Welcome to Albany, California

Introduction

I live in Albany, California. If you’re not from around here, you probably haven’t heard of it. When I talk to people in other states who ask where I live, I usually just say “Berkeley area.” Well, perhaps it’s about time you learned about your blogger’s town.

This post is inspired by a great travel book I picked up recently: Roz Chast’s Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York. Of course there’s been more than enough written about that famous city, but Chast is a very funny writer and cartoonist. Not so much has been written about Albany and I’ll do my best to give you a chuckle or two.

(I’ve laid out this post according to Chast’s chapters, but that’s about where the similarities will end. I cannot do cartoons, but I did get some nice sketches from a budding local landscape architect on condition of anonymity.)

Let’s start here

Over a century ago, Albany was an unincorporated area where Berkeley people came to dump their garbage. One day in 1908 an angry band of shotgun-toting local women turned them away. This triumph inspired the residents to incorporate as the City of Ocean View, which (thanks to people’s good taste) was changed to Albany (after the city’s first mayor, who came from Albany, NY). The story of the armed women is acted out every year by students at our local elementary school. I suppose it wouldn’t be so charming if it had been men wielding the guns. Nobody knows where the men were on that day, as this was before video gaming and televised sports.

When I was in college I was aware of Albany, but only vaguely. I thought maybe Albany was the name of a district of Berkeley, like Westbrae or Elmwood. After living in San Francisco for about five years, my wife and I decided to head back to the East Bay where we could more realistically afford a house. “How about Albany?” my wife asked. “I hear they have good schools.” I shrugged and was like, “Yeah, sure, okay.” After a mere nine months of open houses every weekend and having more than forty offers rejected, we finally got a place and became Albanians. I’m not sure that’s what we’re called, actually … makes it sound like we’re from Albania. So … Albanites? Albanyites? Albanyans? Albanyone?

Basic layout

You don’t need to know that much about getting around Albany because it’s not very big—less than two square miles. You could cover it on foot in a day, but why would you, when it’s a great place to bike? Here’s a bike path map.

That green north-south route is the Ohlone Greenway, a bike path well off the street with a separate walking path. That east-west thoroughfare shown in white, Solano Ave, is where the cute shops are. There’s a busier, wider thoroughfare called San Pablo Ave that runs north-south and is more industrial, where you’ll find some solid restaurants, garages, and the Hotsy-Totsy Club (more on this later). Another bike path goes all the way out to the ocean.

Walking around

Albany, like its surrounding community, is a great for walking because it was built up before the Second World War, so it wasn’t designed around cars. This means it has wide sidewalks separated from the street by a median, so you can really enjoy a stroll without feeling like you’re always about to get run over. A lot of these sidewalks still have the imprint from the construction company that built them, showing the date:

Good sidewalks may not strike you as such a big deal, but not all communities have them. In this regard Albany is the polar opposite of Irvine, California, which caters to cars so completely it’s essentially illegal to walk there. (I think the city planners down in Irvine have given up and are just waiting for the kind of natural disaster that would require the whole city to be evacuated, so they can blast off, nuke the entire site from orbit, and just start over.) In Albany, by contrast, city planners are forever thinking of new ways to be cool, like installing bike lanes, allowing restaurants to build patios out into the street, and putting button-activated flashing lights up at our zebra crossings to help distracted motorists understand that “Hey, I’m walkin’ heah!” Nobody seems to mind that our houses have tiny garages built for Model-T Fords.

The subway

Okay, we don’t have a subway exactly, not like NYC. But we do have the Bay Area Rapid Transit line running through town. The stations and tracks are underground in Berkeley, because those guys wisely insisted on that, but in Albany it’s elevated. When you take the Ohlone Greenway you’re pretty much right under the tracks, so occasionally a train goes by overhead and your fillings rattle. 

The North Berkeley station is just a twelve-minute walk from the southern border of Albany. BART can take you to useful destinations like San Francisco and San Jose, and to the Oakland and San Francisco airports (and I mean all the way—no stupid shuttle bus required).

Stuff to do

Look, I’m not going to try to go toe-to-toe with Roz Chast’s list of goings-on in NYC. Obviously that’s your place if you just dig museums and live theater and such. That said, there’s a lot of culture in this region, such as the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, the Museum of Paleontology on the UC Berkeley campus, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley hills. Needless to say San Francisco has all kinds of world class museums and stuff. (Don’t expect to see King Tut, though, even if they claim to have built an exhibit around him.)

Among most residents, the most popular pastime in Albany is ghost whips. This is where you head out to a large, empty parking lot, get your car going in a straight line, and then jump out and walk next to it. Okay, I confess, we don’t actually do this—our parking lots aren’t that big. I have it on good authority that for ghost whips, you need to head to Turlock, about 100 miles east.

Albany does have a couple of unique attractions, such as Golden Gate Fields, the only racetrack (horses, not dogs) in the Bay Area, and the Albany Sauna, one of the oldest Finnish-style saunas in the country (dating from 1934). According to Wikipedia, its “original furnace and rooms have been maintained to produce one of the most authentic sauna experiences outside of Finland.” I guess I should mention I’ve never actually been; saunas are not really my thing. But here’s a tip: if you want to sound impressive, pronounce it “SOW-na” (first syllable rhymes with “now”).

I’m a cheap bastard so I have a lot to recommend here that’s free. First off, our regional parks are phenomenal. Just head toward the hills and your options are endless (Wildcat Canyon, Tilden, Sibley, Huckleberry, Chabot, Briones), or head toward the water to the Albany Bulb, Berkeley Marina, or Point Isabel. 

Hiking, road cycling, mountain biking, they’re all great in these parts. We even have the fully paved Nimitz Trail running along the ridge of the Berkeley hills with spectacular views of the bay, so even a dweeb on a Segway could have a good time. Here is some eye candy.

Walking around in town is fun too, because we have great weather. Winter is not depressing here, like in places where the cold is biting and/or everything is brown and grey. Winter is our green season and all kinds of trees are blossoming right now. And plants grow so well in this area, most homeowners become part-time gardeners.

If you favor walking with a  purpose, this is a great community for a pub crawl. Start at the Westbrae Biergarten (in Berkeley, just five minutes on foot from Albany), where you can enjoy some choice local draft beer and greasy snacks.

Then proceed down the road ten minutes to Gilman Brewing (delicious Belgian style brews), then stroll another four minutes to Fieldwork Brewing Company, which in my opinion makes the best IPAs on the planet. After all this you’ll need some exercise, so fortunately it’s over a mile to an old standby, the Hotsy Totsy Club (slogan: “Keeping Albany tipsy since 1939”). The best thing about the Hotsy Totsy is that it has an awesome taco truck next door.

On the way home, swing by Schmidt’s Pub, an Albany fixture since 1978 that kind of feels like a house (because it is) and always has great beers on draft, plus some nice original art.

Nerdy stuff

If you decide to live here, let me dangle this nice bonus in front of you: Albany residents get to use both the Alameda County library system and the City of Berkeley library system. That’s fifteen locations! Not that you’d visit all of them, of course, but it means a ton of inventory, and you can have books or movies sent to your local branch for free. The main Berkeley library is a beautiful old building with five floors of goodness. And the gorgeous North Branch, which is the closest to Albany, is a designated historical landmark, having been built by the famous architect James Plachek and funded by the Federal Works Progress Administration.

Now, if you’re sneering at that last paragraph thinking I’m some kind of total nerd, well of course I am! But this area might rub off on you in a good (i.e., intellectual) way. After all, lots of UC Berkeley faculty live in Albany (particularly if they want to raise children in a good school district), and Albany is also home to the University Village, which houses Cal grad students and their families. According to US Census data , Albany has a highly educated population: about 87% of our adult residents have at least some college education; 5% have an Associate degree; 32% have up to a Bachelor’s degree; and 40% also have a Graduate degree.

What does this mean? Well, if you want expert guidance in literature or film, look at what videos were recently returned to the library and not yet re-shelved, or what’s on the hold shelf. You can also get advice from bookstore employees, such as at Pegasus Books (which is technically in Berkeley but a stone’s throw away), who are as stoked on great books as you are. And if you’re looking for free books, we have scores of those little libraries along the sidewalks—I mean, they’re everywhere, and the books in them are top-notch (not just the crap you see in airport newsstands).

What’s more, your book club can occasionally invite, as a guest, the writer of the book you’re reading. We also get pretty good lectures; I’ve attended readings by Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, and David Sedaris. And when chatting over your back fence with your neighbor, you can switch seamlessly among English, French, and Latin. (Okay, now I’m exaggerating.)

Flora and fauna

I know I already talked about the flora but let me add that it’s a true Mediterranean climate, which is one of the rarest climates on earth. According to the Atlas of the Biodiversity of California, the only other places on Earth with this climate are the Mediterranean Sea region (duh!), Australia, South Africa, and Chile. In this climate, everything grows amazingly well. Spit out a sunflower seed and you’ll have a giant yellow flower in what seems like mere seconds. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but really, all kinds of groovy stuff grows in abundance here. The only thing we don’t have a lot of is lawns, because we refuse. They’re so vulgar.

In terms of fauna, the Albany area is great for bird watching because it’s along the Pacific Flyway, so we get all kinds of cool birds: ospreys, great blue herons, terns, and all manner of shorebirds. Up in the hills I see hawks and falcons and even the occasional owl. Check out this great horned owl that perched one day in our neighbor’s tree.

In town here we get lots of songbirds and a surprising number of wild turkeys, which fearlessly stand down cars, sometimes at major intersections.

We don’t get the alligators in our sewers like in NYC, but I have seen plenty of coyotes up in the hills, and a couple of bobcats. I haven’t seen a mountain lion but we do have them, and I’ve seen the remains of their kills. Twice during bike rides, at dusk, I’ve been hit by a bat. (Their echolocation actually isn’t all that good and they dart around crazily, like moths.) We also get cute little newts, and in fact one of my favorite cycling roads, South Park Drive, is closed to cars five months out of the year for the annual newt crossing.

And, of course, we get deer wandering the streets with oddly little fear of anything. The expression “deer in the headlights” doesn’t apply because they never seem to even look up.

Food

Suffice to say there is all kinds of good food either in Albany or a short walk or bike ride away. The dim sum in Albany is very good; the dim sum in Oakland’s Chinatown is great; the dim sum in San Francisco (a BART ride away) is surely on par with anything in NYC. We have an embarrassment of Sushi places, great taquerias (even Calvin Trillin, writing in The New Yorker, admits San Francisco bests NYC in this regard), and top-notch pizza. (I’ve had both Giordano’s and the original Uno, arguably the most famous pizza places in Chicago, and find them identical to Zachary’s and Little Star, respectively, which are competing places on either end of Solano Ave.) Of course restaurants come and go so I can’t go down a huge list other than to say dining out here is legit. And in terms of famous restaurants that aren’t going anywhere, Albany is walking distance from Chez Panisse, where California Cuisine was invented.

We also have a number of top-notch bakeries. Not far away is Grace Baking, a well-loved place, and in Berkeley there’s Cheese Board, which has lots of tasty baked doodads but is particularly known for pizza. They’ll sell you the dough so your pies can come out great at home, too. Albany’s newest place, Pâtisserie Rotha, has such great pastries, people will stand in line for hours for them (or so I’m told). A friend brought us some of Rotha’s stuff and it was darn good. (Had I waited hours for it, I’m sure I’d have liked it even more.) 

There’s also Semifreddi’s, which I always thought was the best in the business for baguettes and such until I tried Acme Bread Company and realized it was vastly superior. Technically Acme is in Berkeley but it’s a short walk from my house.

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado which is at too high an altitude for baking, so I am just blown away at the great baked goods here. When I’ve traveled on business I’ve tried in vain to get good bread, pastries, etc. Of course I’ve had great stuff in France (though no better than here, honestly). I will concede that for bagels, there is absolutely no substitute for NYC. And, having racked my brain, I realize also that the Vogel’s sandwich bread my family had in Glasgow is better than what we get in the grocery store here. But still: Albany is a great place for foodies.

Apartments & housing

Housing is really expensive here. I could go on about this, but it would be boring.

Final stop

You may be wondering why I chose this topic. Well, I figured if you live in a place where winter is harsh, you might like a little escapist travelogue. On the other hand, if you live near Albany—i.e., anywhere in Alameda County—property tax is due in about a month. This is a good time to count the many blessings we have here!

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Dead Indian Memorial Thanksgiving Ride

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and coarse humor.

Introduction

It’s the day after Thanksgiving and I’m not sprawled out like a beached whale.  The feast is tonight instead.  While the womenfolk prepare it, I’ll recount my gorge-free day of pure gratitude—well, okay, cycling and gratitude—which was yesterday.  But don’t worry, this won’t be a Normal Rockwell or Thomas Kincade  style preciousness-fest.  It’ll be a snarky, snooty … no it won’t.  In between.  A frigid ride described through the prism of grudging gratitude.  C’mon, it’ll be fun.  There's even some photos.

Pre-gratitude

Really, I kind of don’t see the point of Thanksgiving.  That doesn’t mean I don’t see the point of giving thanks.  I just don’t like the idea of compressing all your gratitude into one day, so that everybody is going around the table trying to outdo each other with innovative, comprehensive outpourings.  It’s like a bunch of Academy Awards speeches and meanwhile our food is getting cold.  My kids haven’t asked me to explain this holiday; perhaps they instinctively know I’d ruin everything by saying, “Well, early colonists would have starved but the Native Americans saved them, so the next year they threw a big celebration feast, and then ran the Native Americans off onto reservations, which were tracts of land that weren’t of much use until somebody had the brilliant idea of running casinos on them so the white man could exploit a lucrative gambling loophole and blame it on the Native Americans.

I prefer to thank as I go, year-round.  My wife and I make the kids do it, too.  “What are you grateful for today?” is a standard dinner table conversation starter (or killer, let’s be honest), along with “Everybody recount the most embarrassing thing you did today.”

Ride prep

The first thing I’m grateful for is that I got to ride at all.  First thing in the morning my wife started speaking to me in hushed tones.  This usually means she’s hatching a plan for a family outing and doesn’t want the kids to weigh in.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bad person, but I don’t always want to spend my day off doing boring things with my kids.  (Okay, maybe I am a bad person.)  Now, a good hike isn’t boring, and I’d normally be up for it, but one of Ashland’s main attractions is Lithia Park, where teenagers go to smoke pot, and which has a playground for little kids and their bored parents.  I had a feeling the playground would suck us in.

I don’t mind watching my kids play on a playground.  Actually, that’s not true.  I do mind it.  For me, quality time can take a variety of forms and that’s not one of them.  I’d much rather read to my kids, or just sit next to them on the couch, each of us with a book.  I was doing this with Lindsay in the morning, all cozy and everything, and suddenly she fled to the far end of the couch.  I asked what was up.  “You committed flatulence!” she accused.  I denied it (honestly, I hadn’t done it).  I said she had done it.  “No, I know it wasn’t me because mine are very loud,” she said.  “Yours are more … solemn.”

Ah!  The insight of a child.  Suddenly I had a brainstorm about the craft of writing.  I read a Stephen King book about writing recently, and he exhorted the budding writer to avoid adverbs.  His position is that if your description is good enough, the nature of the action should be obvious. Well, what exactly about my (alleged) flatulence had struck Lindsay as solemn?  What body language had conveyed this surprising notion?  And how might this mystery inflect my own writing? 

They drove along the winding road, stereo off, taking in the full range of autumn colors.  The trees just don’t do this in San Diego.  He looked over at Claire, trying to gauge her mood.  She’d been quiet for some time:  was this a sign of irritation, or had the scenery cast a pleasant spell?  He noted a certain set of her jaw, slightly disrupting the tranquility of her face.  Was she even enjoying the drive?  Or was she distracted by a memory of her former life, when she’d lived here?  Probably he was over-thinking things, as usual.  He gave his head a tiny shake as he acknowledged, not for the first time, the inscrutability of others.  Perhaps it was enough to just enjoy the drive and not try to know everything.  Yes, perhaps this smooth, asphalt road and the brilliant hues of the leaves would have to be enough.  He farted solemnly.

Getting back to the family plan, I was relieved to learn that my wife’s idea was to head to Lithia Park, let the kids play, and then take them hiking while I did a bike ride.  For this plan I felt much gratitude.

While filling my water bottles, asked my wife, “Hey, did you ever check out that link I sent you to the Hater’s Guide to the Williams Sonoma Catalog?”  She said she hadn’t, that she hadn’t had time, but not to take it personally.  “Take it personally?” I protested.  “Why would I do that?  It’s not like I wrote the thing.”  I reflected sexistly that only a female would take such a thing personally.  I reminded her:  “I’m a guy.  I don’t take anything personally.  If you told me my breath stunk, I’d say, ‘Oh yeah?!  You should take a look in the mirror!  You probably have something really stinky lodged in one of your nostrils!”  So I guess in this realm I am glad I’m a guy, and also glad that I can pretend to be sexist without angering my wife.

(Do you think Stephen King would have minded that adverb, “sexistly”?  If so, on what grounds:  that it’s an adverb, or that it’s not even a real word?)

The next thing I was grateful for was that I managed to overcome a mechanical problem with my bike.  One of the inner tubes wouldn’t hold air due to a bad valve.  It’s touch and go.  The leak isn’t obvious unless you (well, I) apply some saliva and then check, with your (okay, my) tongue for that buzzing, bubbling sensation that indicates a leak.  Oddly, my wife didn’t seem curious about why I was French-kissing my French valve.  I finally had an “aha!” moment and put a bit of cold vulcanizing fluid on there before screwing on the valve cap, figuring when it set up it might help form a seal.  Sounds absurd but it seemed to work.  I was really proud of myself and was dying to describe the solution to my wife.  I said, “I’m trying really hard to resist describing my innovative bike repair to you.”  She replied, “Well you’re not trying hard enough.”  I’m grateful that instead of silently suffering my bike-mania, she stops me cold.  This dynamic is probably the backbone of our marriage.  (By the way, I never normally use valve caps.  I was grateful to have brought one, having thankfully noticed the flaky valve before we left home.)

The ride

We parked at Lithia Park, I checked my bike tire (still holding!), and I said goodbye to the family and headed out.  I was grateful for the ingenious helmet liner that I was trying out for the first time, that kept my head from feeling like it had been stabbed through the vents and then had ice cubes thrust into the open wounds.  I was grateful for my extra-thick leg warmers and my stretched-out old cycling shoes that accommodated thick Smartwool socks.  And I was grateful for the dry climate of this area.  Not only did that make the cold air less harsh, but the crotch of my shorts had dried out after my post-urinal drip.  I don’t know why I sometimes drip but I think every guy sometimes does.  (A sonnet I once wrote on this topic ended, “For urine flow can never really stop/ Until your undies drink the final drop.”)  You might say this is much ado about nothing—how much could have dripped, anyway?  Well, imagine the amount of moisture that might condense on a telescope lens.  Now picture the Hubble Space Telescope.

I headed for Dead Indian Memorial Road, a solid 9-mile climb up to about 5,000 feet (similar to Mount Diablo in the Bay Area).  It’s my go-to ride when I visit my mom.  The road used to be called “Dead Indian Road”—it had been called that since the olden days—but the Native Americans eventually protested.  The modern name is a compromise that I’m not sure the Native Americans should have accepted.  It’s a tricky thing.  “Dead Native American Memorial Road” is too long, and “Native American Memorial Road” suggests an entire race was wiped out.  “Dead Injun Road” has obvious problems; though it does allude to this name having been assigned long, long ago (which is perhaps slightly less offensive than if the road had been named recently), it’s far too harsh.

I didn’t feel so hot, and thus felt grateful I didn’t have to try to keep up with anyone.  I once did a group ride on this climb, on Thanksgiving Day years ago, and one sprightly novice overcooked it and ended up vomiting.  I can still picture the pool of vomit in the road.

I saw a bald eagle.  I’m not a birdwatcher (or “birder” as they call themselves) but I’ve seen some pretty awesome birds during bike rides.  This was probably the highlight.  I felt grateful that my wife and older daughter, though both self-identifying as birders, don’t wear hats with long bills like so many birders do (a subconscious, or even conscious, effort to look like birds themselves?) or throw around cool-birder terms like “mo-doe” for mourning dove or “sharpie” for sharp-shinned hawk.  And they don’t go around making bird-calls like “pwish-pwish-pwish” as if they could actually attract birds.  I felt grateful for all of this.

I gave thanks to the skies for not dumping rain or snow on me.  I even enjoyed periods of sun.  I remembered several rides up this road when I wasn’t so lucky.  One time, it started snowing hard and the wind picked up and I’d have aborted the ride except I couldn’t face the frigid descent.  So I kept climbing, just to stay warm, fully aware that I was just prolonging the eventual agony of the trip back down.  On that occasion I’d been surprised to see, off the side of the road, some cool teens hanging out.  (From my thirties on, all teens had begun to seem cool to me.)  They were trying to do flips in mid-air, which made me think of the hoods in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.  Was that the inspiration for these kids?  Or were they being tough-balletic, like the Jets in West Side Story?  Reflecting that West Side Story surely influenced The Outsiders, and that West Side Story was itself based on The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, I wondered if these teens’ behavior was the natural result of growing up in the shadow of Ashland’s famous Shakespearean theater.  Suddenly I realized one of the teens was looking back at me, and he gave me a dramatic thumbs-up.  I was thrilled to be noticed—validated, even—by a real teenager.  For a moment, I felt cool.  Looking back on that incident, I felt grateful all over again that occasionally I can have moments of not being a totally lame old person in the eyes of youth.  (Then it dawned on me that the kid may well have meant the gesture sarcastically.)

There was a pretty dusting of snow on the trees as I reached the higher elevations.

The view was pretty spectacular from up there.  You can see Mount Ashland in the distance (with the ski runs).

Plenty of snow up top and that made things a lot colder.  I snapped a photo to show my kids the snow (living where we do, it’s something of a novelty).  I questioned whether it was narcissistic of me to be in the photo.  I thought of photographing just the snow but it seemed like the photo would be terribly boring.  I remembered the part in Lance Armstrong’s autobiography (I suppose we should call it a novel at this point) when, demoralized by a poor showing in the spring races, Lance heads back to the states, and then does some brutal training ride in terrible weather and his entourage gets all stoked and then at the top they start to put his bike in the car and he says, “No, I’m going to ride down.”  His coach and manservant look at each other with delight, as if to say “Lance is back!”  Given that Lance obviously noted their appreciation (having documented it), and that this was a turning point in his great comeback, we can read this episode as a triumph of narcissism over self-doubt.  As regards my photo, I decided to err on the side of self-doubt and only keep the photo if I looked old and tired in it.  I felt grateful to have enough sense to look inward and worry that I’m narcissistic.  Here’s the photo.  I think I look old and tired enough.

The descent was mighty cold.  I stopped to get this shot, knowing my hands soon wouldn’t work well enough to do any more photography.

Epilogue

By the time I reached the car I was too cold even to sigh and didn’t want to be on my bike anymore.  As we drove back to my mom’s, Erin saw a truck lose a hubcap.  We tried to drive up next to the driver and signal to roll down his window.  (As Ellen DeGeneres has pointed out, the pantomime of cranking a window down by a handle doesn’t mean much anymore, but it’s impossible to pantomime pushing the window-down button.)  We stopped at a stoplight and tooted the horn, but just then the guy turned right and drove off.  A homeless guy, maybe around twenty, with a backpack and a couple of dogs and a handwritten sign, trotted over to the car, looking hopeful.  “Oh, sorry, we were trying to talk to that driver,” I said.  He went back to his dogs and we drove off.  He’d been looking for someone to take him in for Thanksgiving dinner. 

I felt grateful I wasn’t he; sheepish that I was willing to help a motorist with his lost hubcap but not a lonely kid with nowhere to go; grateful that the thing had all unfolded too quickly for me to really agonize over whether to help him out and/or discuss it with my wife; and above all grateful that we hadn’t picked him up only to tell him we weren’t having a special feast at all, and that maybe she should try for something better out on the road if it wasn’t too late.  Above all I was grateful that my life isn’t too full of terribly awkward situations—“Larry David moments,” I call them, after the TV show “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”  And finally, I was grateful that like me, my mom doesn’t have TV, and nobody was going to try to watch a football game on Thanksgiving Day.