California

Garbribre, I'd be interested in hearing a bit more about your experience in Oakland. Based on your recent posts, you seem a bit disenchanted with the place. I'm down in Palo Alto now, but I've always been an East Bay kinda guy (have family in Berkeley).

If only that sorry excuse for a university up there could get its act together (Kal Sucks...anybody? anybody??)
 
Is San Francisco really considered a college town? Like, it always seemed to have that young/artsy/hip lure to it, but I can't think of a whole ton of schools in the SF area. Then again, I haven't tried to look for schools in the SF area.
 
Not like Boston. My impression is that SF is more of a destination for 20 somethings. It's certainly where many Stanford/Kal grads end up. But SF does have its share of schools in the city proper. USF, SF State, City College SF, Academy of Art, UCSF (med school), UC Hastings (the other law school), and probably a bunch of others.

As much as I rag on my rival school, Berkeley is a wonderful college town unto itself. It truly is the Cambridge of the West. Same politics, both diverse, both intellectually and artistically vibrant, located across a body of water from a major city. Berkeley wins on score of sheer natural beauty, but Cambridge is nicer architecturally and more urban overall. The Berkeley flatlands are packed with tiny one-story houses, ie sprawl with the appearance of density (like the Sunset in SF)

Now Palo Alto mostly sucks, but Stanford is a self-contained bubble, so venturing outside isn't really necessary. I do feel for the grad students though. University Ave is dominated by high school sk8r kids and obnoxious Silicon Valley hotshots.
 
All the Stanford grad students I know live in SF and endure the commute. Palo Alto is unbearable as a 20something.
 
As Cambridge culture spills into adjoining Somerville, does the Berkeley vibe similarly sprawl into one or more adjoining towns?
 
Ron: Yes. Oakland would suffer from not having UC Berkeley nearby, which had its roots in Oakland, btw. Their system-wide HQ is in downtown Oakland.

I would be interested to see stats documenting the number of students, staff, and faculty who live in Oakland, El Cerrito, Albany and Emeryville, all of which border Berkeley, but commute to the main campus. Two of my friends work for UC and live in El Cerrito and North Oakland. Another lives in SF's Polk Gulch and she commutes up into the hills to the Lawrence Hall of Science by public transport (Muni bus to BART to AC Transit bus or the UC shuttle)!

Temescal District of Oakland (about a three mile direct route down Telegraph to the UC campus) and Rockridge (also about a three mile commute down College Avenue) certainly benefit from UC's presence. North Oakland shows signs of this as well, though the commercial district there is kind of a mess, comparatively to the other two.

czsz and kennedy: I would say SF is a closet college town. The line blurs between the influx of 20-somethings who are and are not (perpetual) students. :D Friends who were both grad students at Stamford commuted from SF. Others attended some of the SF-based schools blade bltz mentioned, including my friend who is back in StL and she commuted from Oakland into SF for grad school.

Oakland has a fair number of small colleges, as well. Some are well regarded, including Mills, St Mary's (formerly in Oakland, now in the hills, just over the border in Moraga), CCAC (home of the arts and crafts movement), Laney (large, diverse, community college), Merritt (liberal arts community college and another branch for non-MD, medical training), and a few other small, private colleges I know I am forgetting about.

blade bltz: I will answer your initial question some other time.
 
czsz said:
All the Stanford grad students I know live in SF and endure the commute. Palo Alto is unbearable as a 20something.
Click to expand...
Is Palo Alto a city or region?It has a large population any pix's?
 
Palo Alto is a city, containing Stanford University and a fair amount of Silicon Valley industry.
 
So, in general, we can say that in the US, college towns ranked in order go:

1.Boston/Cambridge
2. SF
3. Chicago or NYC? Probably NYC-would it even beat SF?, Chicago seemed like more 30 somethings to me...but I wasn't really in the college part of town.
 
I don't understand what currently makes Boston a better college town than New York. The fact that it's more completely dominated by its student population? That doesn't really make up for the comparably limited entertainment options, especially at night.

Boston could surely win the fight hands down when Harvard and Kenmore Squares were in their heyday, the Combat Zone was still risque, and New York was nearing cataclysmic social breakdown, but it's a little more difficult to see how it compares today.
 
kennedy you can decide where to live based on photographs?
as for the smog, and other ecological problems, no it's not the 1980s, and LA, and the state, has improved on that front more than any east coast city ever could, or would care to.
as for northern california, it's a nice place to visit, but i wouldnt want to live there. the photographs never did it for me (except to reinforce my preference for LA). The concept of living in one of the world's largest and most diverse cities did, and many visits. it has a spectacular history, keeps making it, and is usually worth the cost. that it is consistently maligned adds to the intrigue (if some of the stories were true, i may like it even more).
 
No, I can't decide where to live on photographs, but they can certainly give me a fairly good idea of a place. Especially with colleges, since there are a bunch I can't visit, I've been looking at every virtual tour and photo and YouTube video around.
 
Books are expensive, the ones I have were passed down from an old neighbor, so they're mostly outdated information.

And they don't have pictures.

The best resource, by far, is the internet. I got collegeboard.com, youtube, college websites, student blogs, all sorts of stuff. And of course, I can visit schools in some areas.
 
blade_bltz said:
Garbribre, I'd be interested in hearing a bit more about your experience in Oakland. Based on your recent posts, you seem a bit disenchanted with the place. I'm down in Palo Alto now, but I've always been an East Bay kinda guy (have family in Berkeley).

If only that sorry excuse for a university up there could get its act together (Kal Sucks...anybody? anybody??)
Click to expand...

Da Bears!

I am an East Bay kinda guy, too.

Did not like SF. (Oh, horrors!) Tried it for about three years, after running away from NYC. Didn't feel as if I changed locale all that much. (I KNOW that is going to confound some people--you gotta live it to know it.)

Can't say I would ever want to live on the Peninsula, Marin, Napa, South Bay. (San Jose is repulsive!) I could see myself in Santa Cruz... maybe. (Some old-timers on the board who think they know my 'hippie,' slacker tendencies will understand--heheh.)

After 15 years, the East Bay is it. Or so I thought. The people here... I dunno. It's changing. Not to something I like.

Give me a New Yorker any day. (Sorry. Stereotypical Bostonians are too dour for me.;))

It's very complicated--too complicated for me to go into it all here. (Plus, I hate typing.)

After eight years of Jerry (pathetic excuse for leadership), the brief optimism I felt before he took office faded rather quickly during the inauguration. Yup. That quickly. This city should have flourished and it foundered. Pockets of vibrancy exist. It has become more of a bedroom community for The City. (I think you know what I mean.) I think this has become a disparate region of 'urbs--insular cities parading as a collective, regional economic force but having no real discernible identity over each border.

Hmmmmm... does that make sense?

Oakland has become identity-less. It doesn't think that. It's deluded.

The leadership here is ... non-existent.
(Be grateful, from what I gather reading things here on AB, that Boston has some semblance of leadership, even if you disapprove of any/all of it.)

The communities that collectively encompass Oakland would all secede if they could swing it, financially, as independent entities.
Sound familiar?

I think Oakland squandered many opportunities during my tenure here.
I don't want to be around for any more of the foundering, the petty battles, or the potential collapse. I no longer think Oakland is worth it. :(

That may sound alarmist. Ha! It's not ... and it is.

Oakland doesn't seem to want to move ahead. Feebly, it tries to, it sputters, then fades.

However, I think it's now resigned to having its proximity to SF as its prime aspiration. Its physical place with in the region has become its saving grace, and this is sad. Also, its identity is wrapped in too many old myths, and lost, long-past, fleeting moments which defined it then, but define it no longer. This becomes all too apparrent when I hear the generalizations about how other people view the Bay Area or speak as if they know about the Bay Area and Oakland, in particular.

The whole region is becoming a faces megalopolis.

Either that, or it's Boston, or the NYC metro, or Chicago, or any metro area now, with better weather.:p

And, hey, a630--Am I missing something in the translation here? If kennedy doesn't read books, with expert opinions and accompanying pictures to reinforce whatever those opinions are, how else can he make an informed decision about where to live/go to school? Sure, he won't figure out squat until he spends some time inhabiting some place. However, he cannot visit or inhabit them all before he decides.
Ya?
Dive in, kennedy!

SoCal-ites ... -ers -- just sooooo defensive.
Just pokin at ya.
I DO like parts of LA.
Ummmmmm... there's...
Let me think a bit more about that....)
 
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