I once attended a business conference at Jack London Square on the Oakland waterfront. Very nice area (the only nice area I saw in Oakland), but I quickly noticed that this hotel, restaurant, and entertainment district had 24-hour security at every vehicle entry/exit point and they were very serious about checking who entered. It felt very much like a walled oasis in the middle of the urban chaos, kind of like Oakland’s version of the Green Zone in Iraq. Set foot anywhere outside Jack London Square, however, and it was a very different world. I don’t recall a single night that the local news didn’t report multiple murders somewhere in Oakland.
And you wonder why many Chinese in Oakland’s Chinatown are moving at the first opportunity to the south end of Alameda County—Fremont, CA. If you visit Fremont, there’s a very sizable Chinese community living there for many years.