Originally Posted by cmac2012

Yeah, that's a new development all right.

Unless of course, you count all the people over the last 30 or 40 years hungry for someone to thumb their nose at so they can elevate their wounded sense of self and civic glory.

BTW, I was in Sunnyvale/Santa Clara t'other day. Lord help us, let me out of this place if I can figure the streets out. If it wasn't non-descript neighborhoods near industrial areas, it was soul-less banks of apt. buildings. Shopping malls and chain stores wherever I look. And then the damned Lawrence Expressway, a freeway with traffic lights. Oh boy.

I'll take Berkeley any day to those burgs. Chain store/franchises are kept at a distance in B-town, very few of them, instead we have locally run stores and restaurants -- some of the best coffee houses I've found in the bay. Now that I'm living in Redwood City (my heart's still in Berkeley) I've been forced to go to Starbucks often as not. I much prefer Peet's or the two Roma coffee shops in Berkeley -- better coffee and much nicer atmosphere.

BTW, didja hear about the new restaurant on the moon? Great food but no atmosphere.