East Bay Tour

On Saturday we took a day trip to Berkeley. First we hit Solano Ave:




Had lunch at Zachary's. Their Chicago pizza were voted best pizza in East Bay for a number of years. The walls are decorated with huge poster size paintings in Zachary's pizza theme.



Pegasus bookstore is next door to Zachary's. Nice selection of used books, though not much on knitting.



Then the guys dropped me off at Stash so they can go to some card stores to trade baseball and basketball cards. I have read some very positive reviews of Stash on Ravelry. The store is large and well organized, with both high end fancy yarns and regular every day yarns. The hardwood floor is beautiful, and there is a nice sitting area in the back, where I took a break after shopping. It was a cold day so I wore my newly finished Dickinson Pullover and the ladies in the store appropriately wooed and ahhed over it. They even found me on Ravelry and immediately friended me.



The guys dragged me out of Stash, time to hit Telegraph. It was hard to find parking, and we ended up on the top floor of a garage. Here is the view from the garage:



Corner of Telegraph and Channing:




Cody's Books has closed this location, or it'd require a visit. Tho they only sell new books which is less interesting than a good selection of used books. Now only a huge flower stand in front of the store.



Moe's is wide open and packed with books. Bill is very familiar with these bookstores as he grew up in the East Bay and always comes back for his "book fix". But then he also calls Moe's "the old hippie hangout", what does that make him?



Didn't have time to go to Shakespeare & Co. It's not as big as Moe's, so hopefully not much missed.



Across the street is a big music store, Amoeba Music, a rather messy, chaotic place. Bill has bought me some CDs here over the years, so it's worth a visit.



Amazingly large selection of classical music upstairs. That's where my Bocelli CDs are from.



While we were there, Bill drove further down the road to show us his old dig. This is the apartment he lived in when he was four years old.



His aunt lived in this Victorian home behind the apartment building. He used to play on those front steps. The buildings are still the same color as before, but no telling who's living in them now. His other aunt lived across the street, and an uncle further down the street. My family would have blown up the street if they lived this close.



We passed Article Pract in Oakland along the way, but we were running out of time and it wasn't a good neighborhood, so I decided to skip it.

Final stop, Lacis Museum. This is Jocelyn's recommendation and it's heaven for anyone remotely interested in lace, textiles or classic European culture. Of all places, I forgot to take a picture of the store front of Lacis, so here is a stock picture from their website:



This is a corner of the book area in Lacis. The knitting book selection is huge. I could have lived there for days. Instead I read till five minutes before they closed, while my guys waited in the car.

The loot:

1. Bill Bryson's African Diary from Pegasus. I didn't know this book existed.

2. The Green Mountain Spinnery Knitting Book from Moe's. I have been wanting this book for a few years and now I have it.

3. Creating Original Hand-knitted Lace by Margaret Stove from Lacis, published by Lacis.

4. Alchemy silk purse in Mediterranean (deep aqua green)

5. Claudia Hand Painted merino in Midnight (purples and blues)