I moved to SF 20 years ago and to oakland 5 years ago. The differences are pretty huge. Main thing for me is oakland is the place where people make things. Ther

I moved to SF 20 years ago and to oakland 5 years ago. The differences are pretty huge. Main thing for me is oakland is the place where people make things. There are lots of cabinet makers, butchers, shipwrights, and suchlike places. Even things that people might associate with sf are sometimes made in oakland, like boccalone meats, or blue bottle coffee. There are loads of hacker spaces and coops, too. If you want to start a business you could hardly find a better place. Real estate is cheap. Labor is readily available up and down the scale. You can find plenty of janitors, stone masons, or maybe you can even poach employees tired of the commute to Facebook or genentech or yahoo. Transportation costs approximate zero since there is no parking pressure, a subway, a sprawling bus system, and mainline train service, which even sf lacks. So if you are out to start a business oakland makes sense. If you want to be in the valley scene then of course it makes no sense at all, not being in the valley and all that.