I always imagine Berkeley to be some sort of utopian away from hum-drum America, always doing the same boring thing. Walk down Telegraph... street kids, musicians with instruments unknown. Street kids and urban poverty. Food. Indian-Pakistani, Korean, American, Ethiopean, French Italian, Mexican, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Afghani, Japanese. Food and people, languages and culture. The streets are dirty, sometimes. Rasputin's on haste and Telegraph - 4 floors of music and DVDs. Moes and Cody's - books, books and more books. College avenue, Elmwood and it's quaint little shops and silly cross walks around one way streets that dead end. University avenue - always busy until the street lights flash on and off at 3AM. So many cars even then. So slow and yet fast, free way approaching. Shattuck avenue and its pomp and circumstance. Here is where the corporations are. Ever eat a power bar? Their home is in Berkeley. The blockbusters and Barnes and Noble mix-match with independent stores. Starbucks meets Intermetzo and Milano. There is almost a balance. The streets, walls, fences and occasionally the Berkeley University campus are all canvases for art. Some call it vandalism. Maybe it is. In Berkeley, the cops probably smoke weed. They certainly don't seem to mind that everyone else does. Cool. The bicyclists almost number as many cars... on a slow day. Anthems and slogans, cause after cause. Some hate cops. Some want us to live in trees. Others want to stop war and feed the children. Berkeley fits well with the moto: Opinions are like ass holes, everyone has one. But the opinions are more interesting than ass holes. Generally. Farmers markets, locally grown food. Conscious consumerism... but not conscious about classism. Right next door to Berkeley is Oakland. Poor, murder, crime, run down, some rich, mostly poor. Oakland. Where is the class consciousness, the willingness to change things? Fake liberals. Berkeley? Sometimes, yes. Once in a while there is a 'naked parade' where a group of hippies dawn their nakedness and decry war and violence, being symbols of innosence - or shame as most of us might consider being naked in public to be- but they do it with pride. Pride in being born the way we are. But after a year of music on every street, sweet flowers, beautiful weather, expensive housing, protests and pantheons of praise to all sorts of things... well... I wanted to imagine Berkeley was different. And sometimes it is.. but most of the time. Most of the time, it's just Berkeley. When you live in any place for a while... even the unusual becomes dullingly familiar.