a tour of berkeley through red objects

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Today I went out to hang out with a friend (yay!). During the day, I was committed to collecting photos of red objects. The first was this storefront, which was our first attempt at finding a dessert after lunch.

Except that they only had mango things, and I think mangoes are cringe. So we didn't get anything here. On the search for a different dessert, we came across this huge tuning fork.

Apparently it is engineered to vibrate in union with Earth's tonal center. I am not sure what this means, but sounds legit. In any case, I couldn't resist the opportunity to release the sound of our Earth's tonal center, so I rang the accompanying bell.

(It was loud. I think some people started staring.)

Leaving the echoes of the bell behind us, we walked through downtown Berkeley where we came across two red awnings. First, the one over a set of Wells Fargo ATMs:

I was impressed with the crispness of it. The next red awning was over the entrance to a Psychic Advisor Shop.

Less sleek than the Wells Fargo awning, but much more character. The sparkles? The cursive letters? The handprint?

Not to get too distracted from the original goal (getting dessert), we dropped into a boba shop. Here, I found another red thing:

Armed with a copious amount of sugar, we continued to walk around in downtown Berkeley, passing a couple of red restaurant entrances. First up was this bright red door to a classy restaurant.

Next up was the classical red restaurant, McDonald's.

Also, selfie hugs:

I am not sure what this means, but hey — selfie hugs!!

A bit after this, a firetruck started driving by, which I had to add to my red objects collection. Here's a rushed photo:

Then I collected some red street items for easy points:

This last one was across from a Shake Shack that's about to open. Some important notes:

1. Shake Shack meetings have Shake Shack food. (We initially thought the restaurant was open because there were a bunch of people inside eating Shake Shack. But alas, it was just the employees having Shake Shack food for their Shake Shack meeting.)
2. They have avocado burgers. (I personally do not think this is a good idea but people seem to like avocados).

We took a turn towards the UC Berkeley campus, where we came across this very red sculpture on the Crescent Lawn.

I later found out that this sculpture — Mama Mobius by Mark di Suvero — was just installed a week ago. How lucky of us! Any earlier and we might have missed it.

We cut through the Crescent Lawn and made it through the Eucalyptus Grove. The Eucalyptus Grove didn't have anything red, but it did have a Prize of Superiority in Football, which was pretty fire.

My friend then took me on a tour of the Valley Life Sciences Building, which is a weird mix of museum and library and research lab and study space?? Anyway there weren't too many red things here either, but there was a T. rex skeleton.

But the T. rex did lead us to a red thing in its information panel, because T. REX ATE MEAT:

Back in the outdoors in Southside, we found some street art of boba, which happened to be red.

And then we also found an abandoned drink bottle in the bushes.

(Don't worry, we threw it away after taking the photo. We're upstanding citizens, after all.)

After performing our civic duties, we came across a wonderful combination of three red things: a building, a car, and the bus lane!

We finished the day at Grizzly Peak, where we found a bright red bottle cap in the woodchips.

The important part, though, was the view:

Forgive me, it's not red. But it is really pretty.

A, thanks for driving today.