I don't understand why the author would move to Portland when we've got our own affordable, culturally rich, tech-friendly cities in the East Bay. Come to Oakland. It's beautiful here.
The weather is better than San Francisco, you can ride your bicycle anywhere, public transit is good, and it's easy to get to SF as well as Silicon Valley (which I do regularly).
There's no need to leave the entire Bay Area just because San Francisco is an overpriced and overcrowded city. I recently came back to the Bay Area after a decade+ in NYC, and my wife and I decided we'd be returning for the East Bay, not SF. For us, it's the best of all possible worlds.
I don't mean this to play into stereotypes etc, but just as a matter of experience, every single person I know who's lived in Oakland for any significant amount of time (say 1 year or more), over the past 5 years, has been robbed at gunpoint at least once, usually while walking within a few blocks of their home. It's not a huge sample, I probably know half a dozen people/couples who live/have lived there. But the fact that all of them (or in the case of couples, at least 1 of the 2) have had it happen makes me say "no way" to the East Bay.
One of my close friends has been living and working in tech from home for about 10 years in various parts of Oakland. I visited him there (from MA) many times and aside from some intimidation from his neighbors (including an 18-year-old who got in my face, lunged his body toward me and provoked me saying "Fuck you," and numerous additional smaller incidents), I found it lovely and enviable.
Things were going well until the last year in which his van was robbed outside his house and a few months later, his band was robbed out on the street while filming a video. It's the kind of situation that makes you want to say, "This is why we can't have nice things."
IOW, if you plan to fit in and live low-key, Oakland may be just fine for a long time. However, if you acquire various types of assets or participate in lifestyles above a certain threshold, you are more likely to experience "equalizing events."
I will agree with what you're saying to an extent, but I think the threshold of lifestyle you're talking is quite low by your average SF tech worker's definition. All of the people I know who encountered crime in Oakland were certainly not flashy or even driving remotely fancy cars. They were all a) white b) mildy yuppie c) to varying degrees "not intimidating" looking
Oakland is currently the 3rd most dangerous city in the United States[1].
What's worse is I worry Oakland will experience the same type of growth the Mission did, where half will become overpriced and homogenized while the other half will continue to be neglected.
where did they live? probably some sketchy part of west oakland where out-of-towners like to move because it's so grungy. you won't get robbed in piedmont, rockridge, montclair, temescal, grand lake usually, or JLS ever. but please keep upvoting this to the top! our rents are already going up because of SF spillover, feel free to avoid it and those of us in the know will keep enjoying our lives in the east bay with no complaints.
People get robbed in all of those places, especially walking home from BART. All the time. Also, have you not seen home prices in Rockridge and Piedmont? No deals to be had.
Live in "NOBE" now (or Longfellow, or Gaskill, or Golden Gate, whatever it's really called), but I regularly see car windows smashed in when I head over to Temescal's 50th/Telegraph area for dinners out. Loving my own apartment, but wishing more and more I had searched harder for a place near the walkable parts of Grand Ave or Piedmont Ave.
Rockridge and Piedmont have crime, too. I live in Rockridge and follow the crime watch mailing lists. People get mugged in broad daylight at the BART station and just a couple years ago was a rash of restaurant "take-over" robberies. Crime follows the money.
East Bay is huge and the BART is fast. You could live in Walnut Creek, Fremont, etc and have a less than 25 min train ride to Oakland. You really can't write off the whole east bay because some of Oakland has a high crime rate.
Sorry I should have been specific about meaning places to live and commute to SF. You could do that from the Nut or Freemont I suppose, but that's a far commute, and a whole separate discussion about why I wouldn't suggest that to anyone from out of the area
Unless you are talking about west or east Oakland, in which case its full of blight, gangs and crime.
Don't get me wrong, Oakland is gentrifying despite itself but I would never want to live in Oakland till they fix their failed city government and their high crime rate.
2nd this and push it up. I live in the area of Oakland, known as lake merritt. It's bordered by Piedmont, still has that "true diversity" as in ALL the colors of the rainbow feel, 20 min commute into San Francisco, AND I have a Damn patio! I love this little neighborhood for all of its nuances.
Yeah I just bought a house in El Cerrito last week and while we paid above asking, it was 1/3 the price of what my friends on the peninsula are paying for a great place. The fact that people seem completely unwilling to commute 30 minutes for a life changing job is pretty bizarre to me.
No matter how life-changing a job is, the fact of the matter is that long commutes are almost always soul-sucking time-sinks that have a significant negative impact on the psychological well-being of those who do them.
Besides, the longer the commute, the less free time you have, which takes away from your personal projects and massively decreases your chances of innovating or inventing something new.
I can and do work on the train. Car commuting is soul sucking. Public transportation commuting isn't great compared to working from home or something but it's not as awful as all that.
As someone who commuted from Santa Cruz to Mountain View and San Francisco to Palo Alto, I certainly understand this. However, walking to Bart, being one of the first on, sitting down and reading/working is vastly different than driving. Depends just as much on HOW you commute.
Love El Cerrito, and even Richmond. Contra Costa County is way overlooked by the tech community. But sorta hope it stays that way for a while, in case I want to buy a house in a few years...
He's referring to high crime rates. Parts of Oakland does have extremely high crime rates, much higher than even SF's notably elevated violent crime rates.
Many Oaklanders would point out that not all of the city suffers from extreme violent crime, but it would also seem that the areas convenient to a SF commute generally tend to be worse, and the good areas aren't that cheap.
It's not just the violent crime rate, either -- it's that the police, as a matter of policy, don't give a crap about anything that doesn't involve blood in the street. If you call the police after your home or car are burglarized, they will basically tell you to stop wasting their time.
If you're not a thug, all evidence (or at least many anecdotes) suggests that Oakland doesn't want you.
I would assume it's the violent crime rate that causes the police to shrug off lesser crimes. I doubt the police do it because they only want gang members in the city — which seems like an extremely silly thing to think.
They mean to get stabbed by a knife, a common misconception about the east bay. Yes there's violence, but theres also beauty, you just need to know where to go and where not to go (san francisco is the same).
#3 crime rate in the US isn't a misconception. Anecdotally, of 6 people I know who have moved to (relatively nice) areas of Oakland, 6 have had their cars broken into or robbed at gunpoint. 4 are currently looking to move elsewhere.
My wife's close friend was only able to purchase a house when she had (1) enough to offer a cash purchase, and (2) the emotional ability to put in an offer sight-unseen.
The weather is better than San Francisco, you can ride your bicycle anywhere, public transit is good, and it's easy to get to SF as well as Silicon Valley (which I do regularly).
There's no need to leave the entire Bay Area just because San Francisco is an overpriced and overcrowded city. I recently came back to the Bay Area after a decade+ in NYC, and my wife and I decided we'd be returning for the East Bay, not SF. For us, it's the best of all possible worlds.