Hacker News Reader

Comment by pfarrell | Hacker News Reader

I moved to the Bay Area, with my family, 8 months ago. We tried to make SF work (and did live in temporary housing in SOMA for three months), but SF is not a place for young children (unless you are beyond financial constraints). I commute to SOMA every day from Rockridge. Rockridge is nice, except for Oakland's inability to provide an adequately sized police force!

All the tech things antirez outlined are true, but the reality is, it took some commitment and blind faith to move out with a family and no friends or contacts. Its like moving to another country :). There is more of everything in SF (bay area really), success and destitution, beauty and ugliness, brilliant people and charlatans, opportunity and desperation. I'm loving it, but it's a balancing act.

View on HN

Can you elaborate on lack of police? Have you been affected by the crime in Rockridge? I thought it was a pretty decent area the last time I visited.

No he's just being a typical transplant and talking out of his ass.

Don't down vote the parents comment. He/she's right!

Crime has gotten noticeably worse since I moved to Lake Merritt in 2005. Everyone I know who lives on Oakland agrees. For example, Oakland is currently the robbery capital of the nation (http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Oakland-is-Americas-Rob...). OPD employs 20% fewer officers than it did ten years ago, and probably half as many as it should for a city with its size and crime figures. Pull your head out of your own ass and look at some actual data before you post things like this.

Oakland has about 600 police officers for a population which requires around 1,100. There have been five robberies on my street in upper rockridge, where we rent. It's an incredibly beautiful neighborhood and we pay a pretty high rent to live there. In 2010, the police announced that for a long list of crimes (including burgularies) they will not come out. We have caught people casing our neighborhood, strangers sitting in cars for hours, "solicitors" checking for who is home, etc. One woman was abducted from her home, but managed to flee before being permanently maimed (I don't know which year this was, but it was mentioned at a neighborhood watch meeting. Combine a typical neighborhood of strangers with desperate criminal elements, as well as an understaffed police and you can have a bad situation. Hoping the governor will help out (it's his hometown) because Oakland could be an incredible town.

Oh typical petty crime. BRING ON THE POLICE! "Oakland could be an incredible town". It already is. If you don't appreciate it, then go elsewhere? Berkeley may be more of your taste (lots of granola for ya).

in rockridge, they are pretty much in berkeley already. oakland "could be" an incredible town? coming from someone who moved here 8 months ago? this guy is trolling on the out-of-towner's ruining the bay meme, and we're falling for it

Rockridge is far, far more crunchy than any part of Berkeley these days...

The abduction happened in Rockridge?

Probably this one but there have been a few in the past few years:

http://rockridge.patch.com/groups/schools/p/two-attempted-ab...

Sit on your porch with a shotgun more.

I've lived in Rockridge for about 10 years and can attest to everything you've seen: half a police force, restaurant "take over" robberies, broad daylight muggings at Rockridge BART station, many "solicitors" casing houses.

I've been bullish on Oakland for a long time. It could be a great city. It has an international airport, a major shipping port, easy BART access to SF, cheaper real estate than SF, near UC Berkeley and a number of smaller colleges. But Oakland's crime waves, understaffed police force, history of police abuse, and years of do-nothing city government is taking its toll.

You may be interested in joining the "Rockridge Neighborhood Watch Network" Yahoo group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RockridgeNeighborhoodWatchNetw...

rockridge is 100x safer and nicer than many of the places where people flock to in SF, as is grand lake, as is jack london square, as is piedmont, as is temescal... oakland has some of the nicest neighborhoods and most coveted real estate in the entire bay. drive around the hills sometime. the "oakland is dangerous" meme is laughable. you are in trouble in parts of west oakland and far east in fruitvale. just like in bayview/hunter's point in SF. welcome to oakland! now I can't compare it to suburbs in the midwest, but if you take it as a city, oakland is already an incredible place and one of the last places you can get good housing on a normal person's salary in the bay.

For someone who is considering moving to Oakland in less than 2 months, can you comment on the safety of the other Oakland BART station areas (12th & 19th)? I honestly can't get a good read on Oakland anymore. So many people (yourself included) say that there are plenty of safe places to live in Oakland but crime maps suggest otherwise, especially within walking distance to BART stations.

I live in Berkeley now and I'm considering finding another place somewhere in Berkeley but it should would be nicer to be a little closer to SF, where I work...

Its boosters will suggest otherwise, but Oakland is pretty sketchy. Everyone I know there has been jacked at one point. It's just a matter of time. That said, the only place I've personally been held up at gunpoint in the Bay Area was in Berkeley. (San Pablo and Dwight area)

Sorry you had to go through that. I live downtown now on University (and I'm probably gonna try and stay downtown) and I pretty much never go west of Sacramento, that area is pretty sketch.

It's so bad, you could easily join the OPD or SFPD (as a presumably fit young male) and be making more than an avg. engineer in a year or two (overtime incl.)

Apparently Oakland is running a handful of police academy's this year in an effort to increase the size of the force. Salary's start in the $80's I think before overtime. Might be a pretty lucrative position.

And you get to shoot people at will! (ok, not really, but my cop friend says a lot of their "what not to do" case studies come out of oakland.)

Hopefully more officers on the street will help the incidence of crime, but I'm not convinced. Time will tell.

Piedmont, however, is really nice. If I had a particular need for decent schools or a police force, I'd probably live there. There is a decent shopping area near Piedmont in Oakland (confusingly, on Piedmont Ave), similar to Rockridge. The problem with Piedmont is lack of BART vs Rockridge or Oakland Uptown. Around 19th st BART is ok if you have no kids; it is only particularly dangerous on the other side of Telegraph.

> Rockridge is nice, except for Oakland's inability to provide an adequately sized police force!

You live in North Oakland. Duh. You think they're really focusing efforts on this area? Move to Piedmont if you want a dedicated police force.

Piedmont is definitely very nice. We have made some great friends there. Unfortunately, nothing was available when we moved. Pro tip: don't relocate around thanksgiving/Christmas ;).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com