The East Bay is the area on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. The general feeling of the East Bay is very mixed, but overall relaxed. A lot of the bustle of San Francisco is lost across the bridge and there is some stale hippie culture lingering in Berkeley that probably makes its residents more apt to recycle. The mornings are gloomy and overcast, nearly without exception, but most non-winter afternoons clear up and blanket us with warm sunshine. Living right next to the bay also means that it’s often windy—about half of all evenings the wind is howling around here. In the summer there have been a couple warm days that made leaving the non-air conditioned apartment a good idea, a few gorgeous days around 75°F, but mostly mediocre days on which a sweatshirt is non-optional.
There is quite a bit of good food around Berkeley, but most of it comes with a price. I’m not saying it’s expensive, but most of the deliciousness will be found at sit-down restaurants that will drain you to the tune of $30 for a couple. That may be par for the course (no pun intended—ouch) at most suburban eateries, but I guess I was spoiled by the abundance of awesomely cheap food in San Diego that allowed me to survive on less than $10 a day for the better part of seven years. That said, you could probably eat that cheaply up here, though you might end up with an obnoxious illness or a stab wound or two.
The best part of this area, for me, is the variety of neighborhoods and neat places. Kensington is one of my favorite niches of the world, even though I’ve never exited the vehicle while coasting through its maze of hilly roads. Tilden Regional Park is a glorious series of hidden treasures on top of the Berkeley Hills, where nice people go to have a nice time amid a sunny (on good days) and verdant festival of beauty. It should be no surprise that the hippies took a stand next to the trees of Berkeley—they are wonderful. Getting lost in the hills surrounding this area has become a treasured pastime of late, letting us glide into new and interesting environments with fresh eyes and no compass. I thoroughly enjoy the leisure and beauty in the hills.
Down on the flats, however, you can expect Berkeley and Oakland to be dirty, run down and generally unpleasant. Some areas, like Telegraph Ave., have character, but most are just sad. We’ve found redeeming qualities of Berkeley, Emeryville and communities to the north, but Oakland’s grime has permeated our most hardy judgmental reserves. Needless to say, we linger north of the 24, though we sometimes also venture to the east and west.
East of Berkeley, in the Diablo Valley, Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill provide what have become the customary accoutrements of suburbia: large, clean grocery stores; malls aplenty; angsty high-schoolers roving in droves; near-every chain restaurant that exists within a few gallons’ drive; and more SUVs than would be proper in any context at any time, period. That said, suburban life brings with it many appreciable things. I like safe neighborhoods and the convenience of fully stocked gourmet grocers, but the sum total falls somewhere short of gleeful and completely outside the bounds of interesting. So we moved over the hills and onto the bay, increasing dramatically both our satisfaction with living and our appreciation for the expense to be found with (semi-)urban dwelling.
The grocery stores could be closer (and cleaner), the armed guards at Best Buy are only mildly unsettling and the price of gas is higher, but I don’t have to drive to work. My $1.50 daily travel costs are an all-time personal best and my commute is pleasant and short. We’re less than ten minutes from “The City” without traffic and within two minutes of a major interstate that whisks us away from the gloom when the desire for real warmth overcomes us. Overall, not half bad.