Officially "The Hearst Greek Theater" this venue built on University of California Berkeley's campus in 1903 remains an iconic space thanks to stellar acoustics, easy parking and the sort of crowd one might expect in an affluent liberal area.Hosting two shows by Vampire Weekend the weekend of 6/15/24 and 6/16/24 both the lawn and floor were packed as the band ran through 36 songs including a karaoke-by-request encore in just over two hours.

I wanted to love this place because it's so conveniently located. Parking on the weekend can be hectic, but if you get there early enough you should be able to drive around and find a spot. The instructor, Victoria is amazing. So nice, fun, and genuinely interested in the well being of the students. If this was just a review of her, she would get five stars. The pole studio itself is badly in need of some renovations. Almost all of the poles looked extremely scuffed, making grip a bit harder. In a studio with no AC and only a couple fans, the poles should be in better condition for grip purposes. The floors definitely need to be replaced. The laminate is coming up in places, missing chunks in others, and is held together in places with some kind of tape. The tape, however, is soft and fraying so by the time the one hour class was over, I had tape all over the bottom of my shoes.Not a fault of the studio (but kind of the fault of the studio), the class was extremely packed to point poles had to be shared. I don't mind sharing a pole, but it seems like some of the women there were not used to it so when I asked if I could share they told me no. Like really? It's not that serious, but ok, I'll ask around to find someone who doesn't mind sharing. An easy way to prevent that would be to only allow people who sign up for class to take it. The space is large and they have many poles in there, so capping class size based on single pole availability is probably a good idea.