https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/cal-berkeley-killed-america-best-sports-bars-20319623.php

The article was a tough and maddening read. Bear's Lair on campus was special while I attended.

Go Bears Forever

I'll never miss those bathrooms but the rest...well written but devastating read. 2003-2008 was a magical era at that bar. Memories of a place and time that will never return.

Loved Friday afternoons there...

Jeff82 said:

---

This is another data point for SCT's view that Cal just doesn't care about the traditions surrounding sports, or being competitive in sports. You can't have institutional memory if the staff operates as a lobotomy.

---

NOT getting sucked into that again ;-)

But I would say that for our new Football GM there is a secondary task (and really it is mostly HIRING someone to do this) which would be to look at "game day experience". Whether that is really leaning into Bears Lair, "flipping" the band festivities to Lower Sproul (to open up food option), setting up seating on Upper or programming gathering spots at Faculty Glade and Hearts Field it has to be leaning into the Chancellor's expressed reason for supporting ICA means using it as a tool of engagement.

(BTW - Cal CAN do this if any of you have been to Cal Day in recent years. There are tens of thousands on campus and it works. However, I assume it is an INVESTEMENT (several tens of thousands of dollars). If the university can't/won't invest than everyone knows my long term position. But it needs to if it wants to actual carry out the stated reasons for P4 membership.

(and while on that soap box - that person could also engage the f'ing city in a smartt way to close down streets and run an effective shuttle.).

I remember happily going to Pappy's just to see the memorabilia on the walls. Same holds true for the old Bears Lair.

Now, both are gone. Last time I went into the bar beneath that old Bancroft Hotel (don't even know what it's called now) all the great memorabilia from THAT bar was gone too.

Like much of Berkeley with their generic buildings which have replaced so many great older buildings, the history is being lost, the traditions along with them.

Sort of like game day for football. Lost and rebuilt with generic "everybody else does this" crap.

I'm saving money on the trips I no longer take to see and experience exactly those things which are being lost.

"Go Bears For Now"

Man, I loved the Bear's Lair. That was the place to be before and after football games. I once drank with the entire Cal rugby squad after a big win, and I used to see Adam Duritz there every now an again. It's a shame the university doesn't value its history.