Berkeley West

It was a beautiful day, and we decided to visit Berkeley West.

We often blog about our favorite Berkeley neighborhoods, and 4th Street in West Berkeley, is one of our favorites.

This time we headed further west... to Berkeley West.

You might know it as San Francisco.

It was a beautiful day, so decided to drive over. Note to self....if we're only going to the Ferry Building Market Place, then BART makes much more sense... it costs less, takes about the same time, and gets you closer to the Ferry Building than a $5 parking lot does!

So what did we find when we arrived? A great Art Deco building, marvelous food and lots of people! BBQ Oysters, fresh tamales, beans, peppers, breads, coffee, chocolate and more.

Here's one of the murals from Rincon Annex post office building - it shows the discovery of gold! Rincon Annex is an Art Deco post office, which has been nicely converted to shops and restaurants. One of the scenes from Tucker was filmed in a corner of the lobby.

What else was there? Turns out that Berkeley West has many of our West Berkeley Neighborhood shops! Peet's Coffee, Stonehouse Olive Oil, Acme Breads, Sur La Table, The Gardener and Scharffen Berger Chocolate, to name a few!

It also had the chimes from the Ferry Building Tower, music, historic streetcars from around the world, and a filming crew from the Food Network!

Enjoy the photos!






The WPA murals inside Rincon Annex show the development of California, and some scenes from the depression. I don't think the murals showed bread lines.. but people are still lining up for bread in San Francisco. Some of my favorite San Francisco WPA Murals are inside Coit Tower. The aforementioned link is from http://www.sandy-travels.com/


The Ferry Building Marketplace has a very European feel, as does the building. It reminded me of Budapest's Central Market Hall, so I dug out my photos to compare.

Wow! You can see why I thought of Budapest. These were taken with a "state of the art" Sony Digital Camera... set to Fine Mode... on 3.5" disks!

It's been 8 years since Leslie Jones crafted a wonderful trip to Prague, Vienna & Budapest for us... and I'm ready to return