Two Green Girls on the Road

Days 13, 14 and 15: The Bay Area and Lake Tahoe

Use the handy map here to follow Mary Logan's path and view her favorite snapshots.

Friday Trish and I checked out Berkeley--a friendly Bay city with recycling bins, bright-faced students and signs of counterculture everywhere. Everyone knows that, but it's nice to see in action.

Cal is my dad's alma mater and I was eager to see remnants of the monkeyshines that went on there in the sixties, but we really came to meet with Rebecca Womack of the Chez Panisse Foundation. Chez Panisse is Alice Waters' celebrated organic restaurant in Berkeley, and her community-supported foundation started something called the Edible Schoolyard. She got together with the nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School and helped create a huge school garden and a program at the school that made garden and kitchen time a mandatory part of the curriculum. Kids see where good food comes from, how it's made and how much more rewarding it is to eat the fruits of their labor than a questionably sourced piece of mystery meat.

The garden--small farm, really--is both exquisite and productive. There are big blooms of flowers as well as beans, quinoa, corn, tomatoes and most things you imagine growing this season. While we watched, a middle school student plucked fresh green beans for the Schoolyard team to take home. One of the gardeners, Ben (in a great floppy straw hat), told us the middle schooler had been coming during the summer to help out, just because he wanted to. We all grabbed some green beans from his bounty; they were snappy and sweet.

Ben saw the card I'd stuck in my Moleskine from the Big Sur Bakery and Restaurant--the out-of-our budget but delicious stop we made on Highway One. Turns out his family's organic farm in Big Sur supplies produce to the restaurant, and Ben said it was one of his favorite places to eat in the world. Love when you stumble on something great when you're clueless and hungry and just scream "Pull over!"

This time we grabbed pizza at the less-pricey Cheeseboard Pizza Collective, a Berkeley institution that makes one type of pizza--different each day--based on what's locally available. We took down a half a pizza with corn, onion and pesto before we even knew what happened. Before we left, we pushed our way through the tacky tie-dye stands on student-filled Telegraph Avenue and found independently owned Amoeba Music. We bought some used cassette tapes--that's right, I said cassette tapes--that were four-for-a-dollar and gently used. Although Amoeba didn't have a limitless collection, we managed to steal away with Sting, Elton John, the Footloose soundtrack and Peter Gabriel for easy listening for the next few states.

Back in San Francisco, we strolled the Castro, Haight-Ashbury and the Mission districts and ran into Mission Pie for some more good, local food. Mission Pie is a pie shop with a connection to Pie Ranch, about an hour south of San Fran, where high school students in the city can work to connect with the land. It occurs to me that students in the Bay Area should really be able to out-know me on food sourcing.

We learned about food on Friday, and on Saturday we learned about San Francisco's green fashion. We met with two members--Amanda Coggin and Nayomi Munaweera--of the Conscious Fashionistas, a group of four vegetarian, earth-aware women who started a venture to find used clothing, sometimes rework it a little, and sell it for super-cheap at fashion events they host. We met them at the Salvation Army in the Mission district and rummaged around with them for their next event in November. There was a black and white sleeveless pinstripe dress, sort of twenties-style, that could go eighties-style in a flash with the right belt. Trish, getting a little loose with the cash, bought an old leather purse, red flats and a belt for $10. What a reminder to reinvestigate the wardrobe--or shop vintage--before buying new every season. And this comes from a New York City girl with an affinity for fine clothing.

Pushing our fashion whims aside, we popped into a San Fran local and organic corner market then hit the road for Tahoe. We found one of the last remaining sites on the entire lake--according to the incredulous campsite official who bellowed that it was high season and a weekend--and it was down on a little meadow in tall pines. We slept until ten and then took a hike to some falls and had a backpacked lunch on some big rocks with our feet in a creek. For supper we cooked couscous on the camp stove with tomatoes, onions and cashews, with half a California avocado on the side. You just really don't need a big budget for a nice day.

Money spent: All under budget
Money spent on gas: Not much driving
Highlight: Not much driving
Lowlight: Realizing we bought nothing but easy listening at Amoeba
Trash tally: Um, have you seen the system in San Fran? A monkey could properly dispose of waste and recycling there.
Mood: A little low, realizing we are now technically on our way home

© The Green Guide, 2008

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