Ridge House

Best co-​op ever! I lived in Ridge (Rage) for one year (and still visit regularly) after two years living in the co-​ops prior to my Ridge experience. Beautiful house, possibly the cleanest co-​op (although all the smaller co-​ops will say that), fireplaces abound, a huge tv, beautiful garden, lovely people, Case Walker, secret passages and doors that go to nowhere… what more could you want?
I want to thank Ridge House for teaching me the virtues of Rage and beets, and the evils of corn dogs.

4 for housing experience, 5 relative to other co-​ops!
POSITIVES:
+ Clean bathrooms thank you Jesus
+ Final time womYn’s circles
+ HOT TUB
+ 2 Chainz
+ Whiskey for friends only, bud light for all
+ BEST
FOOD
EVERRRRRRR and endless streams of nutella
+ Popcorn all day every day
+ $.25 laundry!!!
+ Good roommates AWWWW
+ The garden is the most beautiful
+ Veggies everywhereeeeee
NEGATIVES:
— Not enough ice cream :(FORCE YOUR GUESTS TO DONATE TO THE KARMA BOX!!! FOR THE SAKE OF ICE CREAM!!!
— We need corn dogs
— Where are the beets!!!
— Sometimes, the TV room smells a little funky…
— The basement… or the 1^st floor… can be a frightening place
— SHUT UP CZ

I lived here for only a year. It was a cheap place to live. And overall, it was a good deal, but not great.
I loved how close I was to campus, loved having conversations about all sorts of issues, loved the yummy and innovative dinners my housemates cooked, and loved going out clubbing with them.
I did not love the communal bathrooms, did not love the way things got really dirty as the week progressed, and did not love the hills I had to traverse to go home.

For anyone who ever reads my reviews of fancy-​ass hotels and thinks I’m pampered, delicate, or otherwise squeemish, let me set the record straight right now: I lived in Ridge House for two years.
The co-​ops are not a gentle place.
They’re not a particularly tidy place, or a quiet place either, but Ridge house is a good place. Some good people, and good experiences.
Plus, where else are you going to find housing and food a block from campus for $ 400 a month?
…To give a bit more detail, for those unacquainted with the Berkeley Co-​ops, the USCA is a largely student run organization (independent from the university) that operates 20 houses around the Berkeley campus. These are big «houses» — converted mansions and even some apartment buildings, housing 20 – 200 students (but probably averaging around 40 – 50 per house.) Since there isn’t a landlord making profit, rent is cheap, and since the USCA can buy food in bulk for all the houses, food is cheap.
That doesn’t necesarily mean that it’s good.
As with anything student run, the houses are pretty messy — there are workshifts to be done each week as part of your rent, but some houses have more diligent residents than others.
Ridge is pretty squarely in the middle, both on the cleanliness front, and also on the character of the house in general. It’s not as wild as some of the more notorious co-​ops, but it’s not as quiet as some of the others. It’s an old faux-​tudor mansion from 1915, and the ballroom on the first floor is pretty neat — wood floors and high ceilings. The old servant’s quarters downstairs have been converted to single bedrooms — they’re tiny, but you get your own bedroom.
There are mice.
Mostly in the downstairs rooms, and maybe they’ve gotten it taken care of by now, but I do remember several occasions of jumping on a chair, followed by getting over it and just chasing the things out of the room.
The food can be good and bad — there’s almost always a vegetarian option, but since it’s your fellow students cooking as part of their workshift, the tastyness of the dinner depends on their skills in cooking, and their ability to give a damn.
Said ability to give a damn is ultimately why I moved out of the co-​ops — one afternoon I saw a guy open the fridge, accidentally spill a bottle of hot sauce on the floor, and walk away from the broken glass and red pepper mess. I asked him if he was going to clean it up, and he said he wasn’t on kitchen duty that week.
I decided it was time to move on.
But despite the general grime, the occasional awful meal, the mice, and a few rotten housemates, I’m glad I lived there — a little grit is good for you, learning to cook dinner for 40 people is good for you, experiments in small scale socialism are good for you, and sitting on the roof looking at the bay and San Francisco drinking beer with your rather random housemates is definitely good for you.