Our weekly tailgating guide stays West this week, meandering down the coast to Berkeley for Cal's date with Oregon State.

The Lowdown.
Cal is a bit of a unique critter when it comes to tailgating, in that there's not a lot of traditional tailgating happening at all. The stadium is situated right in Berkeley; there are no massive parking lots and no fleets of RVs with grills on their trailer hitches streaming in on Thursday afternoons. If you're looking to make new friends, you'll find tailgaters in bars around town (none of which are remotely close to the stadium), frat houses and wherever someone can scare up a patch of green space. For a school whose geography makes standard mob revelry kind of impossible, though, they do know how to throw a party. I've been three times in the last three years and can remember very little from any of those trips, so they're doing something right.

If you're smart, you won't even get near campus with your car. We promise you don't have the booster cred to drive anywhere near the stadium, so be smart and take the BART train in or get your student buddies to pick you up and ferry you in to the action. Don't bother trying to find a street space in the residential areas, either; fines often double on football Saturdays. And please note: Wherever you land, you're going to be walking, a lot, and there are seemingly nothing but hills on this campus. Leave the stilettos in the closet. There are gameday trolleys around, but they're slow and crowded. Hoofing it is your best bet, and a fine way to work off the many delicious microbrews you'll be plied with.

Music follows you in some form everywhere you go in Berkeley. The Cal Band sings, plays, and dances its way across campus (stopping at one point to scream at a library for reasons that are unfathomable to visitors, but it's highly entertaining nonetheless). You'll also meet wandering bands of a capella singers serenading picnickers wherever the mood strikes them:

The music doesn't stop there. The student section at Cal has a hive mind like no other, and their precision can be seriously intimidating despite the relatively low volume levels in the stadium. If this sounds like too much, you can always catch the game from Tightwad Hill overlooking the field.

What To Wear.
Fly casual, and wear something you don't mind getting snagged on ancient stadium seats or a tree branch. Berkeley has nice warm football weather year-round. But whatever you do, don't wear anything red, lest the aforementioned organizational powers of the student section focus on destroying you. Cal has what one of our Bear correspondents calls "A great history of attacking opposing team mascots," so you don't want to be rocking anything that could possibly identify you with, say, the Stanford Tree. (Pieces of its 1996 costume are still on display in fraternities.)

Pregame Stops.
• Henry's, 2600 Durant Avenue. Located in the Hotel Durant, stop here for hangover breakfast.
• Bear's Lair, 2475 Bancroft Way. This is the campus sports bar on Lower Sproul Plaza, a favorite hangout of students, faculty, and alumni alike that gets absolutely mobbed on game days. Stop in for some pizza, beer, and scores of interest if you can get in the door.
• Top Dog, 2534 Durant Avenue. If you find yourself craving when you get back home, this Cal institution also peddles its wares by mail order.

Postgame Stops.
• Jupiter, 2181 Shattuck Avenue. Brewpub built in a converted stable filled with church pews, eerie ambience, good beer.
• Berkeley Karaoke, 2284 Shattuck Avenue. I once saw a men's choir take over the mic for "Rock of Ages," and I'm not sure I've ever recovered.
• Pyramid Brewery, 901 Gilman Street. A little ways out from campus, but if you're at loose ends on Sunday stop by for a tour.

What To Drink.
While Cal doesn't have its own signature cocktail (as with Oregon, we recommend a local microbrew or some Pyramid Apricot Ale), it does get to boast its own official signature drinking song:

Dressing up to mock-vomit: This is our kind of party.

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Thanks this week to the crackerjack staff and readers of California Golden Blogs.
Holly welcomes your adulation and veiled threats at nastinchka-at-yahoo, etc.