Aquatic Park & Panini

Our weird, almost summery weather took leave of us a few days ago when a low pressure system at last made it in off the Pacific. Today, cold & alternately bright and gloomy with scattered cloud cover. Alone with my dog Sugar & cat Gigi, I read in front of the fire until after noon & decided that I needed to do something at least mildly physical to shake my lethargy. Around 2, I loaded  Sugar in her handlebar Jeep bag and we headed for Aquatic Park.

http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=12016

This park is an underused (happily, for me!) gem of West Berkeley that used to delineate the eastern reach of San Francisco Bay in this part of Berkeley. Highway 80/580, on the west border of the park, was built on landfill and miraculously and surprisingly, rather than extend the landfill, three tidal basins were allowed to be created. The north basin enjoys a perimeter path and a pleasant, riparian park on the east side, which is where Sugar a I spend most of our time on our visits which, in nice weather, are almost daily.

Today we came down Bancroft Ave, which leads into the center of the north basin area. Chilly and a little blustery, not much windbreak here from the Bay.  Nor many seabirds, other than the ubiquitous winter buffleheads. All the usual suspects. Brown pelicans, pelagic cormorants, western and Clark's grebes, pie-billed grebes, and of course, mallards, coots ant more mallards and coots. Where Strawberry Creek creates a little pond on the west side of the railroad tracks (hidden by cottonwoods, tall poplars and eucalyptus), the water was too high (recent rains) and too opaque to do our usual inspection of the crayfish population. Further along the path, after restraining Sugar from an ill advised go at a Rottweiler, we encountered birders who had heard recent reports of a rare winter tanager, but had had no luck so far. At the end of the north basin, not feeling energized (me) as I had hoped, we turned around and headed out and south to Cafe Trieste. More of which later.

Today's bike ride...

Began on Channing Way and headed toward the only record (viz, LP's, to those of you younger than 40), which is a few blocks down from the sadly horrible new location of Black Oak Books on S Pablo Ave. Are they serious? In any case, record store closed, I was looking for an old Pioneer component system.. Heading back north on S Pablo, decided to check out the huge garden, which I had always taken for a commercial one, one supplying the local foodie restaurants, & turns out that it's s coop run by young Jewish folks for the benefit of the poor community. Go see the beautiful hens, the cool earthen oven where they back bread, their ingeniously designed hot houses.

Heading north up Dwight & left on Action, stopped by the hippyish place a couple of blocks from Addison. Check out their ostrich. Their bird enclosure abuts to Strawberry Creek (the creek, not the park).

Had to visit Missing Link, & on the way had a gastronomically delightul experience at Slow, a small restaurant in the block (south side) before MLK. Sat at a sidewalk table, reading P. Roth, one of his books sure to enrage all of Berkeley's brain-dead PC gender feminists, while I ate a pulled beef sandwich w/fresh fig/gorgonzola chutney served on a fresh sweet batard, watched lovely women walk by, relished the relish and Roth's autobiographical reflections on the relations of women & men. What a pleasure! Go there! Good! Inexpensive. After, you can visit next door & top your sandwich choice off with a piece of handmade chocolate.

If you can't live in Europe, can't afford New Haven or Sante Fe, find Portland & Seattle too funky weather-wise, well, you may as well be in Berkeley.

On the way home, stopped off at TJ's on University to spirit home half a dozen bottles of Vino Verde. Shove a bottle into your freezer for half an hour while you fire up a bowl of Mendocino,  then drink the whole bottle. You'll feel ever so much better about life in general.

A genuine autumn day, maples on fire, ginkoes shimmering gold, sun or no.

New Additions to the Neighborhood

Well, I suppose that, given the date of my first and last post, no one will accuse me of writing too much. But now that I'm sort of retired, I hope I'll write much more. It's been so long since I posted that I want to just note the new places...mostly restaurants and cafes....that have shown up in our neighborhood.

At the top of the list, for me, are Quince and Zazou's. Within a couple of blocks of each other, they compliment each other, foodwise and ambience wise. Quince has a somewhat more extensive menu, is pleasantly appointed and decorated. Room for art on the walls, which the owner, Shareen, changes periodically. Try everything on the menu, if you're around often, but don't miss one of the best burgers, with some of the best fries, in Berkeley. It ranks up there with the likes of the burgers you can eat at The Meal Ticket & at Saul's. Daily 7 to 2:30, closed M's.

Zazou and his pleasant wife, Marianna, have made fast friends with the local community in record time!

Don Quixote (Picasso)

Don Quixote (Picasso)

Observations on just about everything....: Italians Gone Bad

Observations on just about everything....: Italians Gone Bad

Truth & Reality

For some reason, I was thinking about theories of truth this morning & recalled Gettier's paper, which was introduced to me by our professor in my epistemology course. Apparently, Gettier won a master's degree on the basis of his paper, since the reasoning was so important in philosophy at the time,  causing problems for B Russel's "four tests of truth." http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html

I think the idea of truth was floating around in  my head because of a recent profile of Anton Zeilinger. Actually, Zellinger was addressing the question of reality more than that of truth, and a question that he puts to philosophers is why must they keep looking for some "hidden reality" rather than just accepting their observations? But, if they did, wouldn't Zelinger say that they're not making the correct observations? And that perhaps, he, Zelinger, is, which would entail the notion that only he, or perhaps other quanum  physicists as well, have the tools to observe reality?

Does this make sense, or is a false conundrum of some kind?

An interesting aside: in the same proile, op cit, Zellinger says that he believes that one when teleportation can be practically done, quanum physics will have  the ability to create encryption that could never be broken ("quantum computing").

Zellinger and colleagues have successfully transported a separated photon some ninety miles.

Beam me up, Scottie!

Italians Gone Bad

When Lucca Cocina opened in the neighborhood, I thought "Yea! A decent, authenic Italian restaurant, affordable, & with the best chicken picata (they don't spare the marsala) I've ever eaten. Subsequent visits also good. But yesterday, a friend and I stopped by for lunch. We were jonesing for a paninni. My first experience with this, a while back, was that they are served ungrilled, between two slices of ciabatta each about as thick as the continental shelf. Well, OK, so yesterday I asked the rather truculent owner/chef if we could have them grilled. Came the angry response, "No! We don't have a grill," delivered in such a way that seemed to imply that it was an inane question. Followed bad service, monosyllabic & sullen responses to simple questions & desultory service. Like its neighbor, Cafe 123, it seemed good at first. And WTF's with the German place down the block? Did they miscalculate on the neighborhood or something? Are they on the same planet as we?

And! Zazou's gone, taken over by a clueless Mexican guy, and there are no more cool Berbers & Algerians having passionate arguments with Zazou. The thrill is gone. Up (down?) the street, though, there is still Cafe Quince, which never disappoints, although I might venture a suggestion to Shareen that the occasional new item on the menu might be welcome. I know that whatever it might be would be good.

Fleeing from the mean Roman's place after our no paninni encounter, my friend bumped into Ramon, who together with his, partner Aida, own and operate the beauty parlor next door. Aida is also a masseuse, and you can pop in for a quick neck massage. More importantly, she claims her moles must be experienced to be believed, & I'm anxious to become a believer. She seemed skeptical when I told her that the moles at La Mission, the new Mex place across the street from the old Berkeley Adult School, are superb, but I recommend checking them out. Certain to satisfy most of my fellow gringos.  Also, good baja style fish tacos, surpassing those of Loca Vida.

Late last night (well, "late" in relation to what time cafes shutter up here in Berkeley, a justifiable lamentation, for sure), I walked down to Trieste for a chocolate fix. Didn't want any late night caffein, & discovered they have a really nice decaf Earl Grey. "Nice decaf" may sound as if it's an oxymoron, but try it. Green tea "chai," though. Christ on a crutch, only in Berkeley or Marin County would you encounter f***ing green tea chai. And what's with calling any hot infusion, such as chamomile, "tea"? Doesn't tea come from a tea tree, from which actual tea leaves are harvested and fermented (or not, as in the case of green tea "chai"). Maybe I could suggest they get some good puer, the best compromise between fermentation and un- that I've ever encountered. Much to the disdain of Chinese friends, though, I like it sweetened. A chaqun son gout, not to be confused with the old bromide "I don't know ____, but I know what I like." Really, though, if you don't like very strong, sweetened puer, my taste is ever so much more discerning than yours.

I found a new (old) book by Tom Drury, The End of Vandalism, which fact has nothing at all to do with life in W. Berkeley, since we in fact have a bit of vandalism in our 'hood. Actually I'm half way through his book, and I still haven't discovered the relevancy of the title. I don't think you'll like this book unless you grew up in a village or in a rural area. But the novel that got me hooked on Drury is The Driftless Area. I think it was good enough to have been short-listed for the Booker.

Try the lamb burgers across the street from the surly Italian.

I leave you with these bon mots conveyed to me by my French Lit prof at UMD: "Fail. Fail again. Fail better." ("S. Beckett," with whom she used to visit and spend time each summer. Madame A., had I only known a little something about women at the time!).

And that's my story for today and I'm sticking with it no matter what they say about me.