OAKLAND

3 year anni of GhostShip fire yesterday... sorry Quincie we're still haunted. :-(

Quite understandably. A sad memorial.

Ask away!

I live in Berkeley fwiw.

OK first East Bay question (with context)

Horse options are looking pretty good in Castro Valley and Pleasanton (and possibly even close to Berkklee and Oakland).

Question(s):

1) What's the southernmost Oakland neighborhood that doesn't feel like a suburb? Walkable to groceries, restaurants, transit, other city stuff?

2) Realistically, how long would it take by car to get from downtown Oakland to Castro Valley and Pleasanton (weekend traffic vs rush hour)?

1) maybe Fruitvale?
2) to CV, probably 25 minutes max with no traffic. Not sure about Pleasanton, I never have to go out there.

I'll note that Fruitvale is kind of a funky area and not always the safest place though it's better than it used to be. You may want to just look at the Lake Merritt area.

Gotcha. That horse commute sounds great; I currently do 45 minutes, which can be more like an hour with traffic.

Are Piedmont and Rockridge painfully bougie or?

Full disclosure: I'm pretty painfully bougie myself

depends on what painful is to you. I mean if you have a kid and a job presumably. For some people that's painfully bougie because you aren't living in a shed and stealing your electricity.

Piedmont is hideously expensive and kind of painfully bougie though. My wife tutors some kids who live there.

and by 'hidesouly expensive' i mean all the houses cost well over 2 million dollars. Rents seem to be maybe slightly less than SF though. There probably aren't a lot of renters in Piedmont.

Ok I am bougie but not 2M bougie. No kids so schools and stuff are not a particular concern. Walkability and interesting housing stock are the priorities.

Rockridge and the Piedmont Ave area (not Piedmont proper -- only reason to live in Piedmont is if you have kids because it's a different school district) might feel suburban to you. Kinda ... Georgetown-y (trying to remember what Georgetown was like) or ... what's that one Maryland suburb, Bethesda?

Basically, Oakland has a lot more similarities to Baltimore as opposed to DC. Fruitvale isn't all that walkable ... pretty much everyone I know who lives near there drives or bikes. East Lake (some of which is near transit, some isn't) is probably the most "urban" and close to transit where you can have a traditional house. There are a lot of condos coming on the market near where I live that are actually in the more urban part of Oakland, just north of downtown, which is like, very convenient to 3 different freeways.

jack london area (which is not far from the late) also has good housing stock and is somewhat interesting.

also sorry quincie for some reason I assumed the horse was for your daughter. because people with daughters have horses. Actually the people I know who own a hideously expensive house in Piedmont have two daughters and horses!

https://i.gifer.com/40uF.gif

Jack london area housing is mostly condos. But yes, if you want to live near a real body of water that isn’t the ersatz lake, there are options... like said hood

This is all very helpful, thanking u

What’s the word on Alameda?

alameda is completely delightful. I love going over there. don't do it enough.

easy transportation to SF with a ferry, really lovely beach, nice shopping strip downtown with interesting shops, some decent restaurants and bars, some incredibly nice houses for less than you'd pay in other places.

Wow, what’s the catch?

Piedmont is max bougie, followed by Rockridge, then Eastern Alameda. West Side Alameda is more townie than bougie.

How does Berkeley rank in there

parts of berkeley are as bougie as rockridge (basically everything north and east), other parts are decidedly not (everything south and west, which is where I live)

the catch with alameda is that it's an island and pretty big and has big expanses of nothing or almost nothing on it where a military thing was, and also massive stretches of homeless RVs lining the roads leading to those areas. And I think there are only two roads in and out of it into Oakland and it deposits you right into Fruitvale which was forever a bad part of Oakland (less so these days).

I've lived in Berkeley since 1991 and have a love/hate relationship with it, more hate lately than love. city council is completely useless, mayor is terrible, but biggest issue for me is that there are no interesting areas to go to anymore due to the exorbiant rents and how difficult it is to run a business in the city. As a result all the thriving areas are in Oakland (rockridge, temescal, downtown oakland, grand, etc). I live adjacent to the San Pablo Ave corridor and it's just empty thing after empty thing, with new condos going up with retail spaces in the bottom that are almost certain to be empty forever.

Afetr more than 1000 posts, I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the now century-old Gertrude Stein quote about Oakland: "There is no there there." Not that it was ever accurate, but you have to admit it was awfully clever of her.

Xp there’s a big condo complex on the corner of Powell and Hollis and the out of the 8 or so retail spaces only two are occupied (Ike’s sandwiches and an optician). The rest have been empty the entire 5-6 yrs the complex has been there.

East Oakland rules, highly recommended

Thought this was the Creedence thread for a second lol... but that's the corner of Peralta & Hollis on the cover of W&tPB.

You can see how someone like me could get mixed up between Powell-Peralta?

There’s also a big condo complex there now as well

I drive by that Powell and Hollis complex twice a week on my way to my studio. Every time I do I think "I should go to Ike's one day" and then I never do.

Sandwiches are good but absurdly overpriced. Mr. Pickles in El Cerrito is a much better value

The sandwich scene has been rough since Genova and Sacred Wheel shut down

Genova was a big loss. I still drive to Walnut Creek and Concord to go to the now-victorious rival Genova stores

And I think there are only two roads in and out of it into Oakland and it deposits you right into Fruitvale which was forever a bad part of Oakland (less so these days).

There are at least three, actually, plus the tunnel that goes through Chinatown. One goes through Jingletown, another through Fruitvale, and then there's the one that's nearish the airport. Basically, the Alameda negatives are: 1. traffic and 2. climate change -- I guess if you don't really want to put down permanent roots then that doesn't matter, but like, looking at maps of projected rising ocean levels and Alameda is gone.

other parts are decidedly not (everything south and west, which is where I live)

― akm, Wednesday, December 4, 2019 11:41 AM (four hours ago)

lol -- pretty much 95% of Berkeley is bougier than all of Oakland except for like Piedmont Ave area, Rockridge, and Montclair/hills -- the "rough" parts of Berkeley are like the not-so-bad areas of Oakland.

Afetr more than 1000 posts, I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the now century-old Gertrude Stein quote about Oakland: "There is no there there." Not that it was ever accurate, but you have to admit it was awfully clever of her.

LOLZ -- this is like the "electric boogaloo" of posts about Oakland. And actually, her quote was accurate, in that it was referring to her childhood home which had been demolished. There are actually public art signs that refer to said quote on the Oakland/Berkeley border that say "Here" and "There" ... it's a few blocks down from the gas station on MLK where Black Muslim bakery heir Mr. Bey IV got gunned down about 20 yrs ago.

OK I'm gonna have some dumb questions, like: whereabouts is East Oakland? Or are there a group of neighborhoods that constitute East Oakland?

many xposts re the San Pablo corridor: my understanding is that the city mandates new development to include ground level retail. The retail spaces are for sale as opposed to lease so the overhead is incredibly high. In any event, there's maybe 1 in 10 such spaces that get developed. I've been living on that corridor for the better part of a decade now, and when we moved there (near the Oakland Public Library Golden branch), I was told the neighborhood was about 10 years away from being this kind of walkable, shoppable area with restaurants etc (for good or ill). Anyway that still seems a ways off - Noodle Theory closed up shop since they couldn't get foot traffic, and the most recent addition to the neighborhood is a tattoo parlor that was shuttered by the health department within a week of opening.

Speaking of the library, they're planning on dropping a 5 story building on the corner where the scaffold place is. I went to a community meeting where the developers were talking themselves up and how it was going to be a great benefit to the community with new ground level retail. We asked what they had in mind and they said "a real estate office or something like that". cue a collective eye roll....

historically, anything east of lake merritt is considered east oakland, but I'd say fruitvale & eastward, personally.

The East Oakland border used to be Park/5th imo but I'd say it's 14th these days. The tech dudes don't often stray past Champa Garden.

many xposts re the San Pablo corridor: my understanding is that the city mandates new development to include ground level retail.

which city? There are 3 cities involved, all with different zoning and planning requirements.

whereabouts is East Oakland? Or are there a group of neighborhoods that constitute East Oakland?

that is a very very politically charged question that as a white person who didn't move to Oakland until I was 23, I am so not qualified to answer.

many xposts re the San Pablo corridor: my understanding is that the city mandates new development to include ground level retail.

which city? There are 3 cities involved, all with different zoning and planning requirements.

Where and when does Oakland FAPing happen? I've got nothin' but time Dec. 25-Jan 1.

Some of it probably goes back to when there was a CEDA (redevelopment agency) and they were very focused on building and attracting retail to Oakland. Like they gave out money for this. This was about 5-10 years ago. There also was some kind of bloated planning document for the area that they refer to when it suits them and ignore when it suits them.

A few of those older vacant storefronts have been converted to living spaces btw.

The vacant storefronts I don't mind- in fact I see more potential with them since those property owners tend to be the ones open to small scale or community focused stuff happening. It's the endless expanses of low-e glass where you can't tell if a place is open or closed or even there.

Sparkle motion, we’re almost neighbors

the condo/luxury apartment buildings with ground floor retail -- so many of those built in the past 15 years -- so much vacancy, mostly because the rents are stupid expensive.