penitent, turbulent, multiplex!

Day three of the long weekend saw us heading up to Berkeley. The official reason was so that Nathan could visit the quantum computing folks there, but we really just wanted to look around the town that we’d both heard so many good things about. Another story-in-pictures awaits…

Upon arriving in Berkeley, we parked in front of some frat house…

… near Bancroft and Piedmont, which is just southeast of the main Berkeley campus, if I remember correctly.

On the way to the university, we stopped at the art museum, which was mostly closed for the holidays; however, the galleries in the first and second floor lobbies were open, so we checked those out.

Despite the signs telling me not to do so, I decided to take a couple of pictures of some modern Indian art. I figured that if I turned the flash off, it couldn’t do any harm…

… except that I forgot to kill the flash. Not only did that surprise me, but it also sort of ruined the picture, so I decided to take another one, this time ensuring that the flash was off…

… or so I thought. Apparently I only respond to feedback that occurs less than one second from the originating event. At this point an attendant (what do you call a person who works at an art gallery, anyways?) walked in and told me to stop, so I did. Sort of. I took a few more furtive shots later on, but none of them turned out properly, so I count that as having followed their rules.

After the gallery, we made our way to the university. The campus actually felt like a university campus, unlike Stanford, which felt more like a conservatory or something. There was quite a bit of activity, and lots of poster-covered surfaces and other familiar university sights that weren’t really evident at Stanford.

The architecture was awesome, especially to someone who spent five years on the University of Waterloo grounds, where buildings are designed with no consideration of their surroundings and with little regard for the welfare of the eyes that have to behold them.

The main library was particularly exquisite.

The quantum computing folks at Berkeley are holed up in the Hearst Mining Building. We sort of got lost in there, and ended up in a restricted area after tailgating a grad student with a keycard, so in the spirit of urban exploration I did some snooping. Unfortunately, these bullpens were the most interesting thing I could find.

One wouldn’t necessarily expect mining students to have much concern for the beauty of their surroundings, but the Hearst building is quite a piece of work, as the photo above indicates.

After listening to the QC folks talk shop for a while — and trying to contribute some of my mediocre knowledge of hyperbolic geometry, which was rightfully ignored — we made our way to the downtown and walked up and down the streets there. The highlights for me were…

… the music stores. Rasputin had an incredible selection of pretty much everything. Nathan aptly described the feeling that the store gave me when he said “This place has made realize how little I really know about music.”

After being overwhelmed by Rasputin, we didn’t bother going into Amoeba, but…

… it sported some pretty wild graffiti (urban art?) that Nathan had the presence of mind to capture digitally (this photo is his.)

There were also, predictably, quite a few different bookstores. Not so many as one might find in the Mission district in San Francisco, nor were they as large, but they had their own personality that I instantly took a liking to.

We spent the evening at the Jupiter microbrewery and pizza joint, and man was it a good time. When we got there, we obliviously chose a table next to the coolest couple I’ve pretty much ever met. We had some great conversations with them, and I was sad to see them go when we finally parted ways at around 1am.

We did get some pictures with them, but I’ve always been sticky about divulging details about other people on my site here, so you’ll just have to use your imagination and conjure up your own images of us hanging with some cool folks.

A great place, Berkeley. I hope to get out there again before my stint here is done.