The basic problem with making generalizations about Oakland is that it is geographically huge. The "good areas" and "bad areas" are each bigger than all of San Francisco.

There are some really bad areas of Oakland and of SF, and they're fairly near the popular-for-startups areas (the Mission, Downtown Oakland and areas adjacent). Pac Heights and Oakland Hills/Piedmont are both quite safe, but are not really startup areas.

The biggest problem with Downtown Oakland is that it empties out at 5pm. The areas with more activity are either lacking in office space, or are more dangerous (particularly if you don't drive). And the other problem is that Oakland is quite spread out, so things are in different neighborhoods.

The average (mean, per capita) crime in Oakland is higher than in SF, but in both cities, there are a few pockets of extreme violent crime, and fairly widespread property and nuisance crime over a large area. Neither SF nor Oakland is a particularly well governed city.

Please HN'ers, ignore these people. These comments have confirmed a pattern I've been seeing on various websites' comment-section.

<BIGconspiracyhat> Any attempts to show Oakland, Africa or African-americans in any kind of positive light or as victims will always, _ALWAYS_, get troll'ish/meta/hyper-pedantic comments that derail the main topic and/or meaningful discourse of the subject at hand, completely blowing up the comment threads. It works well on places like HN because almost everyone here likes to debate & discuss. But their arguments will become so spacious that you'll need 5 screen-lengths to debate with them and thus ruining the comments for anyone else who actually wanted to talk about the article. </BIGconspiracyhat>

Please let's ignore these guys. We know they're wrong, no point debating with them. We'll never convince them and the comments will get bloated with arguments back-in-forth about crime stats, someone will eventually use the "R" word and then BOOM, all meaningful discussion nullified by 5+ pages of of debate about some non-significant detail. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6365495

NOTE: An idea for the comment section, a way for users to flag a thread as "superfluous". If it gets enough of these, the whole thread is moved off to a small link on the side labeled "Superfluous thread started by $USER" where clicking on it give you a little scrollable window to view it and easily dismiss it when you're satisfied the thread had no real value. Perhaps each user's profile even shows how many superfluous threads were credited to him/her.

This is about Oakland, why bring race into it?

If the original poster had moved his startup to Stockton, we would be having the same conversation.

Race is always a factor for anyone who knows anything about the history of Oakland. For example, the Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland. There has been class war and racism at the heart of Oakland for many, many years.

This post is another example of a long history of gentrification, which also has a racial component. Race is absolutely on-topic here.

That doesn't mean I expect said discussion to be productive.

The BPP starting at Laney is one of the cool things about Oakland. There's history around the corner when you're roaming the city. That and the Oakland Museum and Chinatown. And Flints BBQ, and E&J, and Doug's. And the markets in Fruitvale. And the anarchist and communist stuff in Berkeley. I'm getting all misty-eyed.

That has to be BS. I used to walk around Oakland at night in the 90s during the crack days. Whatever. It was unsafe, but there's unsafe... and unsafe. Put on the city face. Besides, if you're not Black, the cops won't mess with you. People think anyone walking at night is crazy. And don't go to the really dangerous spots where gangs run the street, unless they know you. You can see it by the drug dealing. That's just common sense.

OK yeah I got mugged once. But nonviolently, LOL. Only cost me $20. This was near Downtown.