By Jessica Lipsky
I just got back to the Bay after three months in New York City for work. While back East, I met quite a few former Bay Areans who had made their way to “the world’s most diverse city.” I also met folks from places other than the West Coast who seemed to know a thing or two about Bay Area geography. At the very least, they’d heard about Oakland being the left coast analog to Brooklyn, so when I told them I live in the Town, no one gaped or asked me if it’s dangerous.
“Oh, that’s nice,” they said. “Do you live by the lake?”
Oakland has come a long way in the public consciousness — both among Bay Area residents and those living elsewhere — in the seven years that I’ve lived here. Demographics are changing, crime is down a bit, and the rent is skyrocketing. Renters are being priced out of San Francisco and finding apartments in the East Bay, displacing folks in Oakland and Berkeley; young families are buying homes while they can still get great deals; new businesses are simultaneously spurring the local economy and changing its face. All of these forces are working together to create a new phenomenon: Oakland has become a place people know about and respect, and less of a “scary” city.
I’ve lived in the Bay Area my whole life, raised in a suburb that always felt too sterile and easy for any sort of “real life.” I moved to Oakland in 2008 because I felt drawn to its edge and culture — and it was cheap. And it was also a whole lot warmer than the fog pit I lived in near SF State.
I was immediately proud to live somewhere where people were earnestly involved in so many different things and I felt inspired to seek my own community. Right in the shadow of San Francisco was a massive array of culture — from social justice and activism to slam poetry, circus arts, and hip-hop — that a lot of people on the outside didn’t seem to appreciate. Rather, they observed it from a safe distance, or feared it. I had a couple friends who wouldn’t come to my place in Oakland in the middle of the afternoon because they worried about getting mugged.
The rebellious teen in me reveled in my city’s outward defiance of popular opinion. In some sense, I thought of myself as a pioneer among my formerly suburban peers for moving to a place many considered untouchable. I felt tough, ahead of the game, and like I was truly growing as a person from the sheer energy of my locale.
A couple years into living here, I was running a small newspaper in central Contra Costa County where people were throwing a fit about building affordable housing. One person actually predicted a “tsunami of perversion” that would come with affordable housing and the people who utilize it (read: people of color). Those new residents would likely come from Oakland, she said.
“Why would you ever want to live in Oakland?” an older woman asked me with genuine confusion upon learning I lived in Oakland. Surely I could find a nice place in Walnut Creek. The people I worked with didn’t get it, I thought. They were stuck in suburban hell while I was living out life in the thriving, diverse metropolis. I was making it in my own twenty-first-century version of 1970s New York City and could be a tough-as-nails ambassador for all the good coming from west of the Caldecott Tunnel.
Oakland doesn’t need me — it’s always been full of amazing people, places, and ideas. And people are finally realizing all it has to offer. Outsiders no longer see it as inhospitable, but as a city on the verge with a nice (not filthy disgusting) lake at its heart. At the same time, many parts of Oakland — mostly in deep East Oakland — continue to be lost or disregarded as other neighborhoods get a public facelift.
Something stubborn and angsty in me doesn’t want these newly enlightened people to be privy to the wonderful things in Oakland. I want the things I love to stay secret and safe for the people who live here. (Of course, I’ve completely reneged on this idea and wrote a neighborhood guide but a few months ago.) The truth is, I’m a little ambivalent about Oakland’s shiny new reputation.
Can I still be proud of where I live if it’s not “tough” or unusual to live there? Ginger Murray answered my question in a killer piece for Medium about racial dynamics and fearing Oakland. Murray quotes blogger Sussu Laaksonen on the psyche of wanting to live in a tough city:
“It’s vital to the self-identity of the Burner Art Geek Man-Boys that they live in an Extremely Dangerous Urban Mad Max Wasteland, and the Self-Identity Protection Shield they have built from Steampunk recycled metal parts prevents them from seeing the working class and middle class families and schools and churches.”
Murray goes on to challenge the way people mythologize Oakland — something I was definitely wont to do — because such ideas encourage politicians and corporations to see urban areas as unworthy of funding or services. “It fuels ignorance and the perception that poor black people are either monsters or victims, or both. It divides.”
The answer to my question about whether I can still be proud living in a city that seems to be losing its edge, of course, is hell yeah. One of the great things about Oakland is the pride of its people — they work together to get things done via community watches, food banks, hacker spaces, and after school programs in the face of a bad rap and lack of services. Oakland’s success in becoming desirable to new residents and businesses is only emblematic of how tough the city truly is.
Big cities require a thick skin and force residents to evolve with them; those who can’t head elsewhere. Toughness comes with being able to grow with your city — as many folks in Oakland have through years of ups and downs — not from it being untouchable to the masses.
