Golden Bear Pool

A hard-​to-​find, warm, outdoor, moderately crowded, 25-​yard lap pool that — here’s the kicker — looks due west over the bay into the afternoon sun from the Berkeley foothills.

Great view from this outdoor pool. Nice dedicated lap swim (only) facility. Hot showers! Nice fellow swimmers, but lanes are somewhat narrow.

Decent pool, tucked up above Berkeley’s Clark Kerr campus. It’s a 6-​lane, 25 yard pool set up for lap swimming only (2 fast lanes, 2 medium, 2 slow). Pretty location in a eucalyptus grove. The pool tends to have lots of little leaves and debris floating in it and always seems to set off my allergies and dry out my contacts in a big way (heavily chlorinated?). But it’s rarely crowded, at least on weekdays, which means you probably won’t have to share a lap lane with more than one person, if at all. $ 5 to get in, general public welcome. They often have swim hours when other area pools aren’t open (like from noon all the way to 6 on most weekdays, when other pools are only open from 11 – 1 and 5 – 7 or so). Also, another benefit, if you’re a triathlete like I am, you can swim at this pool and then easily head up to the gravel track right above it for a brick workout .
Do be warned, there’s a sort of cliquish crew that swims there — I totally got yelled at by a grumpy old Berkeley fusspot when she smacked me with her hand when we were passing in a lane (her ridiculously wide swim stroke is not my problem!). The lifeguards are all young work-​study types, so I wouldn’t count on them to step in and mediate if there’s an issue.

Okay, I lived in the Clark Kerr dorms for a full year, and was at Berkeley for four years. So why the hell did this 25-​yard (75-​foot, duhhh) pool seem so elusive? Was it because I was simply lazy (this certainly kept me from the basketball & tennis courts and track up in the hills that in retrospect seem shamefully close by)? Was I too busy partying? Or was it because the hours were weirdly scant and I always got them wrong?
Probably all of the above.
I’m pretty sure I only swam in this pool four times. The first time was at night, when a group of us freshman idiots scaled the simple chain fence and jumped in thrashing and screaming at the top of our lungs. We were reprimanded by campus security and recorded as trespassers.
The next time was legit, and without incident.
The third time, I had somehow gotten the time wrong by an hour (though I maintain that the hours magically switched on me), but the lifeguard let me swim for as long as he felt like swimming in it (1 sweet hour of having the whole pool just to ourselves!!). «I’m done,» he gasped at the end, and we both got out and went our separate ways.
The last time I was there, I snuck in on my own, set off an alarm that I simply ignored, and got a few jubilant laps in before the staff came running out of nowhere. I feigned ignorance/​innocence and was spared another encounter with the campus po-​po.
Good times; but this pool is criminally underused (or was, from the years 2000 – 2004), as if it’s just a decoration to embellish the already gorgeous CKC.
Come on, Cal, open it up… because when you’re not looking, I bet there’s more midnight skinny-​dipping and mid-​day lane-​hogging going on than you think! [Though from all two reviewers below, it seems that things may have changed? Or were they just the lucky ones?!]

On a sunny day, Golden Bear is so choice people. If you enjoy foliage, old ladies and charming lifeguards-​this is your spot.

Golden Bear Pool is so charming and relaxing. It is a rec lap swim pool, so not good for families and kids, which honestly is exactly what I like about it. It is hard to find a public pool that doesn’t have a million children running around! I must admit that the biggest reason I probably love this place is becuz my bestest buddy Cat O. is a lifeguard there… any single, cute boys out thurr should really consider checkin this place out, it’s worth it just to catch a glimpse of the lovely Cat. So I guess this isn’t a review of the lifeguards (who are all awesome!), so back to the pool… it’s not very big, but there’s never that many people there and it has some great lounging areas to soak up the sun, read a good book and chat up the cute lifeguard! Ok, ok enough…