7 ms·
I don't understand why the author would move to Portland when we've got our own affordable, culturally rich, tech-friendly cities in the East Bay. Come to Oakla
by jaysonelliot 13y ago
I don't understand why the author would move to Portland when we've got our own affordable, culturally rich, tech-friendly cities in the East Bay. Come to Oakland. It's beautiful here.
The weather is better than San Francisco, you can ride your bicycle anywhere, public transit is good, and it's easy to get to SF as well as Silicon Valley (which I do regularly).
There's no need to leave the entire Bay Area just because San Francisco is an overpriced and overcrowded city. I recently came back to the Bay Area after a decade+ in NYC, and my wife and I decided we'd be returning for the East Bay, not SF. For us, it's the best of all possible worlds.
- fibbery 13y agohouses are impossibly expensive in Oakland also.
- api 13y agoAnd Oakland can get stabby. So it's stabby and overpriced. No thanks. If I wanted stabby I'd go to Detroit and get a Victorian for $25k.
- GFischer 13y agoI had to look up "stabby".. Is this what you were talking about? www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stabby or http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stabby http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stabby ?
- jaggederest 13y agoStabby as in "You might get stabbed".
- Kickmr 13y agoThey mean to get stabbed by a knife, a common misconception about the east bay. Yes there's violence, but theres also beauty, you just need to know where to go and where not to go (san francisco is the same).
- taurath 13y ago#3 crime rate in the US isn't a misconception. Anecdotally, of 6 people I know who have moved to (relatively nice) areas of Oakland, 6 have had their cars broken into or robbed at gunpoint. 4 are currently looking to move elsewhere.
- potatolicious 13y agoHe's referring to high crime rates. Parts of Oakland does have extremely high crime rates, much higher than even SF's notably elevated violent crime rates. Many Oaklanders would point out that not all of the city suffers from extreme violent crime, but it would also seem that the areas convenient to a SF commute generally tend to be worse, and the good areas aren't that cheap.
- GFischer 13y agoThanks for all the replies. It was an honest question - I'm not a native English speaker and I get occasionally confused by slang.
- CamperBob2 13y agoIt's not just the violent crime rate, either -- it's that the police, as a matter of policy, don't give a crap about anything that doesn't involve blood in the street. If you call the police after your home or car are burglarized, they will basically tell you to stop wasting their time. If you're not a thug, all evidence (or at least many anecdotes) suggests that Oakland doesn't want you.
- ceol 13y agoI would assume it's the violent crime rate that causes the police to shrug off lesser crimes. I doubt the police do it because they only want gang members in the city — which seems like an extremely silly thing to think.
- untog 13y agoMr. Stabby may provide an unsubtle hint: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Mr+Stabby/ http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Mr+Stabby/
- swang 13y agoHe's referring to the high murder rate of Oakland.
- theboss 13y agoHe means "stabby" as in "there are a lot of stabbings there and the possibility I will be stabbed is slightly higher than in other areas"
- AnIrishDuck 13y agoI imagine what he means by "stabby" is "unsafe and at higher risk of violent crime".
- mike_herrera 13y agoMy wife's close friend was only able to purchase a house when she had (1) enough to offer a cash purchase, and (2) the emotional ability to put in an offer sight-unseen. Ugh.
- ryguytilidie 13y agoYeah I just bought a house in El Cerrito last week and while we paid above asking, it was 1/3 the price of what my friends on the peninsula are paying for a great place. The fact that people seem completely unwilling to commute 30 minutes for a life changing job is pretty bizarre to me.
- textminer 13y agoLove El Cerrito, and even Richmond. Contra Costa County is way overlooked by the tech community. But sorta hope it stays that way for a while, in case I want to buy a house in a few years...
- enraged_camel 13y agoNo matter how life-changing a job is, the fact of the matter is that long commutes are almost always soul-sucking time-sinks that have a significant negative impact on the psychological well-being of those who do them. Besides, the longer the commute, the less free time you have, which takes away from your personal projects and massively decreases your chances of innovating or inventing something new.
- pdenya 13y agoI can and do work on the train. Car commuting is soul sucking. Public transportation commuting isn't great compared to working from home or something but it's not as awful as all that.
- msutherl 13y agoBring a book? I get a lot of reading done on my 1-hour commute.
- ryguytilidie 13y agoAs someone who commuted from Santa Cruz to Mountain View and San Francisco to Palo Alto, I certainly understand this. However, walking to Bart, being one of the first on, sitting down and reading/working is vastly different than driving. Depends just as much on HOW you commute.
- greghinch 13y agoI don't mean this to play into stereotypes etc, but just as a matter of experience, every single person I know who's lived in Oakland for any significant amount of time (say 1 year or more), over the past 5 years, has been robbed at gunpoint at least once, usually while walking within a few blocks of their home. It's not a huge sample, I probably know half a dozen people/couples who live/have lived there. But the fact that all of them (or in the case of couples, at least 1 of the 2) have had it happen makes me say "no way" to the East Bay.
- sliverstorm 13y agoThat may have been part of what he was referring to by "culturally rich" ;)
- pdenya 13y agoEast Bay is huge and the BART is fast. You could live in Walnut Creek, Fremont, etc and have a less than 25 min train ride to Oakland. You really can't write off the whole east bay because some of Oakland has a high crime rate.
- greghinch 13y agoSorry I should have been specific about meaning places to live and commute to SF. You could do that from the Nut or Freemont I suppose, but that's a far commute, and a whole separate discussion about why I wouldn't suggest that to anyone from out of the area
- awt 13y agoTwice burglarized in South Berkeley. Not worth it.
- liveinoakland 13y agowhere did they live? probably some sketchy part of west oakland where out-of-towners like to move because it's so grungy. you won't get robbed in piedmont, rockridge, montclair, temescal, grand lake usually, or JLS ever. but please keep upvoting this to the top! our rents are already going up because of SF spillover, feel free to avoid it and those of us in the know will keep enjoying our lives in the east bay with no complaints.
- bifrost 13y ago> Come to Oakland. It's beautiful here. Unless you are talking about west or east Oakland, in which case its full of blight, gangs and crime. Don't get me wrong, Oakland is gentrifying despite itself but I would never want to live in Oakland till they fix their failed city government and their high crime rate.
- dnyce 13y ago2nd this and push it up. I live in the area of Oakland, known as lake merritt. It's bordered by Piedmont, still has that "true diversity" as in ALL the colors of the rainbow feel, 20 min commute into San Francisco, AND I have a Damn patio! I love this little neighborhood for all of its nuances.
- sabat 13y agoEXACTLY. But so many of these transplants have this simplistic idea about the Bay Area, that it's SV and SF and that's about it. Oakland has an awesome tech scene (ever hear of Pandora?), and there are many, many more wonderful places to live.
- russelluresti 13y agohttp://www.spotcrime.com/ca/oakland http://www.spotcrime.com/ca/oakland http://bit.ly/18J6BFi http://bit.ly/18J6BFi Yeah, looks safe enough.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]