Pilgrimage: A photo tour

One of the places I always try to go when in the Bay Area is the much beloved (by some), much hated (by others), but incredible market known as Berkeley Bowl.

Once upon a time, Berkeley Bowl was a hippie market mostly devoted to produce and hippie products. It was located in an old bowling alley, and when I was the Kitchen Manager for my co-op I had to go there a few times to pick up specialty items. In 1999, the store moved to an old Safeway building, a space twice as big as the old one. According to their website, over 8000 square feet of the place is devoted to produce - the first time you go there, it's a little overwhelming, because I guarantee you have never seen a produce department in a supermarket like this before.

The Bowl definitely has its drawbacks. No matter what time of the day or what day of the week, it is ALWAYS miserably overcrowded. It's virtually impossible to get a parking space and likewise to get out of the store in under 30 minutes even if you're only buying one item - unlike some stores, they do always have every line open, but every line is also 10 people/carts deep. To call it a madhouse at certain times would not be an overstatement. But there's something about the place that I miss desperately here in landlocked Colorado, something about the ability to choose from 87 kinds of avocados and 934 kinds of apples that just warms the cockles of my occasionally shrivelled heart.

I have always intended to take pictures when I'm in the Bowl, and on this trip I actually remembered to bring the camera inside. Here are a few of my favorites.
(we figured out how to get the pics onto my work computer and burned them to a disk so Hulk will upload them to flickr eventually from school. For now they're sitting on my hard drive in all their photoy glory)(yes, all the pics from the train ride and the rest of the trip are here, too, but I need fodder for later dates).


Gourds


The prices on red bell peppers make me weep. Here's a selection of their more interesting peppers.


I was only slightly exaggerating about the avocado selection.


Buddha's Hands


This is why Hulk is a lefty.