Features

Holiday shopping unfinished? Unwilling to make one more trip to a multitude of malls or to … Emeryville? 

Let me suggest where to shop locally this season and also feel good about it. Come down to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. 

Maybe you’re terrified of Telegraph? Worried you’ll find only empty storefronts, aggressive panhandling, no parking, tumbleweeds in the streets? 

Settle down. You probably read too much campaign literature during the last election. Toss those screeds in the trash, and visit the real Telegraph where you’ll find the picture implied wasn’t, and isn’t, true. 

Endless vacant storefronts? I’ve counted. There are 63 commercial storefronts on Telegraph from Dwight to Bancroft, and only four appear both empty and unrented. Panhandlers are few and actually pretty polite, and regular pedestrian traffic is heavy, although with students now leaving town after finals it should tail off in the next few days. 

All the more room for you and me to do our holiday shopping. The special character of Telegraph at this time of year goes far back.  

“In the Christmas season, I almost always think of ‘The Avenue’ wet with fresh rains, pungent with the odor of freshly unpacked merchandise in gift and book stores, exciting with Christmas sounds and decor, and somewhat relieved for an excuse to affect an attitude completely ignoring the collegiate.”  

“It was on this street and its byways, during my last days before leaving for home for Christmas, that I would walk from one end of the business section to the other, shopping for tokens and trinkets.”  

That’s a Cal alumnus writing about Telegraph during the 1940s in the December, 1954, California Monthly magazine.  

And the sentiment is true today, almost word for word, down to the rain, which drenched, but did not extinguish, the Telegraph Holiday Street Fair last weekend.  

The Fair continues the next two weekends—Dec. 16 and 17, 23 and 24—from 11 a.m.-6 p.m.  

North of Dwight the main street is closed to traffic and filled with booths, and several of the regular storefront businesses are also putting on a show, with sales and specials. Street parking can be tight, it’s true. If you drive, head along Channing to Telegraph. Just east of that intersection you can park in the University’s Anna Head lot, for a fee. Just west you’ll find the City’s Sather Gate Garage, and the new underground parking owned by First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley. Once on foot you’ll find craft booths with many regular Telegraph sidewalk vendors plus dozens who come in seasonally for the show.  

Here are just a few of the things I saw. 

The fair opens, appropriately enough for Berkeley, at Dwight with a booth selling sparkling stained glass peace symbols beneath colorful streetlight banners featuring doves on the wing.  

On up the Avenue were vendors with unique handmade t-shirts, many of art quality, or with local themes. Holiday ornaments, garden art, and hangings. Bamboo bowls. “Aroma crystals,” colorfully knit gloves and slippers, and gorgeous patterned silk scarves. Jewelry makers of all descriptions, some of them also offering unset stones and crystals. Old vinyl records bent into bowls or transformed into journal covers. Colorful glazed tiles. Handcrafted wooden cutting boards, and whimsical stuffed animals. All sorts of ceramics. And soybean candles with a multitude of scents, including chocolate. Soybean candles! Did you even know those existed?  

One craftsman was selling sinuous metal sculptures entwining glass or crystal balls. Each orb seem to endlessly descend along the metal spiral as it revolved in the breeze. “That is so crazy!” said a shopper standing next to me. “I could seriously just watch this for days.”  

If you want to eat while strolling, the fair includes booths selling freshly popped kettle corn, organic Tibetan fare, and Southeast Asian tidbits. Beyond the seasonal vendors and outdoor shopping, Telegraph is still the go-to place in the East Bay for music, with the enormous and varied Rasputin’s Records and Amoeba emporiums.  

And books? The closing of the original Cody’s this past summer did leave a hole, but there are still more bookstores concentrated along or near the Avenue—eight, by my count—than anywhere else I can think of in the Bay Area.  

The redoubtable Moe’s, Shakespeare and Co., and Cartesian Books all cluster near the Dwight/Telegraph intersection. Revolution Books and the Friends of the Library Bookstore (with a free book cart in front!) are be found in the Sather Gate Mall, and University Press Books, Ned’s Books, and the Student Store bookstore are up along Bancroft. The latter is no mere textbook warehouse. It hosts an extensive general book department with local interest and faculty author sections. 

Telegraph also has several interesting gift, art, and specialty shops. The Reprint Mint offers thousands of posters, framed and unframed. The Framer’s Workshop helps you do it yourself. Some more recent stores—including Land of Bliss, Kathmandu, and the newly relocated What The Traveler Saw (which occupies much of the old Cody’s building) make Telegraph a nexus for handicrafts from all over the world and South Asia in particular.  

The Berkeley Hat Company is well worth stopping in for that special chapeau, and kids might enjoy the several “vintage” and specialty clothing stores along the Avenue. If you finish up or take a break from shopping at brunch, lunch, or dinner time, Telegraph is also one of Berkeley’s best areas to eat. 

Pick your style. Standing room only grilled sausages at Top Dog, or perhaps white-table-cloth upscale Adagia in the renovated Westminster House two blocks up Bancroft at College Avenue. Burger or salad, Thai, Korean, savory crepes, sandwiches, “smart food,” greasy spoon, organic, pizza, fresh baked goods (two bakeries and one donut shop), sushi boats, the fastest take out, and the most leisurely sitdown … it’s all here.  

In the long Telegraph block south of Dwight down to Parker you can find a trio of Asian-themed restaurants where I’ve had good meals, including Unicorn (fusion), Norikonono (traditional Japanese setting and dining), and Saigon City (Vietnamese). 

Or you can take a nostalgic culinary tour of college hangouts dating a half-century back. Perhaps Larry Blake’s for the ’50s, Fondue Fred’s from the ’60s, Kips for the ’70s, Henry’s Pub from the ’80s, and Raleigh’s and Intermezzo for the ’90s.  

Coffeeistas need not fear caffeine withdrawal along Telegraph, which boasts numerous cafes including Berkeley’s oldest (Mediterraneum) and newest (the Telegraph Peet’s) just a burnt bean’s throw from each other near Dwight.  

And if you’re willing to wait until dusk these days Telegraph offers an additional treat. Five blocks of street trees are festooned with thousands of yellow and blue lights, and cheery, lighted, holiday decorations twinkle from the lampposts.  

After wandering through the street fair for an hour or two last weekend we bought a book of poems ($5) from Julia Vinograd, Berkeley’s venerable “Bubble Lady,” bundled up several small purchases, detoured around a Santa in shades, and sat down in Ann’s Soup Kitchen for a bite to eat.  

I was reading Vinograd’s “Punk Girl in the Coffeehouse” when I glanced up over the top of the book and saw, dining a few tables down, a young lady who, except for a slight variation in hair color (red instead of pink), was a living image of the literary subject. Life easily imitates art along Telegraph. Come on down, take it in, and shop around.