Knonymous's Profile

I moved to Oakland 6 years ago and have no desire to live anywhere else in the Bay Area and especially NOT San Francisco the city that isn't a city to me. (I'm a New Yorker). For all the reasons Elizabeth said above, but especially for the last "Oakland has moxie", Oakland is a great place to live. There are tons of blogs, organizations and non-profits dedicated to improving Oakland and putting it back on the map. But then again, because of so many miscperceptions of Oakland as dangerous and unworthy of living in or visiting, Oakland remains a slightly discovered city full of great little neighbordhoods, shops, and so forth untainted by big city bullsh*t.

I personally love the Lake Merritt area because you've got a great big lake in the heart of the city, you're close to downtown no matter what part of the lake you're on, you can live here without a car (AC Transit buses everywhere and BART downtown), you've got Trader Joes, Wholefoods, Luckys and Safeway, Longs, Walgreens, two movie theaters, tons of little restaurants and shops, and can take boat rides of all sorts on the lake, as well as jog, walk and so forth!

Also, Oakland is at the begin of it's well deserved and well overdue renaissance with so many redevelopment sites complete, currently in development and planned to be development, revitalizing the city at an amazing rate. It's best to get in on the ground floor. It's also just amazing watching a city grow what it was, to what it is and what it will become. It's a unique time in Oakland history and moving here now is a smart decision despite the current problems. Some problems, by the way New York had and continues to have yet no one gets really deterred from moving to or visiting that city!