In general, Berkeley is not exactly my field of expertise, but I can tell you a few things about the place.
The Berkeley Bart station is actually quite conveniently located for going to the UC Berkeley campus area.
If you walk west a little bit from the Bart station -- though note the excellent "Comics Relief", and the respectable "Other Change of Hobbit" on Shattuck -- you'll come to University Avenue. If you hung a left on University Ave, you'd find:
- The UC Theater - a decent "repertory" theater, which I am sorry to say is no longer doing the midnight, Saturday showings of Rocky Horror.
- Au Couquelet - a large, quite good coffee house/desert place. Open fairly late.
If you go EAST a few blocks from the Bart station, you will get to the corner of Shattuck and Bancroft. Making a left there and going north on Bancroft about a third of a mile will take you to the beginning of the Telegraph Avenue strip (the center of the weirdness). That's probably the fastest way to get there. But if you've got any time to risk getting lost, you'll probably rather wind your way there through the Berkeley campus itself. If you go straight north from the Bart station (or just follow University Ave north) you'll encounter the base of the campus itself. If you look around, you'll see some campus maps posted near the entrance. To get from where you are to Telegraph, you want to find your way through "Sather Gate", and exit on the path just north of the Student Union building. If all else fails, follow the sound of the drums.
What's there on Telegraph? A lot of stuff, too much for me to list. Don't get so distracted by the scene that you miss these places:
- Amoeba Records - at Telegraph and Haste. Huge place. The best. (though these days, the Amoeba in SF on Haight is it's equal).
- Moe's Books - Huge used books store. Definitely the world's best. (And yes, I know about the Strand in NY.)
- Mediterranean Cafe - Across from Moe's. An old Beat hangout (Ginsberg worked on Howl here). Julia Vinograd generally holds court here, and you can buy a copy of her latest work directly from her.
It's a bit out of the way, but a more than honorable mention goes to "Dark Carnival", a science fiction/fantasy/whatever bookstore that is probably the best in the area. It's on 3086 Claremont, at "The Uplands", near "Woolsey St" (which is between the major streets of Ashby and College: that can be confusing if you don't remember that these three streets form a triangle). For more information, see this Reference