"City of Players" a Oakland Travel Page by supune

I like Oakland. One word to describe the people: Cool. People are laid back and I've had some nice conversations while riding the BART to school. I met a youngster who kept insisting he's from Oakland because he thought being from Hayward was just too square.

People in the bay area refer to it as "The Town"(since SF is the CIty), "The O", "O-Town", "Oak-town", etc.

My favorite style of rap music comes from Oakland. The dope fiend beat is very bass heavy and filled with crisp beats. It's been given that name since it is just highs and lows. Even though it's filled with the gangsta mentality and pimp tales, oak-town rappers like Too $hort, Ant Banks, Dru Down, Baby D, Bad-N-Fluenz, Goldy, Spice 1, etc usually have some kind of point they are at least try to push.

Just looking at the numbers, Oakland is a very professional city. When the Bay Area was booming in the late nineties, I've read that Oakland had a higher average income among professionals than San Fransico.

But if you ever drive through East Oakland, some parts are just too sad to look at. The town was hit hard by the crack epidemic in the late 80s and some of the effects still show. It's worse than the bad parts of south central LA. Hunter's Point (across the bay) may be the only place worse from what I've heard or seen. Just makes you wonder, "does this look like America to you?"

But Oakland can always be proud of being the birthplace of one of the greatest movements in American history: The Black Panthers. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale are 2 American heros for standing up for justice. Too bad the Oakland police department and the FBI had to ruin it. But the Panthers are still alive. They are trying to organize as a polictial party and still want to build it around the ideals of their 10 point system.