My wheelchair and I are in the back of a small, crowded lecture hall, wedged to the right of the door, in the oldest building in the University of California system. Another wheelchair user brackets the other side of the door. To someone walking in, we might look like charioteer sentries, except we’re facing the wrong way for guarding the place and don’t have halberds. The old building, which overlooks San Francisco and the Golden Gate, is one of the first two buildings constructed for the “new” University of California in 1857, but the lecture topic is current — computer mediated networking, freedom of information, the social dynamics of the Internet.

South Hall has multiple meanings for me. My graduate degree as a librarian was granted here 17 years ago. It had extraordinary, invigorating professors who expanded my intellectual frontiers. I met my wife here. And after this public lecture, sponsored by South Hall’s resident program, the School of Information, I will cruise home a scant mile away down colorful, chaotic Telegraph Avenue.

Out the tall French-style windows you can see the Campanile, the university’s iconic bell tower, whose lofty presence and hourly chimes indicate irrevocably that you are at one of those ivory tower institutions. Glancing around the room, I see sharp, eager 25-year-old graduate students, male and female, not deprived of confidence, from around the world — India, China, Japan are represented — and also UC librarians and network technicians I recognize from my student time spent here, as well as people from my own neighborhood — the gray-haired ponytail types, a local soccer coach. Disability rights activist and longtime computer enthusiast Scott Luebking is my accidental counterpart on the other side of the door, his knowing smile and penetrating gaze an asset to any event.

Scott and I chat briefly after the lecture. We both have spinal cord injuries from ages ago, his higher up so he has a motorized chair, while I am still arm-drive. He lives just a few blocks from me, and Berkeley positively bristles with wheelchair users, so common you rarely get a second glance. Then we part, each of us on our separate errands, and I careen down a steep grade, hurtle under Sather Gate and the scene of the Free Speech Movement and early disability rights demonstrations of the 1960s, and swerve onto Telegraph Avenue.

“South-side” as they call it, looks like many university town scenes, if you could find a suitably fuzzy, psychedelically oriented lens. There are burger and falafel joints and vaguely menacing paraphernalia shops, and plenty of ethnic clothing, copier and bookstore storefronts. With Cody’s most tragically out of business, it is no longer a world-class place for book browsing, but other bibliophilic choices still linger.  This section of Telegraph, so named since it traces the 19th-century telegraph poles that formed the communication link between the university and Oakland to the south, swarms with students, merchants and wayward young panhandlers with their legs stretched out, blocking way too much of the sidewalk.  An old neighborhood friend had grown weary of getting hit up for money when walking up Telegraph with his young son until he figured out that dressing in tie-dyed clothes would create a cloak of invisibility.

I know every inch of the way — which cracks and divots in the pavement to hop over, when and exactly how to weight-shift on the curb cuts so as not to upend myself. It’s downhill so I cruise at four knots or so, weaving in and out of foot traffic.

I stop at the grocery store on the way, picking up some Belgian ale, veggie burgers and organic produce for dinner. My household, like many, is vegetarian; my spouse is one of those black-belt vegetarians, a vegan. The kids and I cannot imagine life without cheese. We tell everyone we are the typical Berkeley family — vegetarian, solar-paneled, homeschooling, disabled, over-educated. Three excellent grocers lie within minutes of home — many options and no need for a car. Most shoppers bring their own cloth bags, happy to get a discount while perpetuating the green mindset. I sling my muslin bag over the back of my chair, reminding myself to change my weight-shifting. My center of gravity has moved backwards, and if I misjudge a pavement crack, so will I.

My neighborhood is a quiet, tree-lined street. Several same-sex households, multi-ethnic marriages, and a variety of professions coexist cheerfully — architects, students, retirees, and strangely enough, four of us on our block have library degrees. We all assemble once or twice a year for our block party, and with the road closed to traffic, the neighborhood kids squeal with delight riding down the middle of the street on their bikes or scooters.

Two-thirds of the town is fairly flat, gently sloping down to the bay from the steep hills around the university. Higher up are ridgeline houses with multimillion-dollar views. I’ll roll almost anywhere outside the steep zone, and go many weekends without needing the car at all, unless it’s soccer season for the kids, and then we traverse a wide swath of the East Bay for their games. Soccer has acquainted us with an amazing range of people. One year, my son’s team heard encouragement shouted in four languages from the sidelines: Arabic, Norwegian, Spanish and English.

The local train, BART, part of San Francisco’s semi-accessible and underappreciated light-rail system, stops half a mile from my house, and takes me to work as a librarian at San Francisco State University. My home stop, Ashby, was the recipient of a major grant and will become the Ed Roberts Center, a major focal point for the Independent Living Movement. Construction has already started.

It is a town rich with disability history. The legendary Ed Roberts, who died in 1995, just a few years after I moved into town, is considered by many to be the “father” of the independent living movement. Having contracted polio at an early age, he spent a lot of time in his iron lung, but managed to get accepted to Berkeley, after a determined fight, in the early 1960s. They weren’t so keen on “crippled” students then. Both the university and Ed were not always a happy challenge to each other, but he was such a persistent thorn in their side that the town and university were reluctantly coerced into such now common accommodations as curb cuts. The Center for Independent Living was born through his efforts, and people remember him fondly with respect for his focus and will — he never would accept an unreasonable “no” when he thought something could be done better. He cleared an early trail, and many tough, determined folks followed in his wheel-tracks, widening and improving the route for the rest of us.

All is not perfect in Berkeley. Being devoted to the life of the mind and its voice, the town is famous for arguments. Nothing is so small (garbage collection, recycling, traffic circles) or large (nuclear weapons, homelessness) that it cannot be debated to death, with heated factions and overzealous rhetoric. While better than most towns, many shops, professional offices and the like are still off-limits with stairs or other barriers. It is quirky, completely left-wing (my first-born had never met a real Republican, excepting his grandfather, until he went east to college), and everyone doesn’t get along all the time. Diversity creates many boundaries that need to be negotiated, not always gracefully.

But Berkeley is a physically beautiful and intellectually stimulating town, and as a disabled person, it’s possible to blend into the background better here than almost anywhere else. It benefits from basking in the wide cultural radiance of cosmopolitan San Francisco, minus the congestion and difficulty of movement. My work is in the southwest corner of the city, far from the extraordinarily steep and breathtaking hills of postcard San Francisco. Of the half dozen places where I lived when nondisabled — in North Beach, the Mission district and the hills over Haight Street — not one could I enter solo now.  Steps, tight turns and impassible entries block my way.

When traveling internationally and asked about home, I indicate “San Francisco,” a place everyone knows. If they’re academics, I say “Berkeley” and get a different look. “Ah yes,” they murmur, eyebrows raised, then tell a story about visiting the town, taking a sabbatical, enjoying an unusual lunch, acquiring a long-sought book, seeing something remarkable. Some wags call it Berserkley, and it does drive you nuts sometimes. But when you pick up fragrant organic apricots at the farmers’ market, sample somosas and naan at an Indian restaurant, or share a pint of locally brewed ale with your mates at one of the fine brewpubs in town, it feels like not a bad choice for home.