Berkeley Rose Garden: for the Flickr set, click here.

Mudrakers Cafe in Berkeley:

Stencil art on Dwight:

While Oakland has a firm grasp on my heart, I must confess a wandering eye toward Berkeley. Oaktown beware: I’ve got options. Option Berkeley comes equipped with a building named for Beverly Cleary, an academic atmosphere reminiscent of my childhood, and signs telling me I look beautiful.

Berkeley is my favorite place to go when I need a change of scenery. I love San Francisco, but Berkeley feels like home. I think it’s largely because this is the first time I have ever lived outside an academic environment. My mom was a grad student until I was ten, and my dad and stepmom are professors. Seeing TAs poring over stacks of papers in coffee shops gives me a delicious sense of nostalgia.

Aside from my personal reasons for making the trek north, I don’t see how you can not feel warm and fuzzy about a place with the coolest indie clothing shop ever as well as a rich tradition of progressive organizing. Granted, Oakland also has the latter, but if you want a side of hippie with your Panthers, go to Berkeley. For example, Claire has a great post titled “Only at Berkeley” about Cal students picketing at Quad Day to protest the environmental impact of all the flyers used to advertise various campus organizations.

For those unfamiliar with the town that pioneered the concept of the “Nuclear Free Zone”, tread carefully through these deep, lazy waters. What begins as a flirtation will soon be a scandalous affair.

Seen in Downtown Berkeley:

For a snarky take on the Internets, go to sendmeaninternet.com. Click at your own risk, however. I will not be held responsible for blindness caused by flashing neon and/or MIDI-induced insanity.

I went to the Berkeley Naan n’ Curry the other day, and they were selling volleyballs along with their usual fare:

For the record, I know the title of this post is utterly shameless. Thanks to my father, I can’t resist a good nonsense word or a bad pun. The badder the better.

Beth and I went to the Spice of Life Festival in Berkeley yesterday. We found cool hats, made by Zazu & Violet:

Unfortunately, the one I was wearing cost $185, so I didn’t buy it. Beth didn’t buy hers either, despite the fact that it suited her smashingly.

There are a few more festival photos posted on Flickr, which may or may not become a Project Janna routine. I’ve been motivated to use my account there by moo.com, a site where you can turn your Flickr photos into calling cards. If only I had a pricey handmade hat to complement my newest retro accessory.

Ren, dog-in-residence at Momoca, origin of the bananashirt:

Aside from an adorable dog in a hand-knit sweater, what does Momoca have to offer? The East Bay Express had this to say in its 2005 Best of issue:

it is so tiny you could almost put it in your pocket, carries only hand-crafted items made by local designers, and specializes in highly textured natural fibers. The overall look is one that’s sort of ripped-and-reassembled, loose-fitting and yet cleverly cut, futuristic and homey at the same time. Let’s put it this way: If Björk were planning to launch an organic farming cooperative in outer space, she’d do it wearing clothes from Momoca.

The best thing about Momoca is that the owner, Tomoko Tsuchiya, designs most of the clothes, and sews some of them at the store while open for business. This is cool in a number of ways - first, you can’t argue with multitasking; second, it adds an interesting dimension to the consumer experience to see the work that goes into the stuff one is buying; and finally, it tangibly illustrates that the items for sale were not outsourced to distant sweatshops for assembly.

Drop by Momoca (Dwight & Telegraph in Berkeley) if you are looking for something hand-crafted with love. You don’t have to have a social engagement in outer space, either. Bananashirts are acceptable fare on Planet Earth as well.