Any road trip rating that focuses on tailgating is going to rate Cal low, but the only times I've actually tailgated at an away game are when I drove there and could bring my BBQ, ie Stanford and UCLA. Getting invited to a tailgate is great, but whenever I've flown to an away game (Northwestern, Texas, Washington, Rutgers, ASU, Hawaii) I've generally just bought food from restaurants, venders or the concession stand but had to walk through acres of tailgaters.
Cal is actually set up nicely for visitors coming in on BART. Lots and lots of great places to eat. One of my favorites Bear Downtown Berkeley BART is Jupiter, with a great sunny back patio, wood fired pizzas and their own craft brews. Sometimes live music.
We have been back visiting California for the last two weeks (visit annually since moving to a Pacific island 10 years ago) and we cannot get over how great it is. We spent days in SF and Berkeley, driving and walking all over and crime and homelessness is almost nowhere to be seen (was an issue a year ago. Admittedly we did not visit Union Square in SF). If we could afford to buy we would but even the formerly "sketchy" areas of Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland (and the entire East Bay) have been gentrified and is beyond our price range.
