Berkeley vs LA

Berkeley versus Los Angeles created January 2005 Context: I lived in Berkeley from August 2000 until May 2004. In August of 2004 I moved to LA.

Restaurants and markets	Berkeley	LA	Apartment	Berkeley	LA
	Fabulous restaurants (La Note); diverse cuisines (Ethiopian, Burmese, Tibetan); Berkeley Bowl; The Cheese Board; organic farmers' markets	Really good cheap eats (Lucy's, ethnic enclaves); chic and pricey places; non-organic farmers' markets; the Farmers Market; Little Tokyo and Fugetsu-Do; online health inspection results for restaurants		Airy, spacious fourth-floor studio in cool old building with fascinating elevator, hardwood floors, and excellent management; lousy water pressure, high rent, noise-sensitive neighbors	Cozy studio in cool "Garden of Allah"-style complex with nice neighbors and their pets, gas stove and oven, lower rent but higher utilities; meager closet space, building not as well-kept
	Better? LA for sheer size and eating on a small budget; Berkeley for fresh food with a conscience and everything within easy reach.			Better? Very much miss the hardwood floors and superbly-maintained building, but love the new gas stove, the extra $150/month, hearing the barks and meows. Do NOT miss old neighbors!

Neighborhood	Berkeley	LA	Transportation	Berkeley	LA
	Sunny and pleasant by day, "use caution" at night. Four blocks from campus and two blocks from shopping (and good Japanese food!) to east and west. Convenience store across the street.	Adorable, quiet, and safe, just about everything I could ask for in a neighborhood. Not close to campus, but then again, I don't ever have to hear the sounds of frat parties.		Walking: cheap, easy and good for your heart. BART and free-for-students AC Transit buses to take me everywhere else. Why guzzle gas? When rainy or grocery shopping, wished I could.	Land of auto worship. Never a day, hardly an hour without traffic; rain makes it exponentially worse. Every driver is an aggressive driver. Public transportation exists but no one takes it.
	Better? Feel thrills of happiness when walking through LA neighborhood, but sad to think it'll be years before I can buy a home in this kind of area. And really miss that convenience store.			Better? updated I feel like a sellout, but I think it's now a draw. I still hate that the traffic dictates my excursions, but I'm staring to like the convenience of driving. Plus I'm discovering new places to walk and hike in LA--and since I have a car, I can drive to get to them if they're far away.

Weather	Berkeley	LA	City	Berkeley	LA
	Rainy in winter and spring, sometimes hot in summer, overcast year-round.	Warm and balmy all the time. Er, except for this year, which is enjoying record rainfall. Smoggy.		Small, friendly, accessible Berkeley; quirky, lovely San Francisco; Albany, El Cerrito, and Oakland are all close to my heart. Long live the People's Republic of Berkeley.	Huge, famous, sprawling LA has its own culture and the tenth-largest economy in the country (or thereabouts). Sometimes I'm proud to be here, but mostly I just give thanks I'm not native.
	Better? updated Right now, I'm loving LA: the spring sunshine is orgasmically beautiful, and it's not yet as swelteringly hot as it's going to be in a few months. Plus, thanks to my Bay Area roots, the occasional breeze doesn't make me shiver like it does native Angelenos.			Better? These cities are both so unique and strange each should be its own country. It's fascinating to be in a place as renowned as LA, but Berkeley is my soul home. Dual citizenship maybe?

Love	Berkeley	LA	Citizenry	Berkeley	LA
	Good friends within walking distance, family a short drive away. Erik either within arm's reach (preferred) or a quick drive away.	My cohort is a fourteen-person definition of community. Dear friends Margaret and Huy are both within driving distance. And I'm making new friends.		Diverse, politically conscious or downright radical. Lots of students. Lots of homeless, some well-known local personalities. Tourists here and there.	Diverse as a whole, but individual neighborhoods aren't. Lots of (duh) Hollywood types, handfuls of real celebrities, and tons of wannabes.
	Better? updated Draw. I miss my family, Erik, Jackie, and Berkeley friends, but I'm no longer lonely in LA.			Better? updated The people of Berkeley are the weirdest and most wonderful mix of folks you'll find anywhere. But LA's not all empty-headed beautiful people.

Campus	Berkeley	LA	Department and Program	Berkeley	LA
	Love at first sight. Small but full of history and beauty, splendid for meandering aimlessly between classes. Libraries are many and many are gorgeous.	Lovely, but like most of LA, big and sprawling. An absurd amount of food is available on this campus; microwaves, too, which is nice, and free laptop rentals in the (not very pretty) grad library.		Friendly, accessible department. Wonderful, inspiring professors, many of whom remain friends and mentors.	The grad advisors make us all feel welcome and part of a thriving community, and I'm beginning to know some professors, but it's such an enormous department I still feel at sea with most of it.
	Better? updated I'm getting more comfortable on LA's campus, but I still prefer Berkeley. It's called your alma mater for a reason. (Really like the microwaves and laptops though.)			Better? updated I'm still not sure. Oddly enough, though, both departments are housed in big, sprawling, confusing buildings with a main wing and a courtyard section.

Academic Calendar	Berkeley	LA	Lifestyle	Berkeley	LA
	Semesters: they drag on forever, but they leave you with breathing room and a glorious feeling of being halfway done by December, with a month of winter vacation to look forward to.	Summer ends later, but quarters are swift, short, and relentless-- and there are three of them!		Study, procrastinate, eat, see friends, wander the town, eat, cook, dance, hang out, do yoga, tutor, read, go to lectures, go to the symphony, go to arts performances, be spontaneous, walk, enjoy life.	I study less than I should, but I'm finding cooler ways to procrastinate. :) And thanks to the beautiful spring weather, I'm really enjoying spending time outdoors.
	Better? Can't decide yet. Like that quarters are over sooner, but there's really no space to breathe at all.			Better? updated After eight months in LA, I have finally begun to enjoy life here as much as I did in Berkeley. Thank goodness!

Culture	Berkeley	LA	Dance	Berkeley	LA
	Alive and well on campus with individual departments, noon performances, $10 Cal Performances student rush tickets--and the evening Sproul drummers and homeless poets. Equally thriving within the city.	I'm still a little overwhelmed with all of LA's offerings, but I'm starting to see that there's a lot here to discover. (Ugh, doesn't that last phrase sound like an advertisement?)		An hour and a half of modern dance every weekday in a renovated old church building, offered by the excellent instructors of the Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies department.	World Arts and Cultures department offers fewer courses, and they're less rigorous and less frequent than Berkeley's classes.
	Better? updated I've seen more of LA's scene now, but I stand by what I said before: LA is harder to explore. It's bigger and more spread out, and I no longer have a steady partner in cultural excursions.			Better? updated Berkeley, but I'm learning a lot from my modern dance class here. I guess dancing is dancing wherever you go, and I'm thankful I'm doing it!

Yoga	Berkeley	LA	Ice Cream	Berkeley	LA
	Three words: Inner Heat Yoga.	It's my fault, but I haven't been to a class yet. No one could take the place of Inner Heat, and I'm afraid of finding the studios all filled with Hollywood types.		Yogurt Park, Ben & Jerry's (site of much excitement for Dana and me), Gelateria Naia	Mashti Malone's, makers of rose water ice cream, and Mikawaya, makers of the original ice cream mochi (they also have gelato)
	Better? I can't believe there could be a better studio out there than Inner Heat. I had a sanctuary and a community there, and I don't think I'll be able to find that again too quickly.			Better? Almost a tie, but Berkeley wins because all those places were within walking distance. I can walk to Mashti Malone, but Mikawaya is in Little Tokyo. :(

new Patisseries/ Bakeries	Berkeley	LA	new Shopping	Berkeley	LA
	Divine creations and wide selection: Masse's, La Farine, Katrina Rozelle, Acme, Miette, Virginia Bakery, Citizen Cake	Boule turns out decadent goodies in a boutique setting. Sweet Lady Jane failed to impress with a $50 berries and cream cake. At least there's La Brea Bakery for bread.		Crossroads and Buffalo Exchange for clothes, Amoeba and Rasputin for music, Telegraph street vendors for random goodies, and the most bookstores per capita of any city in the US.	All of Melrose Ave for funky clothes, furnishings, etc., Amoeba for music. More malls than you can shake a stick at, and they're all huuuuge. But I hate malls.
	Better? Berkeley, absolutely. There's more, and it's better.			Better? Berkeley wins on every count--except clothes! At least there's an Amoeba in LA, but in general, everything is expensive, and oh, I miss Berkeley's bookstores.

Conclusion: The list of good things about LA keeps growing. I'm getting a lot more comfortable here, and I would even say I like it. But Berkeley and the Bay Area are still a lot more closely aligned with my attitudes toward food, consumption, the environment, etc. So I can't even say any more which one I prefer--which is probably just as well!

last edit 15 April 2005.
return to main page.