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Comment by hyperbovine | Hacker News Reader

Shoulda tried Oakland. We've got better weather, cheaper rent, actual diversity, awesome dining, more than one real park, and I've walked around my hood at all hours of the day & night and never once felt threatened. (Granted, there are some parts of Oak where this would not be a great idea.)

The city annoys the shit outta me, but it's a fun place to visit sometimes.

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Oakland is really lacking in a few ways though. Aside from the fact that you can't walk for more than a mile without seeing something really depressing, the thing that really creeps me out about Oakland (and I'm an East Bay resident) is the lack of shops. How can there be a city of half a million people with no malls and no department stores? Heck, there's hardly even any supermarkets.

Restaurantwise, there's a few good ones, but not really enough to satisfy your every whim. Barwise, once you've removed all the really unsafe ones you've got just a handful left, scattered among Oakland's three or four safe neighbourhoods and separated by miles of "don't go here at night".

The weather is better (slightly) and the rent is cheaper (much) though.

Shopping in Oakland is generally more "village-centric" than the big-box Westfield mega-mall approach. I prefer the variety and experience you can get with the smaller stores, though it definitely lacks the convenience of one-stop shopping a large mall can provide.

I strongly disagree with your assessment of restaurants in Oakland. Oakland has a lot of amazing eateries, including many of what are regarded as the "top 50" of the bay area.

Piedmont Ave, Lakeshore, Uptown, Jack London, Oldtown, Rockridge, Temescal and Lake Merritt are all fantastic neighborhoods for eating (and shopping too). They're all close to each other (walking distance), relatively safe and just generally cool places to hang out.

I've been an East Bay resident for a long time and, before getting to know the city better, most of my experience was based on the bad press I had heard.

If you spend some time exploring some of the cities gems I think you'll be very surprised. I was.

I second that. I have been going to free festivals every weekend in Oakland.

Combined with San Francisco, Berkeley, there are far more things to do than I can make it to.

Ultimately, of course, being content is not about finding more fun things. It's about finding more things fun.

I've always found that the city looked its best when viewed from across the Bay in Oakland rather than up close in the city itself.

I agree, although Treasure Island and Alcatraz are both hard to top provided you can see anything. Very distinct views too.

Berkeley and Oakland here - it was amazing. Got robbed once, saw one murder on my property, but it was five years and not much else happened. Okay, that's an understatement, but there was so much else happening that I actually think it was a net positive. For context, I live in Toronto now, and I think it's also awesome... but the east bay was better!

I live in Oakland too. What I've found is that there are microneighborhoods (a few square blocks) that are very unsafe (such as the area frequently called 'ghosttown'), but you quickly learn to differentiate a lack of wealth from a lack of safety.

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