'When I go visit Jonathan Spector I ride my bike. From my house, I ride the length of Berkeley (the setting for Eureka Day) in 40 minutes. To the west I see the Pacific Ocean, Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, the rolling Marin headlands, Alcatraz Island. To the east, tree-lined hills are dotted with homes that belong to ageing hippies that now cost over a million dollars and are in danger of wildfire. I bike through my parents’ neighbourhood, where ‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ signs, Tibetan buddha statues, and massive succulent plants sit in front yards. Beat poet Allen Ginsburg lived here, hosting guests on the floor on meditation mats (I recently gave my mom’s 1970s mats to a friend who actually meditates). Teddy bears peek out of many windows. The bears remind us that we aren’t alone, leftover from when everyone took walks during the early days of the pandemic. In Berkeley, paranoid neighbours crossed the street to avoid each other. A sign put up on the narrow path by my house read, ‘THIS PATH IS TOO NARROW FOR TWO PEOPLE TO PASS EACH OTHER (LESS THAN 6 FT). PLEASE FIND ANOTHER WAY TO GET TO THE SHOPS’. A perfect Berkeley specimen. Passive aggressive, very concerned, politically involved, trying to help, and yet, incredibly rude. I pull up to Jonathan’s purple-painted house. His wife Molly and I went to the same Jewish day camp, where we were allowed to sit out of games like Capture the Flag and make friendship bracelets if we preferred. As kids, Molly and I learned about Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. We celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day on what I wouldn’t learn until college was actually Christopher Columbus Day. We hiked the wooded hills and spotted wild bunnies. We paid tribute to the hippy soul of our hometown buying tie-dyed shirts on Telegraph Avenue. At both of our schools we learned we were special. We, like the offstage children in Jonathan’s play, were destined to ‘be the change we wanted to see in the world’... which is a quote I saw on a bumper sticker on a Prius in Berkeley (falsely) attributed to Gandhi.' Read the full story 'Biking through Berkeley' by Sarah Rose Leonard on our website and immerse yourself in the world of #OVEurekaDay