By the time I was settled, it was time for lunch. I had heard a rumor that in the area of town called the Gourmet Ghetto, there was a fancy cheese shop with an attached pizzeria that offered daily one-off vegetarian pizza creations for $2.50 a slice, live music included. The idea of free live music at a pizza shop seemed far-fetched, but it was absolutely true: after a 10-minute ride, I locked up my bike outside the Cheese Board Collective (cheeseboardcollective.coop), where a three-man band was playing its blues-and-roots tunes, as everyone from toddlers to retirees chomped on slices topped with mozzarella and feta cheese, cremini mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, garlic oil and parsley. (Beer is $3 and wine $5; my choice, water, was self-serve and free.) Three take-aways: every cheese shop should have an attached pizzeria, every pizzeria should have live music, and feta cheese is a far underused pizza ingredient.

Still, it was a small lunch, so I went back to the cheese shop side to look for a snack to eat later. The shop, which opened in 1971, has great service, but its cheeses aren’t bargains. That is, except in the little bin marked “Bargains,” where little orphan chunks that are the gourmet equivalent of Kraft Singles get wrapped up and sold for cheap. I picked up a $1.85 chunk of Cambozola Classic, a triple cream, blue-veined beauty, and a still-hot $2 sourdough baguette; I planned to combine them at an ad hoc picnic on the Berkeley campus.

I picked up a map of the university (at the city’s visitor’s center) and wandered. It looked like a pretty normal campus to me, though I was impressed by the greens, an actual grove of redwoods in the campus botanical gardens, and especially a lack of the neo-Gothic pretension of many universities back east. I paid $3, did the standard trip up to the top of the 307-foot bell tower known as the Campanile to take in the view of the hills and the bay, then engaged in two of my favorite college campus activities.

First, attempting to take pictures worthy of an admissions brochure. Blue skies and the green grass of Memorial Glade, set just in front of the Campanile, made for a great backdrop. But the group of multiethnic friends I had hoped to find sprawled out studying, the Campanile perfectly framed in the background, must have been congregating elsewhere that day. It also served perfectly as my picnic spot.