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. I

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.