Berkeley

On Sunday, dump trucks cleaned up one of Berkeley's largest homeless encampments. But residents haven’t been displaced, yet.

Golden Gate Fields is extending the closure of its horse racing track after a significant outbreak of COVID-19 continues to spread. Operators now face the task of trying to make sure the outbreak doesn’t jump beyond its perimeter. 

The short story collection Berkeley Noir shows a dark side to the college town with tales of deceit and murder. In this interview, co-editors Jerry Thompson and Owen Hill talk about the book and why they love the noir genre.

Progressive, pro-tenant candidates won four out of five available seats in Berkeley's Rent Stabilization Board race on Tuesday, and they’re expected to win the fifth.

This is a 2-minute summary of what’s on the ballot. Click here to listen to them all.

Berkeley Measure KK would change four things in the city charter. Let’s take them one at a time. 

This is a 2-minute summary of what’s on the ballot. Click here to listen to them all.

Berkeley Measure JJ would do many things, but the main one is this: it would give Berkeley’s mayor and city councilmembers a big raise. The mayor would get over $107,000 per year and councilmembers would get $67,000. That’s 75% more than they make now.

This is a 2-minute summary of what’s on the ballot. Click here to listen to them all.

Berkeley was an early adopter of citizen oversight of its police force. It established a Police Review Commission in 1973, well before Oakland and San Francisco.

But after nearly fifty years, proponents of Measure II say the commission is outdated, lacks power, and lags behind other progressive reforms found around the Bay Area.

Berkeley is trying to become the nation’s first city to ban junk food from supermarket checkout aisles.

A pair of non-profits held a ceremonial groundbreaking event yesterday to celebrate a joint affordable housing project 17 years in the making. 

The Oakland City Council recently approved the city’s mid-cycle budget, which goes into effect tomorrow. Though it fell short of calls to defund the Oakland Police Department, it did move roughly 3% of OPD’s budget, $14.3 million, to alternative safety measures. 

You may not have heard of the chemical PFAS, but you probably touched it at some point today. It’s a man-made chemical in tons of products in our homes, like nonstick pans and food packaging. But it’s toxic. And in at least one preschool in Berkeley, it’s in the carpets. 

Hey Area is where we find answers to questions you ask. Cameron Williams wanted to know: "What’s the best place in the Bay Area to have a first kiss?"

From Greta Thunberg to Youth vs. Apocalypse, young people around the world are fighting climate change. But in Berkeley, where students have been pushing environmental goals for decades, logistical realities are making sustainable solutions difficult.

In this Audiograph, we go to a popular gathering spot on a historic campus.

The battle over the right to access People’s Park in Berkeley began 50 years ago, but it never really ended. Now, UC Berkeley plans to develop the space into housing for students as well as homeless people.

In this Audiograph, we climb inside the third tallest bell and clock-tower in the world, UC Berkeley's Campanile.

For few generations now Berkeley has been home to alternative living arrangements like communes and co-ops. There’s a new intentional community keeping this tradition alive.

Here, no one’s in charge and decisions are made by consensus. This place is at the forefront of the housing crisis — in fact, it’s the reason the people here came together in the first place. 

The Bay Area’s long history of chocolate spans all the way back to the Gold Rush. Since then, the region has been a source for chocolate innovation again and again, from a Berkeley-based revolution in chocolate desserts to a craft chocolate revolution in the ‘90s that turned the industry on its head.

Hey Area is where we find answers to questions you ask. Listener Rory Plewman wanted to know when the next big earthquake is going to hit the Bay Area.

We all know we’re supposed to prepare for earthquakes, but how many of us really have a plan?

Hari Srinivasan is autistic and cannot speak. He understands everything. Until he turned 12, no one knew that but him. Then, typing gave him a voice.

Professor of Journalism Elena Conis wrote a book on the history of vaccines. She says, since we’ve had vaccinations in this country, we’ve had opposition to them. 

This weekend Downtown Berkeley will transform into a literary paradise for the Bay Area Book Festival. Cherilyn Parsons started the event in 2015 after being inspired by the LA Times book festival. 

Nazira Babori moves around The 1951 Coffee Shop with ease: mixing, steaming, and grinding coffee like a pro — but the truth is, she’s new to this, and not so long ago, she was in a very different place.

Singer Rhonda Benin has toured professionally for over 25 years. She’s a member of the Grammy-nominated “Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir,” and she’s a soloist.

This Friday, filmmaker Jordan Peele’s highly anticipated new horror movie “Us” is being released in theatres. The film’s trailer has gotten a lot of attention, especially here in the Bay Area for featuring the song “I Got 5 on It,” which was a hit in the mid-90s for the Oakland rap group The Luniz.

This weekend, a capella music lovers will be gathering in Berkeley for the WeSing Vocal Festival. The three-day event was started by Oakland singer Lisa Forkish who got involved in the a capella music scene during her college years. Her group at that time was the inspiration for the hit film “Pitch Perfect.”

There are a thousand hidden histories in the Bay Area – stories in the cement, just beneath the surface of our routes to work or school or play. There are also a handful of guided walking tours that aim to pull these stories from the pavement: Architecture tours, neighborhood tours, literary tours. And then, there is the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour. In 2012, Barnali Ghosh began the tour with her husband, Anirvan Chatterjee.

If you’ve ever spent time in the Berkeley Hills, you may have noticed staircases winding between houses or disappearing into the trees. KALW listener and Berkeley Hills resident Ansley Luce wanted to know how and why these staircases came to be.

The Berkeley Flea Market is a weekly gathering in the parking lot of the Ashby BART station. It’s brought together vendors, musicians, and community members for nearly half-century. But now, the group that runs the market has shut it down for the next couple of months.