Straight from the West, Oakland is the Best
The San Francisco Chronicle has an informative Google Maps mashup showing murders in Oakland in 2007 and 2007. Besides the horrifyinly large amount of Google Maps pins dotting the map, the interesting take-away is the extreme concentration of homicides. Oakland has a rap for being a dangerous, decaying city, a kind of lower scale Balitmore or Detroit on the Bay. But really, Oakland has extremely dangerous neighborhoods, where the overwhelming majority of murders occur.
If you look at the map, the area North of 580 and South of 13, where, among other things, my family lives (in Piedmont) and where my old high school is, has had no murders (if you don’t count neighborhoods right on 580). The murders are instead concentrated in two general areas. West Oakland, the area roped off by 80, 880 and the Grove Freeway, and in East Oakland. Of course, these areas – especially East Oakland – make up a large portion of the city, but the main takeaway from the map is how neighborhood based the violence is.
Not shockingly, my friends and I don’t spend a whole lot of time in those parts of the city. Three murders have occurred, however, in a one block radius of my favorite Mexican restaurant, El Taco Zamorano. Apparently the Hell’s Angels bar across the street isn’t doing very well at maintaining order.
