Posts Tagged ‘ UC Berkeley ’
Hearst Castle architect and engineer Julia Morgan was the only woman to graduate from UC Berkeley civil engineering in 1894, and the first woman awarded a certificate in architecture from Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1902. She designed the Berkeley City Club and led its construction in 1929. Tonight, we dined at the Club’s restaurant, which is named after her. Both are local gems.
In the past two months, Scott and I have seen the Golden Gate Bridge from afar and up close during our weekend staycations.
I took this photo of the bridge’s north tower when Scott and I went flying in December with Scott’s former colleague Jim, who is an amateur pilot. Instead of exchanging Christmas presents, Scott and I pooled our fun money and asked Jim to take us flying. Jim is a member of the Alameda Aero Club, so we took off from the Oakland Airport‘s North Field in a Cessna Skyhawk which we had rented from the club. It was a calm and sunny day. We had a clear view of San Francisco, and of landmarks such as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory above UC Berkeley, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Point Reyes National Seashore. At one point, Jim let Scott take control of the plane – I held my breath and focused on taking photos of the scenery below! We landed at the Petaluma Municipal Airport where there were several small planes parked on the airport apron, including a shiny old Royal Canadian Air Force Beechcraft Model 18. We ate lunch at the Two-Niner Diner. The diner’s name refers to runway 29, which is nearby. Despite our ideal flying conditions, I felt a wee bit nauseated so I was happy to settle my stomach with a delicious lunch of salad, chicken-fried steak, and blueberry coffee cake. After lunch, we flew back to the East Bay.
In January, Scott and I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on a Saturday afternoon. First, we took BART into San Francisco and had fancy dim sum at Hakkasan to carbo-load before our seven-mile (11 km) hike. I’m not sure how many carbs are in Hakkasan’s famous crispy duck salad; I needed exercise after eating it! After lunch, we took UBER to the Presidio, a park and former military base that is part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area. We walked through a beautiful eucalyptus grove called Lovers’ Lane, snacked on macarons and Bavarian cream at the Walt Disney Family Museum, watched the sunlight and shadows of trees dance across the tombstones at the San Francisco National Cemetery, and took some selfies when we arrived at the bridge before sunset. Heavy traffic made the walk across the bridge noisy and somewhat chaotic, but crossing the bridge on foot enabled us to touch the International Orange paint that protects the bridge from corrosion. The bridge’s architect Irving Morrow chose the paint color to complement the landscape and enhance the bridge’s visibility in fog. The Sisyphean task of maintaining the bridge’s paint job is the work of 38 painters. Once we crossed the bridge, we put on our headlamps and power-walked in the dark to Sausalito so that we wouldn’t miss the ferry back to San Francisco. At the Ferry Building, we had a wonderful Vietnamese dinner at The Slanted Door before we went home on BART.
Allied Arts Guild is an artists guild in Menlo Park where Ansel Adams once maintained a studio. Prints of my photos are sold at the Guild in the Artisan Shop and The Barn Woodshop. Since 1929, the Guild has provided an inspiring environment for working artists, beautiful gardens and shops for visitors, and support for critically-ill children at Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
When I first moved to the Bay Area, I booked a string of “blind dates” with people who had graduated from the same schools I did in Canada. I met Grace, a fellow alumna of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, over coffee in March 2009. We had such a nice time that we arranged to meet again at one of her favourite haunts: Allied Arts Guild. We had lunch at the Guild and stayed all afternoon to smell the roses.
In January 2010, I decided to start selling prints of my photos. Although we live along Gallery Row in L.A., I considered the Guild a better place to try my luck. I called the Artisan Shop and introduced myself to the manager to see if she would help me make good on my new years resolution. We arranged to meet the following weekend. She looked over my work with her assistant and chose several framed prints to display in the Shop. I sold my first print that week: a picture of the Berkeley Campanile which I had taken after meeting another Rotman alumna over lunch at UC Berkeley. In March, our friends Maricki and Castaña visited us in L.A.; I enlisted their help to deliver more of my prints to the Shop. Now, I deliver prints to the Guild whenever I’m in town.
HELSA CHOW: THE WORLD AS I SEE IT 
