Californians I Need Your Help (SF,or Oakland, or LA?)

[Carlite]

LA could be OK, it's just different from Oakland or the Bay Area. One is not necessarily better than the other. It sounds like you might be ready to do a scouting trip, spend a few days in each. I'd agree with Postmodern that LA has a lot of creative energy--there are lots of people doing creative jobs one might not think of--set designer, TV music composer. LA feels a little more "big city" to me. Despite their differences, LA and the Bay Area are more alike than either wants to admit--the really different place is inland California, the Central Valley.

The CTA has numerous el stations all over Chicago. BART has only 44 stations in its whole system, 8 of them in Oakland. So a lot of people drive, take a bus, bike to get to BART. The main point of BART is to get commuters into Downtown San Francisco. It's possible that you'd work somewhere in the city (that's what we call San Francisco) that's away from BART, particularly for a tech company. Given those limitations, if you want to travel without a car, you'll need to use the bus system (AC Transit in Oakland, Muni in San Francisco) as well. You'd want to look at what the bus service is like in a neighborhood you move into.

Rockridge is nice. It has a BART station. It has a very strong, if a bit pricy/trendy, commercial street on College Ave., one of the best shopping streets in Oakland. It's adjacent to Berkeley, so it's easy to get into Berkeley for things. Housing is in good shape, but tends to be more expensive than in other parts of Oakland. There aren't actually all that many apartment buildings in Rockridge, but there are cottages, divided houses etc. Nothing in Oakland is lily White, but Rockridge is definitely one of the Whiter parts of the city. Look at Rockridge, look at Temescal. It's the next neighborhood south, centered around Telegraph Ave. between 45th and 52nd St. Not as good a shopping street, but more mixed, a little cheaper, lots of good restaurants and cafes. Macarthur BART is at 40th St. west of Telegraph, a reasonable walk from most of Temescal. College and Telegraph each have frequent bus lines.

[ketch89]

Oakland (uptown and the hills) really is the promised land for educated blacks. People live alongside each other without any care at all as to what color their neighbor is, and racially it's almost even among whites, blacks, asians and hispanics.

[Pacifico]

Of your options I'd stick to Oaktown or LA. You may want to consider Long Beach in La County. Some would argue it's the SoCal version of Oakland.

[postmodern]

Cool its looking like Oakland is the move then. I'm gonna scout it out January or Feb, thanks everyone