
Kings of the Hilgard Avenue
During my sophomore and junior years of college, I lived with three of my best friends in the world in an 800 sq ft apartment. It had south facing windows and access to a rooftop with a view of the bay.
On one of the rare hot nights of Summer 2020, the muggy air got so unbearable my roommate and I lugged a futon to the roof and slept under the high AQI night sky, leading to one of the most disorienting mornings of my life.
Solano Tunnel has TERF bangs
And they look so amazing on her.
Is a gifted mirror cursed or lucky?
Once, while walking down Henry street toward Solano tunnel (who has TERF bangs, as we know), I saw a woman approaching from the opposite direction wielding a circular mirror. I think I must have been listening to music — it was the month I really liked Grimes. I suddenly felt as though this woman was going to give me the mirror. Sure enough, when we crossed paths, she offered it to me. I accepted because this was a confirmation of my premonition and continued my walk, now encumbered with what I believed to be an auspicious object.
When I brought the mirror home, this same event, when recounted to my roommates, became not auspicious but instead scary/unlucky/cursed. I brushed it off until at least two depressive episodes were blamed on the presence of the mirror, and then I drove it all the way to Southern California, where the curse perhaps remains.
Who farted at Indian Rock Park?
A personal low occurred in September 2020 at Indian Rock Park, when I thought it would be a good idea to listen to a collaborative playlist curated by a recent ex boyfriend, walk moodily and watch the sunset alone, sobbing loudly. It was a beautiful sunset though, so the park was populated with hobby rock climbers and two teenage girls eating cheetos. My inhibitions were drowned out by the sounds of Sixpence None the Richer when I, to put things lightly, let one rip. I was brought down to reality when the teenage girls near me started laughing and said, “Dude, did someone just fart?”
To all the AC Transit bus lines I’ve loved before
(with partial excerpt from something silly i wrote 4 years ago)
Even if I have nowhere in particular to go I feel tempted to hop on AC Transit’s 79 and head downtown whenever I see it. Running every 30 minutes, it seems I am always chasing the bus when I need it, greeting it casually when it has nothing to offer me. Creeping along the road toward Warring and Parker Street — I cannot count how many times I have opened the late nextbus.com or a transit app to find her either -1 minute or 30 minutes away.
One day, unbeknownst to me, I must have taken the 80, my favorite line, for the very last time before it became one of many pieces of pre-pandemic obsolescence. I should have known this particular route was on its way out, as I was regularly the only person on the bus, able to sit in the very back right corner with my feet up and take calls from my high school best friend before hopping off to buy bread at Berkeley Bowl West on Sundays.
The Berkeley Rose Garden/Live Oak Park/Valley Life Science Building depression circuit
I feel nothing but gratitude for my pandemic walking routes and the various patches of dry grass where I read books about deranged women to make myself feel sane in comparison.
I’ve experienced the full spectrum of human emotion at Top Dog
Once in front of Top Dog, I apologized to a woman because I was standing in line, which felt like a major inconvenience at the time. She looked at me and through me and through me into the beyond. “You’re sorry?” She asked. Sensing I had said something wrong, I responded with a hesitant no. She shrugged. “You don’t have to be.” I think about her all the time.
Once in front of Top Dog, I looked so bewildered as my friend ordered a chicken sausage that the person working asked if I was okay and gave me a 5 dollar gift card as consolation.
Once in front of Top Dog, I lost my vision and threw up into a flimsy paper bag while a man asked my good friend Valerie to purchase him an apple juice and go on an ice cream date with him.
Clark Kerr Campus
was the first place I ever lived in Berkeley, and the radiator in my room somehow shut off the hot water for my entire building. My friends and I monopolized the kitchen lounge and held a Friendsgiving event that cemented my passion for party planning. We sat around the round tables of the dining hall for hours, chatting over Lucky Charms and lentil soup. I walked up to the track and watched the sunset and passed the idea off as my own even though Clark Kerr Track Sunset was an entry in my cousin’s list of recommended Berkeley activities. I played basketball for two hours every night for two months straight. I had my first kiss sitting on a log along the Fire Trails. My swollen ear ate my angry new piercing, and I bled into a cup of warm salt water in the lounge while my hallmates distracted me. I discovered that there is not a single version of reality in which I have an understanding of differential equations. I wrote bad poetry. My body underwent the physical toll of exorcism after I took my very first shot of Vodka of the Gods.
While writing this, I realized that absolutely none of this information is interesting. I thought that compiling a symphony of fragmented anecdotes could weave a picture of a rich life built within 17.7 square miles. But as I see these thoughts scrambled on the page, I realize these are the sorts of stories that could only garner animated responses from a parent of a toddler or in the context of that early, giddy stage of courtship.
I don’t know what makes a place special. I could always say something cheesy like: Berkeley, you made me who I am today. The truth is t hat I probably could become a beautiful, if slightly different version of myself in any city. But maybe it’s precisely that arbitrary nature of it all that makes a place special. Maybe the Banh Mi restaurant next to my apartment is not actually the best Banh Mi in Berkeley and is in fact just a Banh Mi place accessible within 300 feet. Maybe Pacific School of Religion is not the best place to learn to rollerskate in Berkeley and is just the first place my roommate and I could think of. Maybe, but who cares? The point is that, no matter how arbitrary place as a concept can be, we still get to choose the coffee we like and the places we sit for lunch. We get to decide which blocks have the best flowers and find the most practical location for a nightstand. No matter how arbitrary place can feel, we still always end up somewhere. And how lucky am I to have loved my somewhere so fully and for so long?
