This past weekend, sad circumstances took us up on a last minute trip to Northern California. Despite the tone of the trip, we managed to get in some antiquing, and take a quick trip over to Berkeley to pick up the coolest thing ever.
My husband attended UC Berkeley and I lived there for year. It's a lively place and an amazing urban college town. Established in 1868, the campus is filled with so much history. My husband, Jesse, is obsessed with Cal football and follows all the games. Every fall, we try to make it up to see a game and hit our old hangouts. Even though we plan on going back in a couple months, I figured while we were close by we could pick up a very special treasure.
Since 1923, Berkeley Memorial Stadium has hosted the Cal Bears football team. This past year it was renovated and retrofitted (it sits directly on a fault line) and during construction some old wooden bleachers turned up. A local wood shop in town, The Wooden Duck, managed to salvage the bulk of it and is now selling it. We knew it was essential to have a piece for our home. We rooted through a giant, filthy pile of beat up blue and yellow boards, all inscribed with numbers, and found a couple pieces to turn into a small bench or side table. Yes its very beat up, but not lacking in potential.
All of the boards had numbers on both sides and even numbers on top of faded numbers. They managed to get a long life out of these boards. Each number a seat for an enthusiastic Cal fan, probably waving a felt pennant and rooting for the Blue and Gold.
We also hit up a little antique shop and founds a few more treasures. I keep finding neat stuff that I claim is for our future house, guess we will see if it works soon enough. My new obsession is American stoneware crocks. They usually have a cream or grey salt glaze, stamped by the maker, and range from small to huge.
I also picked up some big thread spools (I see string art and friendship bracelets in my future) and a milk glass Old Spice shave mug with the logo faded to the perfect shade of grey and pink.
Lastly, we picked up these puppies. Jesse builds beautiful wood encased vacuum tube amplifiers. Vacuum tubes made a lot of electronics work back in the day. These tubes were probably from old TVs, they don't work, but I love to incorporate my husbands interests into our home design, now I just need to find the perfect apothecary jar to display them.
