Well, if there is one pattern in Berkeley mailboxes it would seem to be this: if we are going to get quirky with our mail box, many of us just can’t resist turning our mail box into a little house, pink and otherwise.  I learned the word “ubiquitous” in an urban archaeology class I took at Penn in the fall of 1971, my final semester there.  I don’t remember the name of our professor.  Peter and Carol took the class too.  Maybe they remember?  But the mail-box-as-little-house is damn-near ubiquitous in Berkeley.

Let’s start with one that I missed when I walked the block.  Visual acuity is part of the Quirky Berkeley job description, but I just plain missed it.  This is the house:

And this is the mailbox:

Isn’t that something!  And here is another mailbox-imitating-house that a Berkeleyside reader steered me to.  The house:

And the mailbox:

It has seen better days but- still – it is really something.

Here are some of the fancier ones:

 

And the not-so-fancy:

 

 

When he saw all of these, my friend gave serious consideration to moving out from his place in my library and “crashing” (his word, not mine) at one of these “cool pads” (again, his words).  In the end, he decided to stay here with me, but he was impressed with the  mail-box-as-house phenomenon: