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Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm from Canada and have only been to SF once, but: If I had to guess, I'd say race and class conflict. I wasn't used t

Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm from Canada and have only been to SF once, but: If I had to guess, I'd say race and class conflict. I wasn't used to how heavily divided a culture could geographically be, and it seemed to me that Oakland was far more heavily multi-ethnic and financially poorer than the rest of the area. Before the hate poors in: - Yes, Canada still has a racism problem. But I don't know of any areas around me that are strongly of one ethnicity versus another. The major exception being "Indian" reserves, which is a whole other topic. - Yes, it's ridiculous for me to comment after only one visit. But that's how strong the difference seemed to be. Every cab and uber driver I had was from Oakland. - SF was beautiful and I don't mean any disparagement. You're all wonderful people and I love you.

tyre 8y ago
Oakland is starting to become more attractive to people in SF precisely because of its diversity. "Really starting to enjoy Oakland—have you been to Drake's?" is the new climbing, hiking, etc.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
nostrademons 8y ago
Multi-ethnic is not a problem in the Bay Area. Most of the people with money & skills are also immigrants, and many of them are various shades of brown or yellow. Poor is. The Bay Area is one of the least racist places I've lived in in my life, but it's also one of the most classist. There's still a big class stigma based on where you live. (Though sometimes gentrification flips this on its head - the Mission and EPA used to be poor, crime-ridden areas, but now they're rich, crime-ridden areas.) It's very strange - I think that people who are used to the race & class social systems of much of the rest of North America don't really know what to make about the Bay Area, because in some ways we've busted out of those social systems and just replaced them with other ones which are...weird.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > The Bay Area is one of the least racist places I've lived in in my life, but it's also one of the most classist. There's still a big class stigma based on where you live. (Though sometimes gentrification flips this on its head - the Mission and EPA used to be poor, crime-ridden areas, but now they're rich, crime-ridden areas.) The rich get crime-ridden places, too? Sounds less classist than most places.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Yup, they do. Most of the Google engineers I know who live in the Mission have been mugged or had their car/house broken into at least once. You just learn to not carry a lot of money or expensive stuff with you. The reason I say it's classist is that because you have both millionaires and people who are dead broke in the same space, people have invented a lot of subtle social signaling cues to understand just who they are dealing with. Like when my wife & I go house hunting, every realtor asks "Where do you work?", and we answer "Los Altos" and "from home", and then my wife says afterwards "I think they meant which company do you work at?" Or the time I met a black dude on Muni who had a bet with his girlfriend that he could identify techies by sight, because he asked me "Excuse me. Are you a techie?" and then got it right (apparently it was the Columbia fleece that gave it away, which is odd to me because it cost me < $20 off Amazon). Or the realtor who first took me around when I moved out here, showed me a kindy dumpy midtown Palo Alto apartment, then said "It's got a Palo Alto zip. That's important to some people." Undoubtedly this happens in the rest of the U.S, but it's different in the Bay Area, precisely because wealthy and poor live in such constrained spaces. Many of the social signals of wealth in the rest of the U.S. don't apply here because they're stupid - if you park your Lambo in the Mission, it will get taken for a joyride, if you wear an Armani handbag it will get lifted from your car, and there's no room for your gated community outside of Atherton. Our billionaires are too busy coding, raising capital, rollerblading, and kiteboarding to worry about things like their wardrobe or car. You get startup founders who own companies worth tens of millions and yet use a 5-year-old iPhone with a cracked screen.
    - ktjfi 8y ago
dmode 8y ago
Oakland is a difficult town to characterize as it is much larger than SF. Parts of Oakland are dangerous. But other parts of Oakland are actually nicer and cleaner than SF. Rockridge, Oakland Hills are examples. House prices there are comparable to the peninsula.
- rdl 8y ago
  I hate essentially all of San Francisco (so I am biased), but Adam’s Point, Rockridge, Jack London, and a few other neighborhoods are ok in Oakland. Berkeley is the really underrated place, IMO. Somehow they went from being the city with the whacko leftist government as a negative outlier, to actually being relatively sane as a city in the area. Emeryville is the only really good government in the are, though.

tyre 8y ago

Oakland is starting to become more attractive to people in SF precisely because of its diversity. "Really starting to enjoy Oakland—have you been to Drake's?" is the new climbing, hiking, etc.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

nostrademons 8y ago

Multi-ethnic is not a problem in the Bay Area. Most of the people with money & skills are also immigrants, and many of them are various shades of brown or yellow. Poor is. The Bay Area is one of the least racist places I've lived in in my life, but it's also one of the most classist. There's still a big class stigma based on where you live. (Though sometimes gentrification flips this on its head - the Mission and EPA used to be poor, crime-ridden areas, but now they're rich, crime-ridden areas.) It's very strange - I think that people who are used to the race & class social systems of much of the rest of North America don't really know what to make about the Bay Area, because in some ways we've busted out of those social systems and just replaced them with other ones which are...weird.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> The Bay Area is one of the least racist places I've lived in in my life, but it's also one of the most classist. There's still a big class stigma based on where you live. (Though sometimes gentrification flips this on its head - the Mission and EPA used to be poor, crime-ridden areas, but now they're rich, crime-ridden areas.) The rich get crime-ridden places, too? Sounds less classist than most places.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Yup, they do. Most of the Google engineers I know who live in the Mission have been mugged or had their car/house broken into at least once. You just learn to not carry a lot of money or expensive stuff with you. The reason I say it's classist is that because you have both millionaires and people who are dead broke in the same space, people have invented a lot of subtle social signaling cues to understand just who they are dealing with. Like when my wife & I go house hunting, every realtor asks "Where do you work?", and we answer "Los Altos" and "from home", and then my wife says afterwards "I think they meant which company do you work at?" Or the time I met a black dude on Muni who had a bet with his girlfriend that he could identify techies by sight, because he asked me "Excuse me. Are you a techie?" and then got it right (apparently it was the Columbia fleece that gave it away, which is odd to me because it cost me < $20 off Amazon). Or the realtor who first took me around when I moved out here, showed me a kindy dumpy midtown Palo Alto apartment, then said "It's got a Palo Alto zip. That's important to some people." Undoubtedly this happens in the rest of the U.S, but it's different in the Bay Area, precisely because wealthy and poor live in such constrained spaces. Many of the social signals of wealth in the rest of the U.S. don't apply here because they're stupid - if you park your Lambo in the Mission, it will get taken for a joyride, if you wear an Armani handbag it will get lifted from your car, and there's no room for your gated community outside of Atherton. Our billionaires are too busy coding, raising capital, rollerblading, and kiteboarding to worry about things like their wardrobe or car. You get startup founders who own companies worth tens of millions and yet use a 5-year-old iPhone with a cracked screen.
  - ktjfi 8y ago

dmode 8y ago

Oakland is a difficult town to characterize as it is much larger than SF. Parts of Oakland are dangerous. But other parts of Oakland are actually nicer and cleaner than SF. Rockridge, Oakland Hills are examples. House prices there are comparable to the peninsula.

rdl 8y ago
I hate essentially all of San Francisco (so I am biased), but Adam’s Point, Rockridge, Jack London, and a few other neighborhoods are ok in Oakland. Berkeley is the really underrated place, IMO. Somehow they went from being the city with the whacko leftist government as a negative outlier, to actually being relatively sane as a city in the area. Emeryville is the only really good government in the are, though.