Begin your tour in North Shattuck, the historic birthplace of California cuisine. Long celebrated by foodies as the 'Gourmet Ghetto,' this vibrant culinary hub is currently evolving under its fresh neighborhood name. As we stroll along, we'll see where Alfred Peet started hand-roasting beans and invented specialty coffee in this country. A few doors down, the Cheese Board Collective opened as a tiny cheese shop and ended up popularizing the French baguette in the US. Around the corner, a 27-year-old Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse and decided the menu would change based on whatever was fresh that week. None of these people were trying to start a movement, they just happened to be on the same block.
The food stops change a little depending on what's open, but expect a slice from the Cheese Board (one pizza a day, always vegetarian, no substitutions, and yes, it's that good), potato puffs from Grégoire that have a cult following for a reason, and a few other neighborhood surprises.
From there, we'll cut onto the UC Berkeley campus, the first school in the UC system. We'll walk through a massive grove of Tasmanian Blue Gum Eucalyptus, planted by the university as a windbreak, it's now a towering fire hazard nobody can agree what to do about. Admire the Beaux-Arts, neoclassical, and Art Deco architecture alongside the towering Campanile, the second-tallest clock tower of its kind anywhere.
Next, we'll stop at the Mario Savio Steps. In 1964, a 22-year-old Savio took his shoes off, climbed on top of a cop car so he wouldn't scratch the paint, and gave a speech that lit the fuse on the Free Speech Movement. A few months later, he gave another speech on these very steps in front of 4,000 people, resulting in the arrest of over 800 students. The steps were officially renamed in his honor in 1997.
Heading down Telegraph Avenue, we'll stop by Rasputin's, the original Berkeley record store. The owner has a long, highly entertaining feud with Amoeba Records, including a legendary story about a suitcase full of cash that may or may not be true. Finally, after grabbing one last sweet treat nearby, we’ll head over to People’s Park. This site became the epicenter of Berkeley’s 1969 counterculture movement. In May of that year, a community dispute over a vacant lot escalated dramatically when the Governor deployed the National Guard, resulting in a tragic clash that fundamentally shaped the city's activist legacy.
