Do you know anything about the crime in Oakland beyond the superficial 'oh man there is a lot of crime in Oakland!'?
Most of the crime is isolated to a few specific areas. You realize there's a lot of crime in SF, too, right? And that crime is concentrated in the areas where a lot of startups have their offices (e.g. the Fidi). Do you factor that in to your search when you look for a job in the City?
Most of San Francisco is safe, with just one or two neighborhoods being dodgy. Most of Oakland is unsafe, with just one or two neighborhoods being safe.
Oakland is one of the most dangerous cities in the USA. Just because you live there and haven't been gunned down yet, doesn't mean it's not happening to many other people.
It's literally your life, so do your own research and don't listen to me or anybody else.
The basic problem with making generalizations about Oakland is that it is geographically huge. The "good areas" and "bad areas" are each bigger than all of San Francisco.
There are some really bad areas of Oakland and of SF, and they're fairly near the popular-for-startups areas (the Mission, Downtown Oakland and areas adjacent). Pac Heights and Oakland Hills/Piedmont are both quite safe, but are not really startup areas.
The biggest problem with Downtown Oakland is that it empties out at 5pm. The areas with more activity are either lacking in office space, or are more dangerous (particularly if you don't drive). And the other problem is that Oakland is quite spread out, so things are in different neighborhoods.
The average (mean, per capita) crime in Oakland is higher than in SF, but in both cities, there are a few pockets of extreme violent crime, and fairly widespread property and nuisance crime over a large area. Neither SF nor Oakland is a particularly well governed city.
Please HN'ers, ignore these people. These comments have confirmed a pattern I've been seeing on various websites' comment-section.
<BIGconspiracyhat>
Any attempts to show Oakland, Africa or African-americans in any kind of positive light or as victims will always, _ALWAYS_, get troll'ish/meta/hyper-pedantic comments that derail the main topic and/or meaningful discourse of the subject at hand, completely blowing up the comment threads. It works well on places like HN because almost everyone here likes to debate & discuss. But their arguments will become so spacious that you'll need 5 screen-lengths to debate with them and thus ruining the comments for anyone else who actually wanted to talk about the article.
</BIGconspiracyhat>
Please let's ignore these guys. We know they're wrong, no point debating with them. We'll never convince them and the comments will get bloated with arguments back-in-forth about crime stats, someone will eventually use the "R" word and then BOOM, all meaningful discussion nullified by 5+ pages of of debate about some non-significant detail. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6365495
NOTE: An idea for the comment section, a way for users to flag a thread as "superfluous". If it gets enough of these, the whole thread is moved off to a small link on the side labeled "Superfluous thread started by $USER" where clicking on it give you a little scrollable window to view it and easily dismiss it when you're satisfied the thread had no real value. Perhaps each user's profile even shows how many superfluous threads were credited to him/her.
Race is always a factor for anyone who knows anything about the history of Oakland. For example, the Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland. There has been class war and racism at the heart of Oakland for many, many years.
This post is another example of a long history of gentrification, which also has a racial component. Race is absolutely on-topic here.
That doesn't mean I expect said discussion to be productive.
The BPP starting at Laney is one of the cool things about Oakland. There's history around the corner when you're roaming the city. That and the Oakland Museum and Chinatown. And Flints BBQ, and E&J, and Doug's. And the markets in Fruitvale. And the anarchist and communist stuff in Berkeley. I'm getting all misty-eyed.
That has to be BS. I used to walk around Oakland at night in the 90s during the crack days. Whatever. It was unsafe, but there's unsafe... and unsafe. Put on the city face. Besides, if you're not Black, the cops won't mess with you. People think anyone walking at night is crazy. And don't go to the really dangerous spots where gangs run the street, unless they know you. You can see it by the drug dealing. That's just common sense.
OK yeah I got mugged once. But nonviolently, LOL. Only cost me $20. This was near Downtown.
Yes, there are slightly more violent crimes in Oakland than San Francisco (and there's more property crime in San Frnacisco)[1], but on the whole they are pretty equivalent in terms of safety; especially if you stick to the 'nicer' areas of both.
Risk of dying? Have you even been to Oakland? The area around Jack London Square is just as safe, if not safer than many of the parts of SOMA where startups setup shop.
You're getting downvotes because of how you phrased your comment - but the base point is still there.
I've driven to Oakland once, and it was to pick up a friend after he missed a connection on BART - Within that 30 minute window of me driving to pick him up he was nearly mugged by a group of 3, jumped in a black windowless van as an escape route - and somehow managed to have that driver be an ex-taxi driver who noticed he was in trouble.
There's obviously some more dangerous, and some safer areas of the city - but it's still known as having an extremely high crime rate.
Most of the crime is isolated to a few specific areas. You realize there's a lot of crime in SF, too, right? And that crime is concentrated in the areas where a lot of startups have their offices (e.g. the Fidi). Do you factor that in to your search when you look for a job in the City?