North Berkeley

The area west of the Gourmet Ghetto on Shattuck that extends to San Pablo with Hopkins being roughly its northern border, is what is usually referred to as North Berkeley. It is a largely residential neighborhood made up of students and young families (often married graduate students). The neighborhood is relatively quiet and nicer on its eastern end near the Shattuck Avenue restaurants than it is as it nears San Pablo Avenue. Streets are relatively flat in this area with a very slightly, mostly unnoticeable slope down towards the bay.

The main thoroughfares through the area north and south are Sacramento and Martin Luther King. The most pleasant of the streets in the neighborhood is Hopkins, which has a quaint small town feel with red-bricked storefronts leading out onto a somewhat busy tree-lined streets.

A testament to the family orientation of the neighborhood is the location of Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in the neighborhood. And if you pass through the North Berkeley on a weekend in or even an afternoon weekday, you are likely to see parents on bicycles with kids in tow just behind them (usually asleep in those tent like bicycle attachments). The neighborhood also boasts a nice park at the north west corner—Cedar Rose Park, complete with multipurpose play area, basketball courts, and tennis courts.

Most homes and apartments in the area are relatively reasonably priced between one to two thousand, although you will run across the occasional renovated home that can run you up to 3K or there abouts—these more expensive rents, however, are more the exception than the rule.

North Berkeley transportation is excellent as it is throughout the city. In fact, it is not uncommon to find residents of Berkeley who have never even bothered to learn how to drive in part due to the environmentalist ethic that is so strong in Berkeley, but also because of this great transportation system. Parking on the streets is largely limited to those with parking permits but the area breaks down as the streets get farther away from campus. There is also a North Berkeley BART station near Sacramento (one of three stops in the Berkeley area).