Excerpt:

If the East Bay were a giant high school, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory would be, this summer anyway, the homecoming queen.

Cities up and down the waterfront are ardently courting the federal research institution in hopes of winning the lab's nod for a sprawling second campus. "We love LBL" lawn signs and billboards have sprung up from Alameda to Richmond, and thousands have turned out for community meetings to woo lab officials.

"It's nice to be loved," said lab spokesman Jon Weiner, acknowledging that the process is not unlike a string of first dates. "It's a good chance for us all to get to know each other."