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I've lived in Oakland for ~8 months and I'm yet to be in a situation where I felt at risk (disclaimer: I'm a reasonably tall man and rarely feel at risk in citi

I've lived in Oakland for ~8 months and I'm yet to be in a situation where I felt at risk (disclaimer: I'm a reasonably tall man and rarely feel at risk in cities). I live north of Lake Merrit, work in Jack London Square, and deliver bagels up and down Broadway and Telegraph on my bike. Primarily traversing that terrain, I feel very safe. That said, there are other parts of the city that are much more dangerous. I generally put these in two categories: (1) neighborhoods with a high concentration of crimes like robberies and (2) neighborhoods where gang-related violence occurs. (2) is very often a subset of (1). I'm not an expert, but from my understanding, (2) areas are heavily concentrated in East Oakland (east of Park Blvd), so if you generally don't traverse that part of the city, you avoid much of that danger.

thrownaway2424 13y ago
One thing people fail to appreciate is that Oakland is geographically enormous. You can live here for years and fail to visit the majority of it, as I have. It's unfortunate that there's a lot of parts not worth visiting. Some parts are just brownfield industrial relics, some are just endless housing. But you can say the same thing about SF. I doubt for example that when people talk about the hot SF real estate market they are referring to the Excelsior. If you center yourself on the SoMA area in SF, many parts of Oakland are closer to it, in terms of travel time, than most of SF. It could take you an hour to get to 1st and Folsom from 48th Ave & Noriega in SF. But you can get there in ten minutes from West Oakland.