Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.
The Print Mint, Inc. was a major publisher and distributor of underground comix based in the San Francisco Bay Area during the genre's late 1960s-early 1970s heyday. Starting as a retailer of psychedelic posters, the Print Mint soon evolved into a publisher, printer, and distributor. It was "ground zero" for the psychedelic poster. The Print Mint was originally owned by poet Don Schenker and his wife Alice, who later partnered in the business with Bob and Peggy Rita.
Tower Records is an international retail franchise and online music store that was formerly based in Sacramento, California, United States. From 1960 until 2006, Tower operated retail stores in the United States, which closed when Tower Records filed for bankruptcy and liquidation. Tower Records was purchased by a separate entity and was not affected by the retail store closings.
Amoeba Music is an American independent music store chain with locations in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. It stocks music and movies of every kind from popular hits to underground music. It is popular as a music lovers' tourist destination. It was founded in 1990 in Berkeley, California, and remains in operation, having survived the decline of CD sales in the 2000s.
Aaron Elliott, better known as Aaron Cometbus, is an American musician, author, songwriter, roadie, and magazine editor, best known as the creator of the punk zine Cometbus.
Ashby station is an underground Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in Berkeley, California. The station is located beneath Adeline Street to the south of its intersection with Ashby Avenue. The station includes park-and-ride facilities with 715 automobile parking spaces in two separate parking lots. It is served by the Orange and Red lines.
Hear Music was a record label that was founded in 2007 in a partnership between Concord Music Group and Starbucks. Hear Music began as a catalog company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1990 before being purchased by Starbucks in 1999.
North Berkeley station is an underground Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station located in the North Berkeley neighborhood of Berkeley, California. It is bounded by Virginia Street, Sacramento Street, Delaware Street, and Acton Street in a residential area north of University Avenue. The main station entrance sits within a circular building at the center of a parking lot, while an elevator between the surface and the platform is located at the parking lot's Sacramento Street edge. The station is served by the Orange and Red lines.
The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) is the public school district for the city of Berkeley, California, United States. The district is managed by the Superintendent of Schools, and governed by the Berkeley Board of Education, whose members are elected by voters. Its administrative offices are located in the old West Campus main building at 2020 Bonar Street, on the corner of Bonar and University Avenue.
A record shop or record store is a retail outlet that sells recorded music. In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, record shops only sold gramophone records, but over the 20th century, record shops sold the new formats that were developed, such as eight track tapes, compact cassettes and compact discs (CDs). Today in the 21st century, record stores sell CDs, vinyl records and in some cases, DVDs of movies, TV shows, cartoons and concerts. Some record stores also sell music-related items such as posters of bands or singers, -related clothing items and even merchandise such as bags and coffee mugs.
The Gourmet Ghetto is a colloquial name for the business district of the North Berkeley neighborhood in the city of Berkeley, California, known as the birthplace of California cuisine. Other developments that can be traced to this neighborhood include specialty coffee, the farm-to-table and local food movements, the rise to popularity in the U.S. of chocolate truffles and baguettes, the popularization of the premium restaurant designed around an open kitchen, and the California pizza made with local produce. After coalescing in the mid-1970s as a culinary destination, the neighborhood received its "Gourmet Ghetto" nickname in the late 1970s from comedian Darryl Henriques. Early, founding influences were Peet's Coffee, Chez Panisse and the Cheese Board Collective. Alice Medrich began her chain of Cocolat chocolate stores there.
Cody's Books (1956–2008) was an independent bookstore based in Berkeley, California. It "was a pioneer in bookselling, bringing the paperback revolution to Berkeley, fighting censorship, and providing a safe harbor from tear gas directed at anti-Vietnam War protesters throughout the 1960s and 1970s."
Rory D. Root was the owner of Comic Relief, a comic book retailer in Berkeley, California.
Nation's Foodservice, Inc., doing business as Nation's Giant Hamburgers or simply Nation's, is a privately held El Cerrito, California-based regional fast food diner chain. Its menu includes hamburgers, hot dogs, sandwiches, breakfast items, and pies. The chain, founded in 1952, largely operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially the Greater East Bay, with some locations also in the Sacramento area and the Stockton area.
Caffè Mediterraneum, often referred to as Caffè Med or simply the Med, was a café located on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California, US, near the University of California, Berkeley. The Med was a landmark of Telegraph Avenue history, "listed for years in European guidebooks as 'the gathering place for 1960s radicals who created People's Park'" and as of 2009 described in Fodor's guidebook as "a relic of 1960s-era café culture". It was located at 2475 Telegraph Avenue, between Dwight Way and Haste Street.
Consumers' Cooperative of Berkeley, informally known as the Berkeley Co-op, or simply Co-op, was a consumers' cooperative based in Berkeley, California, which operated from 1939 to 1988, when it collapsed due to internal governance disputes and bankruptcy. During its height, it was the largest cooperative of its kind in North America, with over 100,000 members, and its collapse has provoked intense discussion over how food cooperatives should be operated.
Three Twins Ice Cream was an American organic ice cream company based in California, established in 2005. Three Twins owned and operated three brick and mortar ice cream shops in Northern California and was a nationwide wholesaler of ice cream products. It closed in April 2020.
The 2014 Oakland riots were a series of riots and civil disturbances that took place in Oakland, California and surrounding areas in November and December 2014. On November 24, 2014, following the decision of a Grand Jury in St. Louis to not charge Darren Wilson in the shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown, protests and rioting broke out in Oakland and later spread to other Bay Area cities. For more than two weeks, the Bay Area was the site of civil unrest as protesters clashed with police and damaged public and private property.
The One World Family Commune (OWFC), is a new age movement commune. It was formed in 1967 in San Francisco by 51 year old artist, café owner and UFO enthusiast Allen Noonan, aka Allen Michael, who opened the first vegetarian restaurant in the city, completely operated by the commune's members. The OWFC practices the teachings of the Everlasting Gospel, channeled by Allen Michael, a combination of UFO beliefs, Christianity based themes of going beyond good and evil, expressed through use of ones life force in service, along with new age beliefs like spirituality and higher states of being.
Reid's Records was a historic black-owned record shop and East Bay institution that operated for almost 75 years in Berkeley, California. At the time it closed down in October 2019, it was the oldest record shop in California, and one of the oldest black-owned businesses of any kind in the San Francisco Bay Area.
