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Many of my close friends, including my wife, went to UC Berkeley for undergrad, mostly in the first half of the 1990s. So that means they got to witness or experience the Oakland Hills fire, Bill Graham's passing, shelter from the Rodney King riots, sneaking in Jason Kidd [who played home games at Haas (was it called Harmon back then?) Pavilion, above], and the Naked Guy. Some even went there for grad school. And, over the years, audiophiles have reached out to me, stating that they are Cal grads.
Some of our friends and relatives currently attend Cal. So this past weekend, my wife decided to meet up, and walk around and through campus.
During one of the Spring Dead Weeks, my friend ACS joined the throngs, and marched naked through Moffitt Library. While doing that, ACS laughed, "But this is just indoors. I have a friend, John, who goes to UC Santa Cruz. The first time it rains in the evening, they march naked across campus!"
ACS and Scylla are my writing partners, and both were MCB majors. The MCB Department is in the Valley Life Sciences Building. However, the latter is arguably best-known for its Tyrannosaurus Rex model in the atrium.
Separately, ACS and Scylla accompanied me to Berkeley's dB Audio, Music Lovers Audio, and The Audio Chamber. Back then, ACS worked part-time at Victoria's Secret in San Francisco. She saw right through the salesmen at these audio stores. To the downfall of business, these audio stores did not know how to cater to us college kids, especially girls.
Honolulu's late Stewart Ono (AA's UncleStu52) understood that the early-1990s college kid may turn into the late-1990s core high-end audio customer.
It's hard to get Cal students to agree on anything, but most agree that Evans Hall is the ugliest. During a heatwave, Scylla's Evans classroom faced the afternoon sun. Either the AC didn't work, or AC did not exist, but the heat was unbearable, and many students, despite being sharp, passed out.
My wife does not recall the class, but one time, students at Evans pulled the fire alarm(s), in order to get out of midterms. So, to avoid this from happening on his midterms, my wife's professor held class outdoors!
If a student steps on this plate, his or her GPA will never reach or exceed a 4.0.
The inside of Doe Library is old, like Harry Potter's. Above one entrance is the head of Athena. When you exit, you are supposed to walk backwards, so that you retain the knowledge you learned in the Doe Library.
Further up the hill, Cal has the outdoor Greek Theater. But it also has the indoor Zellerbach Hall, which consists of two rooms, one larger than the other. They are thus suitable for dance, theater, and symphonies.
But audiophiles like that Fleetwood Mac recorded "Songbird," the B-side to "Dreams," at Zellerbach.
-Lummy The Loch Monster
Follow Ups:
And even the library, with its neoclassical ornaments, is depressing, grim GREY. Aren't there any pretty buildings on that campus? Anything colorful?
Interior of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building
My wife was walking around (i.e., not standing still), when taking these photos with her phone, so they're not the most stable.
Doe Library, as the sun was going down.
Moffitt Library, as the sun continued to set.
What time was it, when my wife took this of the Campanile (which is not a library!)? She's not sure she'd like to go back to Cal, especially when her employer does not care from which university she gets a Masters. She thinks I'd be able to blend in. But she would, in her own words, fulfill the role of "cynical menopausal white-collar dudette."
For some reason architects like to build university libraries that include underground levels. Does help solve issues with book storage space, in line with giving campus buildings a low profile and not rising to monstrous heights. Stanford University did just that with its main campus library, Green Library. Half the structure is underground! But the building is also situated in a 100 year flood plain. The architects that planned the building might have given more thought to that issue. Because in 1998 that hundred year flood hit. Water cascaded into the basement of Green Library, rising to knee deep levels, which then soaked and severely damaged over 60,000 books. Check the video to see such a truly spectacular library flood, which happened recently at the Smithtown Library of Long Island, New York.
Edits: 09/06/24
In early 2011, while I was working for Stanford Student Housing, an electric cart was found in Lake Lagunita. It was obvious to us, that students had placed it there, as a prank. And the cart, as it turned out, belonged to us. We had no idea where that particular cart had come from, or was supposed to be parked. So I was assigned to do an audit.
Lake Lagunita is a vernal pool. It's normally dry. However, during the times it does rain, Lake Lagunita acts as a flood plain.
As a worker for the Graduate School of Education, I felt that the Green Library (which was next to GSE) had plenty of space, for students to study, and me to take a break. I don't know about now, but back then, the Green Library specialized in social sciences. Hmm, but you got me thinking. I don't think I ever went to the basement.
Below ground (below the main hall), they "cleverly" built rehearsal rooms and a large rehearsal space which the Stanford Chorus used to use. Only trouble was that when there was a good rain (not even a 100 year flood), the sewage would overflow into the practice rooms and the rehearsal space, and people would have to wait until it dried and could be cleaned up. This happened maybe five or six times just during the period I was there in the 70's. I guess it was all part of the "Leland Stanford Junior University Experience". Yes, it's true: I had to attend a junior university. ;-)
One day after work, I spotted George Clooney, who was supposed to give a free talk at Dinkelspiel. I was expecting an entourage, but no, as far as I could tell, he only had a single assistant.
Another sight to behold was the Dalai Lama and all the monks.
But anyway, the "Beat Cal" t-shirts do not sell. The attitude among students is "But we always beat Cal."
No, I was unaware of the underground floors at Dinkelspiel having plumbing problems. But Building Maintenance has had decades to resolve that :-)
Per the last sentence in your post, one HOPES that the plumbing problems were eventually resolved! ;-)
Did you get to Music Lovers hfi shop on (I think) Gilbert street? Is it still there?
Thai Noodle II on Telegraph was closed, the last I was told. Fantasy Studios has been closed for several years now.
I gotta get out there again sometime soon - my wife needs a new tie-dyed t-shirt, and I need my Beserkeley fix.
*********
We are inclusive and diverse, but dissent will not be tolerated.
Scylla found a page of her notes from Multivariable Calculus. She says that, on account of high school AP classes, her start at UC Berkeley got skewed. She took the above Mutlivariable Calc, and Linear Algebra & Differential Equations. She says both math classes were "five days a week, almost two hours a day." "As it turns out," she says, "I ended up not needing those classes for my major [MCB]."
At Cal, freshmen are only guaranteed on-campus housing for that one year. So, as the Spring 1992 semester wound down, Scylla and three other girls found an apartment in the middle of Berkeley.
During the summer of 1992, I took BART from S.F. to Downtown Berkeley, and met up with Scylla. She and I went to Music Lovers Audio, which was on Walnut Street, not far from Chez Panisse and the Gourmet Ghetto. The entrance felt like we were walking on a plank or diving board. The salesman who latched on with us was a tall, skinny, nerdy guy, who wore a short-sleeved collared shirt.
Scylla and I asked about Conrad-Johnson's solid state PF-1 preamp. Alas, MLA on that day did not have a demo unit.
Unlike other audio stores, that initial visit to MLA was memorable. Afterward, Scylla wanted both Oscar's hamburgers (which was on Shattuck & Hearst) and the Top Dog which used to be up Hearst.
In the mid-1990s, a different Cal friend, ACS, accompanied me to MLA. We really liked the then-new Sonus Faber Concertino. Given that my room was small and square, with a hard wall behind the stereo, I should have gotten that SF Concertino instead of the Thiel CS.5 (purchased from San Francisco's Audio Excellence).
The last time I've been to MLA was in 2009, but that was their San Francisco store. An audiophile friend had to get his big-ass Wadia 781i fixed. I helped him lug that CD player, which was as large and heavy as a power amp.
My wife, who does not like to travel, reports to Dallas. Her colleagues love to travel, so they use up the travel budget by mid-year, and then my wife blissfully throws her hands up, "Sorry, there's no money left for me to travel."
I went to UC Santa Cruz, where tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirts were common. Heck, they probably still are common!
So, anyway, did you get to Music Lovers? Or, was your post "revisiting Berkeley" just another nostalgic trip in your mind?
I thought you actually recently went back to revisit Berkeley. Maybe I was wrong.
*********
We are inclusive and diverse, but dissent will not be tolerated.
My wife, relatives, and friends (but not I) went to UC Berkeley for undergrad. A smaller number went there for grad school. Because we lived scattered throughout the Bay Area, Berkeley is often centrally located. Plus, the Cal alums like to see how the campus and surrounding areas have changed.
Per previous post, the last time I've been to Music Lovers Audio was in 2009, but that was the S.F store. As for the Berkeley store, I believe they've moved closer to the Bay. The last time I went to the North Berkeley location was the mid-2000s.
Readers will have to judge for themselves, if they like the new entrance structure at the Downtown Berkeley BART station. Earlier this year, my family took BART from Bay Fair to Downtown Berkeley.
Sorry, last weekend's visit didn't provide clear evening/night photos.
Taken last school year, this shot at Valley Life Sciences Building shows actual chalk boards.
Some marketing class at Haas.
My friends may be Cal alums, but that does not give them a discount off of the $20 entrance fee at the Lawrence Hall Of Science.
That's South Hall, oldest building on the Berkeley campus and where I spent most of my time in the early 90s. Was called the School of Library and Information Studies when I was there. Then it became the School of Information Management and Systems. And now it's just the School of Information. Forget books! Now we are digital warriors!
You posted photos of Moffitt Library and Doe Library. But why does Berkeley have two large libraries on the same campus? Because the research library (Doe Library) has such comprehensive collections that you have to have some level of subject expertise just to find your way through the stacks. So much book wealth you don't know where to begin. An overdose for undergraduates. Moffitt, the undergraduate library, also has good collections, but they are just the main texts essential for undergraduate coursework, and little more. I used both libraries in the era when they still had floor-standing card catalogs, those things now long gone.
Good photo you've got of the Life Sciences Building. But there was a kind of scandal that happened there. Every graduate program in the life sciences used to have its own departmental library, right next to faculty offices. Was great stuff, as you never really had to leave the building to get your graduate education. But that changed. An administrative decision was handed down to consolidate all life sciences libraries. Done allegedly because centralization of library materials would save big money. So all those marvelous departmental libraries (Forestry, Agriculture, Nutrition, Public Health, Optometry, Botany, Zoology, and Microbiology) got mashed together, losing locality as separate collections and also losing local faculty expertise. Was a really stupid move that downgraded the quality of graduate education in the life sciences.
I also spent years on the Stanford campus, and while much richer than UC Berkeley, that didn't stop Stanford from wrecking their own libraries. The Engineering library, the Biology library, and the Chemistry library were shut down in 2015 and their collections siphoned off into Stanford's main library, which is Green Library. Mashed together what were carefully curated and separate collections into one big pit, where nobody knows their way around the materials with the same care those books had as independent collections. Stanford also had the best reference room book collection that I had ever seen, but that got gutted as well. The main floor of Green library now has acres of computer terminals, but very few reference books. And never mind that 4 million of Stanford's books are stored off campus in a warehouse type setting, boxed and placed on high vertical shelving and retrieved by automated machinery. You expected all university book collections to be on open shelving so people could walk the aisles and browse? No way! Because that does not match with the new trend to warehouse collections offsite! It's a big money saver!! Never mind that many of those books will never be read again.
Just my rant about the ongoing desecration and forthcoming doom for university book collections.
My dad had an older sister, my Aunt Fran, who was 8 year older. Because of the age gap, they were never that close. Aunt Fran graduated from the University of San Francisco in, I believe, 1950. She did not want to become a nun or teacher. She loved to read, so her happy place was the library. We do not know how she became a civilian librarian for the military.
By the time I was born, Aunt Fran had long worked in the Chicago area. In the late-70s, she was stationed in Okinawa. And then she transferred to RAF Chicksands. So in the 80s and 90s, Aunt Fran would occasionally ship British candies, shirts, and CDs to me and my brother.
My Aunt Fran always used a manual (not electric) typewriter. In many ways, I miss her type-written notes (she was always brief).
In the mid-90s, RAF Chicksands was shutting down. So my Aunt Fran decided to retire. She bought a small San Francisco condo, out by Presidio Middle School. In the late-90s, that partially convinced me to give up the floorstanding Thiels, and go for mini-monitors, in my small living room.
Courtesy of our niece, here's the inside of Doe. Since Doe was always crowded, my wife used to go down three floors, looking for a place to sit.
This was from late 2014, when I was working for the Stanford Graduate School of Education. I was actually meeting up with an audiophile. I had placed several of his interconnects on a Cable Cooker, and was about to give back his wares.
My office was on Galvez, and I'd take breaks at the Green Library. Is that what has become of Stanford's vast collection of books?! My Aunt Fran is about to come back from the dead, and admonish Stanford.
Very interesting. I wonder if your wife got a picture of Hertz Hall. That's another music auditorium, smaller than Zellerbach, where they do a lot of solo recitals and chamber music. I still sometimes get hired to do piano accompanying for some of the students at UC Berkeley and I play at Hertz, some of the mini recital rooms in Morrison Hall, and, every so often, Zellerbach. Zellerbach is where UC Berkeley does its annual Concerto Competition, although I believe the rules have been changed so that the students can't use outside accompanists anymore (especially those who graduated from Stanford!).
My wife had the same violin since at least high school. She did use it while she attended Cal. Most music instrument stores advised her to scrap and replace her violin. But she found a place in S.F., which could restore it, extend its life a little bit.
Now that she bought a new case (the white one on your left), she can get rid of her old (middle) one. She also uses our kids' ukulele.
Hertz Hall is a couple blocks east of Zellerbach. As we walked up the hill, we stopped taking pictures. So we'll have to ask our relatives and coworkers for more :-)
My wife has always had, in her own words, a "mama bear body." She does not like today's slim-fit women's clothing.
When I was working at Stanford, I never had time, to attend the free evening lectures and performances at Dinkelspiel Auditorium.
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