Oakland, CA

"The Baltimore of the West Coast" sounds about right. Like Baltimore, there are some gang-banger type areas that totally suck. There are also some great neighborhoods that you would never know shared the same city lines. Piedmont and Rockridge are awesome areas, Rockridge being more coffee shop/yuppy and Piedmont being pine trees and almost a Tahoe sort of feel. The whole city has more of a real, blue collar type feel than SF, and I love SF but I grew up in the sticks and I kind of feel more at home in Oakland. The nice parts, not the ghetto. I will add that Oakland is ranked as having the #1 climate in the country, with mostly sunny and mild weather.

The Bad Rap is undeserved. There are truly beautiful areas and some rough ones too, but it's a decent middle-class that might get more praise if it weren't so close to SF.

Some of Oakland is super ghetto and other parts not so much. I was shocked to see while I was there the amounts that people were paying to live there. I felt uneasy in some areas, but was fine. I was only there to visit and stay with friendly, but did notice because of Berkeley there are a lot of young people which are building the area up!

I was elsewhere for most of my business trip, but did spent one night in Oakland! Yes there is a rough side but I can see that the city is trying to re-vamp! I was not too impressed but I will say that the newest side to Oakland looks nice and very different to the down trodden part I was in. Sorry Raiders fans but your stadium S*** with a capital S. It's hard for me to look at this team with anything but pity!!! Your pride is nowhere to be found and to be honest it's not the Raiders stadium but the Oakland A's!!! (You guys rent it for the winter!!!) I see why Oakland get's allot of bad words but to be honest they can only blame themselves! If they put half as much effort into the down town suburbs as they did in and around the stadium area, then the rap would not be so bad!!! The Jack London area is very nice but it's right in the middle of hell and it‘s very expensive!!!!!!!! Hopefully the next time I return for work, things will have improved!!!

A TOTAL trash heap of a city!! Avoid downtown unless you want to get shot, i'll never go here again.

Now ignore what these people are saying about Oakland being violent and bad to live in. You will see that if you go there again, there are many improvements there and the crime rate had decreased significantly. Many places that were once ugly had changed to nice archetecture. I believe that the future is great for this city.

The Baltimore of the west coast

Nice homes in the hills with views of the SF bay, otherwise, avoid Oakland at all costs, unless you enjoy getting shot and/or robbed. I've stayed downtown a couple of times- scary.

4 years ago I would have given Oakland 1 star. I just got back from the bay area and found Oakland looking much better from 4 years ago. Excellent downtown revitalization taking place in downtown Oakland. To my surprise Oakland is looking quite nice.