Here are some of the reminiscences and recommendations of friends about what to do and see in Berkeley, in their words.
Here's the mission we charged them with:
To the Bay Area gang...We've got four pages for you to visit:as our wedding draws near, one of the things that we are most excited about is showing all our nearest and dearest what our life in Berkeley has been all about. It's likely that we'll leave the city of Berkeley to shorten our commutes after we get hitched, and so this is one of our last chances to say farewell to the town we love so much. It's been in some ways really hard staying here while so many of our dearest friends have moved away, and we feel like we never even see our local friends what with our long commutes, but we have tons of really wonderful memories of sharing the area with you all and want to capture and share that with everyone at our wedding.
I'm sending this mail to everyone invited to our wedding who lives or used to live in the Bay Area, and we'd love your help. If you have a moment or two, would you consider writing up a blurb on something or somewhere in the area that you really enjoy? Restaurants, hikes, theatres, bookstores, anything that reminds you of Berkeley. We'll collect the responses and post them on a web site (maybe even print them out) for the out-of-towners (and ourselves!) It's also a chance to reminisce a little, so if you have an illustrative story or memories about why it's a great place, people you've shared it with, or what it means to you, all the better. We expect most guests will be staying in Berkeley proper or the East bay more generally, although anywhere someone might reasonably go on a day trip is fair game. Even just a sentence or two is fine, although longer is also OK.