Ellsworth St, Southside

Ahhh! The memories of college life. I used to know this Southside Street well back when I was a Golden Bear myself. It has been a long time but when I came by here to take a look at this studio, it brought back the memories.

Ellsworth, despite getting some foot traffic from Cal students heading to and from campus is relatively quiet for a Southside Street. It has St. Mark’s Episcopal Church right on the corner with Bancroft and a parking garage right next to it.

Most of the rest of Ellsworth is made up of older apartments filled with Cal student who love being less than 10 minutes from class.

The other upside is that you are right by Telegraph and pretty close to Shattuck as well, so there is no limit to stores, restaurants and cultural events that you can take part in if you have the time. It is an outstanding spot for UC students--especially undergrads. Graduate students or those not involved with the campus might not quite enjoy the this busy spot quite as much.

Rents here tend to be fairly affordable (around $1000 for studios and one-bedrooms) but there are a lot of drawbacks, including higher crime and all of the spill over from weekend revelers. If you like being in the middle of or very close to the action all the time, you will probably like living here--but if you want to get away from it every so often, this may be too close for comfort.

Oh yeah, parking is pretty awful around here as well. You need to either pay for monthly parking to park for any extended period on the streets and even then you will have a hard time finding a parking place.

Overall I would not have minded living here 20 years ago. But given the size of the apartments and the fact that I have kids, I don’t think it works anymore for my purposes.