• Walk or take the bus south from campus down College Avenue; after about 15 minutes of residential blocks you'll enter onto the area covered on this map. If at any point you head west from College, you'll venture onto my map of the rest of Berkeley in the midst of a residential area.

• To the east of College Ave you also find yourself in a residential area which quickly (after passing through some frat houses) becomes upscale as you wend your way up into the Berkeley Hills. (They have a lot of fires there.)

• First, though, on College a block before the beginning of a stretch of restaurants and shops, you find yourself at my apartment; take a look at it from the north-east corner of College and Stuart, from the west side of College (or closer), and from the southeast on College midway between Stuart and Russell.

• Continue walking on the same side of the street as my apartment, and at the corner of Stuart and Russell you'll find the 7-11 store where I buy my milk and New York Times every Sunday morning. There's a dry-cleaners/laundromat next door and a bus stop for the 51 bus where I wait to go to school.

• Cross Russell and you'll see the Nabolom Bakery half a block off of College; this is a cooperative run bakery with wonderful jalapeno cornbread, baguettes, and pastries of all kinds.

• Across the street from the 7-11 is a new and used bookstore; it's very small and not all that exciting, but, having never lived a block away from a bookstore of any kind before, I can't help loving it. It's also called The Big Ape, which is a nice name. Upstairs from The Big Ape is the rental agency from which I found my apartment.

• On the southwest corner of College and Russell is the Elmwood Drugstore, with an old-fashioned soda fountain which I hear makes wonderful ice cream sodas, even though they may cost more than a dime. A few doors down College is another new and used bookstore with a better selection of general-interest books

• On the east side of College there's a beautiful shoe store with lots of comfortable yet trendy men's and women's shoes, and an Italian deli that makes very good sandwiches and even has a few tables inside.

• A few doors down there's a family-owned stationery store who is always ordering special refills for my nice pens for me, and next door to it, a well-stocked hardware store with a very helpful staff. By the time you walk your way to the end of the block, you'll also pass a lock store whose owner cheerfully imprinted a "T" and a "B" onto my top and bottom keys so that I could tell them apart, and a Wells Fargo bank. (Unfortunately, though Wells Fargo seems to have the best checking account deals if you have direct deposit, I do not, and so at least for now this is not my bank.)

• Across the street are a children's used clothing store, a shoe repair store, a few Italian/European interesting looking restaurants, and a Russian-vegetarian restaurant.

• Now you've reached the corner of College and Ashby, a main intersection. If you take the number 6 bus west on Ashby you can get to just about any place in Berkeley that the 51 won't take you.

• Half a block to the west of College on Ashby is a supercuts, and on the corner--in case there is a wait for your favorite stylist--there's a nice-looking cafe with outdoor tables and lots of people at weekend breakfasts; my guidebook tells me that this cafe is a hot spot at night as well. There's also a Dream Fluff homemade donut store right across from the Supercuts! (What an intersection!)

• Walk down the west side of College into the next block and you'll find yourself at the Elmwood Cinemas, a three or four screen movie theatre that usually shows a mix of general interest and art films. On Tuesdays, all movies all day are only $3! A few doors down from the movie theatre is a video rental store, just in case you miss your showtime. This is the video place with the "Blue Room" for science fiction fans; on Sundays, a second rental is only $1 (averaging to $2 a tape).

• Cross College mid-block and take your pick of any number of little lunch eat-in/take-out places; there's an odd vegetarian kosher deli (I really don't know what one can eat there. My father went in and asked for a pastrami sandwich and they were just as offended as if he'd asked for one with cheese on it!).

• There's also a burrito place, and a new little Japanese place, and a not-great, not-terrible Chinese restaurant. At the corner is a US Post Office.

• After this you pass through a residential neighborhood for a little ways, until the mid-sized College Ave Liquor store signals the return of a shopping area.

• A block farther down, at the corner of Alcatraz and College--another main intersection--is another nice-looking cafe, the Buttercup, and a few pizza places.

• At the next corner, the diagonal intersection of College and Claremont, is the Safeway (open 24 hours, but no Star Market) and, across the street, my bank, BankAmerica. On the BankAmerica side of College Ave, you'll see a fruit store, a fishmonger, and a butcher.

• As you head farther south down College Ave, you enter the Rockridge section of Oakland. After another residential stretch, you enter an area of stores and cafes much like Elmwood, but nearer to a freeway entrance and to the Rockridge BART station. College turns into Broadway after this, and the area becomes gradually more seedy until you reach downtown Oakland in a direct 20 minute drive. If you head down Claremont when it intersects with College, you'll find the seedier sections of Oakland a little more quickly. Just five minutes down Claremont from College, however, is the Oakland DMV with a large free parking lot--very handy for changing over licenses and registrations (although I warn you, the written test to change over a license is quite hard).

• All in all, College Ave in Elmwood and Rockridge is great for a stroll on a sunny Saturday. Lots of grad students or young professionals with children live in the area, and on weekends the sidewalks are comfortably crowded with people enjoying cafes, restaurants, and shops. But still, you may ask, what is this area missing?

Thanks for taking this tour of my neighborhood, Robert--I hope you'll come back soon.