moving to san francisco
Out of context: Reply #14
- Started
- Last post
- 25 Responses
- sarahfailin1
Re: the notes above,
Lake Merritt is probably the prettiest part of Oakland, with lots of good restaurants, pretty houses and Lake Merritt, which has a great biking/jogging trail that's about 3.5 miles around it. If you're near the Lake Merritt BART then you've got the best of both worlds, although I think some of the coolest stuff is on the North side of the Lake, where the BART stop is on the south side.
Piedmont has a similar vibe, with a nice bakery, sushi restaurants and other, nicer places, but not too upscale or snooty. Very "neighborhood-y." Farther from BART, however, so a longer commute to the city.
Jack London Square is an easy place to live, because it's close to downtown Oakland, not a ton of traffic, near the highway and has some new restaurants and venues in it. Yoshi's is a landmark jazz establishment located here with good, expensive sushi. It hasn't been the expensive place to live, historically, but a lot of gentrification has happened and now it's getting pricier. The places that are going in are more generic, upscale kind of craft beer and oysters type of places. A little devoid of authentic culture, in my opinion, but a little cheaper than downtown.
Downtown/Uptown Oakland is really fun. Lots of bars and music venues on Telegraph ave, and there's a whole bunch of new housing (gentrification) that has gone in recently. There are two BART stops, one at 12th and one at 19th. Housing here is as expensive as it gets in Oakland, which is to say, about the *average* price of housing in neighborhoods in SF.
If you're a pioneer and want to lead the newest horizon in gentrification, there's West Oakland. It's the most desirable of the least desirable places in Oakland to live, with low rent, high crime, no grocery stores, (almost) no restaurants and no bars. It's also the closest BART stop to San Francisco, with only a 7 minute trip under the bay to arrive at Embarcadero, downtown SF.