Telegraph Avenue District

Great cities usually have an iconic street (or two) that serves to define their past, present and future. Telegraph Avenue, the grand thoroughfare connecting Berkeley with Oakland, is approximately 4.5 miles (7 km) of genius, beauty, madness and rapture.

Berkeley’s Telegraph District is filled with restaurants, bookstores, shops, and street vendors. Moe’s Books, arguably Berkeley’s most storied bookseller, is here, with free speech and flower power lining its shelves. Games of Berkeley is emblematic of the many independent merchants on the Avenue, along with Bows & Arrows (sneakerheads), Rasputin and Amoeba (vinyl), Tacos Sinaloa (Michelin-rated Mexican street food) and Cupcakin’(well, cupcakes). A pair of Berkeley’s leading hotels are here, too: the hip Graduate Berkeley and the Julia Morgan-designed Berkeley City Club, an architectural gem.

A new walking tour offers a way to discover this history through the modern storytelling magic of a smartphone app. Created by Guidekick and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the Telegraph Berkeley Tour is available free via from the App Store and Google Play; see www.telegraphberkeley.org to learn more.

Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue district is revered as the place where the counterculture came to Berkeley and became a national phenomenon from there. Free speech and flower power are forever in Berkeley's "DNA," and Telegraph still has authentic Sixties swagger to this day as it connects Berkeley to Oakland in grand fashion.