Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. Berkeley has about 120,926 people.
Berkeley is home to the oldest campus in the University of California, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is managed and operated by the university. It also has the Graduate Theological Union, one of the largest religious studies institutions in the world. Berkeley is considered one of the most socially liberal cities in the United States.
Berkeley is best known as the home of the University of California, a hotbed of radicalism during the 1960s. The University and its 30,000 students are certainly the center and main industry of the city and, despite creeping conservatism, their presence helps to maintain a legacy of progressive thinking. Politics these days revolve around feminist issues and annually announcing a new "official" name for Native Americas, but recent years have seen a spate of violent demonstrations over homeless rights and related issues. Riots resulting in injuries, arrests, and numerous broken windows along Telegraph Avenue's strips of cafés, shops, and bookstores, are reminiscent of the 1960s demonstrations that also took place on this street.
North Berkeley is also home to older students and faculty. Expensive houses situated along winding hillside roads afford beautiful views of the bay (the fabled five-bridge view). Site of some of the devastation of the East Bay firestorm of 1991, many neighborhoods are still barren, reduced to ashes by the holocaust and not yet rebuilt. Shattuck Avenue is the main commercial district, featuring a number of distinctive restaurants, book stores, and other outlets. West of the hills the flatlands are of lower value but increasingly well-cared for, and property values are on the rise.
The Cult of Ecstacy's base chantry in Berkeley, California.
Bink is a member of the Sons of Ether at the University of California.
It is part of the East Bay Domain, which includes Oakland, lead by Prince Amanda Koller.
Home to the Duchy of Finvarr, a Fief of the Kingdom of Pacifica.
Jealously guarded by Aoibhell, the jewel in her ducal crown is Berkeley. From the streets where activists shout their fiery slogans and cry aloud their propaganda to the intense intellectual coffee klatches she sponsors on a regular basis, Aoibhell uses Berkeley as her mental sharpening stone. Though she places both her mortal and fae self in danger each time she holds court there (due to the fractious forces who find harbor in both Oakland and Richmond), she finds it an interesting consideration.
Despite Berkeley's intellectual environment, there aren't many freeholds there. Those that are here have curiously been drained more and more frequently over the years, without warning.
Society of Telemachus - A debate club and liberal think-tank at UC-Berkeley lead by Satyrs. Founded by Henri Remillard.
Doctor Thomas Lagarri, a Sidhe of House Eiluned, resides in Berkeley, where he teaches Old English and Irish Literature at the University of California.
On May 12th, 1970, the Battle of the Bay commenced in Berkeley, where some of the heaviest fighting took place. The local commoners, following a planted rumor that perpetrators of the Beltaine Massacre had taken refuge on the university campus, massed on the grounds. There they were surrounded by noble forces and told to surrender. They didn’t, and a vicious but ultimately one-sided melee ensued. A handful of commoners broke through the sidhe lines and ran off to warn the rest of the Bay.
Terry Wood is a Seelie Sidhe Childling of House Fiona in the Kingdom of Pacifica.
