Notes on living in a dangerous city...
As you all know (or maybe you don't), I live in Oakland, CA. A friend of mine is shopping for a new home, and asked me to send him reasons why he would love it and reasons why he would not love it. He was specific with numbers, but I had more to say than that.
If you live in Oakland, you will miss the rain. The big fat pregnant humid explosive downpour raindrops, you will miss them. Oakland has emaciated rain. Rain like concentration camp starvation. There is no happy and full rain in Oakland.
Oakland is a generous stew. Everyone from poverty-starved artists to tiny Mexican children, from revolutionary black mamas to muslim coffee shop owners, hippies and Berkeley drop-outs, heavily tattooed farmer’s market vendors and polyamorous lesbians, stay-at-home moms and East Bay Rat bikers, front-porch barbers and genuine OG gangstas. We all live together here on the same concrete, walk under the same freeways, take the same BART trains. We drink together in the same bars, do our laundry in the same Laundromats. We say hello to each other on the street. We are an odd family. We are not a melting pot. We are a buffet.
Independent businesses thrive here. While we do have Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, Berkeley (just down the street) also boasts the Berkeley Bowl (now in two locations!) and lots of smaller corner stores have a much wider variety and selection than just junk food and beer.
The Bay Area (in general) has some of the most incredible food in the world. Bobby Flay came here and got stomped to death by a burrito joint in the Mission District of San Francisco. We will eat anything, and eat it in abundance. We love fresh and local foods. We live for things grown in our own backyards. We are a foodie culture in the purest sense, though sometimes we are obnoxious about it. Self-congratulatory. Oakland has never heard of fried cheese curd, it’s true. But you will never have better produce. Not ever.
Oakland has decent public transportation. Your bus might be a few minutes late, but it will take you anywhere you want to go. BART is reasonably priced and as reliable as can be expected. You do not need to have a car if you live in Oakland unless you live very far into East Oakland, which I would not recommend anyway.
Oakland’s weather is always mild. Even in the one week a year of blistering heat, nobody has air conditioning and nobody is afraid of living without it. Even in the two weeks a year of nasty cold (which is not so nasty considering other places, but we are never prepared for it), you can still leave your house wearing only one pair of pants.
Almost every Bay Area artist, poet, writer, painter, regardless of what city they claim or represent, almost every single one actually lives in Oakland.
Oakland is brutal. Not in the same way New York City is brutal. It will not chew you up and spit you back to whence you came. No, Oakland will hold you tight in its squeezing palm while you succumb to the gray concrete around you. Our murder rate is 3.5 times the national average. Many, many people die in Oakland.
Oakland is beautiful. An incredible beauty lies just beneath the shitty concrete surface of this place. If you scratch just right with your thumb nail, you can find the beauty. The lovely bones, the sweet and sticky marrow.
Sometimes at night, you can hear gunshots. If you are lucky enough to only hear them and never see them, you won’t mind them as much. There is a bullet hole in my front window. I pretend it is not a bullet hole.
It never snows in Oakland.
If you live in Oakland, you will miss the rain. The big fat pregnant humid explosive downpour raindrops, you will miss them. Oakland has emaciated rain. Rain like concentration camp starvation. There is no happy and full rain in Oakland.
Oakland is a generous stew. Everyone from poverty-starved artists to tiny Mexican children, from revolutionary black mamas to muslim coffee shop owners, hippies and Berkeley drop-outs, heavily tattooed farmer’s market vendors and polyamorous lesbians, stay-at-home moms and East Bay Rat bikers, front-porch barbers and genuine OG gangstas. We all live together here on the same concrete, walk under the same freeways, take the same BART trains. We drink together in the same bars, do our laundry in the same Laundromats. We say hello to each other on the street. We are an odd family. We are not a melting pot. We are a buffet.
Independent businesses thrive here. While we do have Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, Berkeley (just down the street) also boasts the Berkeley Bowl (now in two locations!) and lots of smaller corner stores have a much wider variety and selection than just junk food and beer.
The Bay Area (in general) has some of the most incredible food in the world. Bobby Flay came here and got stomped to death by a burrito joint in the Mission District of San Francisco. We will eat anything, and eat it in abundance. We love fresh and local foods. We live for things grown in our own backyards. We are a foodie culture in the purest sense, though sometimes we are obnoxious about it. Self-congratulatory. Oakland has never heard of fried cheese curd, it’s true. But you will never have better produce. Not ever.
Oakland has decent public transportation. Your bus might be a few minutes late, but it will take you anywhere you want to go. BART is reasonably priced and as reliable as can be expected. You do not need to have a car if you live in Oakland unless you live very far into East Oakland, which I would not recommend anyway.
Oakland’s weather is always mild. Even in the one week a year of blistering heat, nobody has air conditioning and nobody is afraid of living without it. Even in the two weeks a year of nasty cold (which is not so nasty considering other places, but we are never prepared for it), you can still leave your house wearing only one pair of pants.
Almost every Bay Area artist, poet, writer, painter, regardless of what city they claim or represent, almost every single one actually lives in Oakland.
Oakland is brutal. Not in the same way New York City is brutal. It will not chew you up and spit you back to whence you came. No, Oakland will hold you tight in its squeezing palm while you succumb to the gray concrete around you. Our murder rate is 3.5 times the national average. Many, many people die in Oakland.
Oakland is beautiful. An incredible beauty lies just beneath the shitty concrete surface of this place. If you scratch just right with your thumb nail, you can find the beauty. The lovely bones, the sweet and sticky marrow.
Sometimes at night, you can hear gunshots. If you are lucky enough to only hear them and never see them, you won’t mind them as much. There is a bullet hole in my front window. I pretend it is not a bullet hole.
It never snows in Oakland.