Help me avoid the bad areas of Oakland/Berkeley please!! (Walnut Creek: home, neighborhood)

[tahoesash]

Are you having any luck? I am curious about the $800 per month/proximity to Bart equation. It might be interesting to use the Bart map to target your desired neighborhood so you know what you are looking for on Craigslist. North Berkeley bart and Rockridge bart are in the safest neighborhoods for Bart stations in Berkeley (Rockridge is actually in Oakland, but it's yuppified) and those two stations have parking. You might try Lafayette, it's the suburbs, but it's safe, and just one stop down from Rockridge.

[stupidchinaman]

There are better places to live. It's dangerous out there.

[E14]

allendale and maxwell park are affordable and quiet and they are in east oakland

[BayAreaHillbilly]

There is nothing in Berkeley bad enough to qualify as a complete no go, in my book. In North Oakland (true north, not West Oakland falsely advertised at North Oakland) there are pockets, but mostly, it's good there as well.

[Forker]

Originally Posted by BerkeleyCali

...there are some lovely neighborhoods that I would definitely live in, and only a few blocks away everything changes

In my opinion when only a few blocks away everything changes, that makes the neighborhood on the whole, a bad neighborhood. If you live on a "nice" street and walk a block to the store and it's suddenly shady, you can't enjoy living in that neighborhood. The homeless and thugs on San Pablo Ave that make it a shady street always venture into Berkeley neighborhoods to dig through your trash, or sleep behind houses, thus making the entire area of Berkeley a bad place.

While visiting my friend in his apartment on Dwight in Berkeley one night, a passer-by thug kid lobbed a water bottle into the apartment below us, shattering the living room window.

That is the kind of stuff that happens there.

Oakland is even worse.

[Forker]

Originally Posted by City Boy

As for Oakland: Look into Downtown/Lake Merritt Area, Rockridge. Downtown is really being revitalized and lots of really nice condo's going up.

Avoid, most of North Oakland, West Oakland and East Oakland. South Berkeley is the only "Bad" part of Berkeley.

New condos in a ghetto neighborhood don't change anything. Look at Emeryville, on 65th street off of San Pablo Ave.. They built a whole bunch of new lofts there, but the area is still shady. Especially at night, I wouldn't walk those streets. The assassination style murder at the Black Muslim Bakery didn't make it any nicer either.

Jack London Square is another example of someone trying to spiffy up a turd, by building new condos. People still smoke dope on the streets there, and all kinds of mayhem happens at the restaurants and clubs. If you just want to live in a box and never go outside to enjoy your neighborhood, that's great. I can't live like that.

The first rule of real estate is location, location, location and the East Bay is a bad location.

[iluvcj]

Originally Posted by Forker

Jack London Square is another example of someone trying to spiffy up a turd, by building new condos. People still smoke dope on the streets there, and all kinds of mayhem happens at the restaurants and clubs. If you just want to live in a box and never go outside to enjoy your neighborhood, that's great. I can't live like that.

The first rule of real estate is location, location, location and the East Bay is a bad location.

...lol but true

[E14]

Originally Posted by Forker

New condos in a ghetto neighborhood don't change anything. Look at Emeryville, on 65th street off of San Pablo Ave.. They built a whole bunch of new lofts there, but the area is still shady. Especially at night, I wouldn't walk those streets. The assassination style murder at the Black Muslim Bakery didn't make it any nicer either.

Jack London Square is another example of someone trying to spiffy up a turd, by building new condos. People still smoke dope on the streets there, and all kinds of mayhem happens at the restaurants and clubs. If you just want to live in a box and never go outside to enjoy your neighborhood, that's great. I can't live like that.

The first rule of real estate is location, location, location and the East Bay is a bad location.

Jack london square is an upscale and expensive, quiet, gentrified neighborhood. If you would be scared to go outside in jack london square, i dont know what to say. People smoke "dope" in the streets? This is northern california, weed has probably been smoked many times on every single urban and suburban street in existance. You sound like youd be scared no matter where you live.

[BayDude]

Originally Posted by E14

Jack london square is an upscale and expensive, quiet, gentrified neighborhood. If you would be scared to go outside in jack london square, i dont know what to say. People smoke "dope" in the streets? This is northern california, weed has probably been smoked many times on every single urban and suburban street in existance. You sound like youd be scared no matter where you live.

No he was talking specifically about the jack london square area and other parts of oakland.

Its not every city where people smoke crack/dope on the streets in open view. I've never seen that in pleasanton or hayward for example. So he has a point.

I'm tired of people defending places that just suck and trying to make it seem like it does'nt.

People act like its a personal attack on their character lol.

The reality is oakland, or atleast most of it is a relatively crappy/grimy city any way you look at it. And hey I live there lol.

Some people would rather just stay in the dream I suppose.

[E14]

Originally Posted by BayDude

No he was talking specifically about the jack london square area and other parts of oakland.

Its not every city where people smoke crack/dope on the streets in open view. I've never seen that in pleasanton or hayward for example. So he has a point.

I'm tired of people defending places that just suck and trying to make it seem like it does'nt.

People act like its a personal attack on their character lol.

The reality is oakland, or atleast most of it is a relatively crappy/grimy city any way you look at it. And hey I live there lol.

Some people would rather just stay in the dream I suppose.

He was talking about jack london square (NOT any other part of oakland), which is very upscale (even by bay area standards). If jack london square is too gritty for you, you are not meant to live among other human beings.