On my way to a writers' group meeting yesterday, I happened to pass by 2222 Dwight Way.

I doubt that address rings a bell with many readers, unless they happen to remember an odd detail from Anthony Boucher's short story, The Compleat Werewolf: 2222 Dwight Way is the address of a lost toddler Wolf Wolfe leads back home while he's in wolf form.

In Boucher's story, 2222 Dwight Way is described only as "a small frame house set back from the street, with a large yard." The actual 2222 Dwight Way is a small house, set back from the street. It looks old enough to have been there when Boucher wrote the story. I wouldn't have described the yard as "large," but it looks as if perhaps other buildings have encroached on 2222 Dwight. And in that part of Berkeley, a yard of any size at all probably qualifies as "large."

Currently the house is looking a little beat up. It's painted tan with green and brown trim. There's a large wind-chime hanging in the upper window, and a sign reading, "Apartment for Rent" in the front window.

I wonder if that address had any particular meaning to Boucher (like if he lived there, or knew someone who did), or if he just chose it because it sounded right.

I imagine that enough books and stories have been set in Berkeley that just about every scrap of the place has been used as a fictional setting. Though the only books I can think of, off the top of my head, that are set in Berkeley are Susan Dunlap's mysteries, which feature a Berkeley police officer, and are awash in local settings.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Diana Paxson's Brisingamen. I've had coffee at Cafe Mediterraneum, where the protagonist has coffee with Odin after he nearly runs over her on his motorcycle.

Peter S. Beagle's The Folk of the Air is set in quasi-Berkeley (he calls it Avicenna), and many of the places he describes in the book feel like real Berkeley places, but I'm not sure if there are any that I can identify as specific places that I've been. Though I've a feeling that many of the quasi-SCA types in that book are based on real people, some of whom I've met. But that's a whole different matter.