A Different View of the Bay Area

We took advantage of the 4-day weekend and Adrian’s upcoming birthday (tomorrow!) to go visit friends in the Bay Area. This time around we didn’t do what we usually do, which is spend too much time and money in The City. Instead, we poked around Oakland and even wound up spending a day in Antioch.

I think that was a good choice, as it gave me a better perspective on general Bay Area-ness.  Here are some things I gleaned from this trip:

  • It’s not always cold and foggy up there.
  • People in Oakland had a Midwest sort of nice about them. Everyone kept saying “Hello” to us.  For a moment there, we felt like celebrities.
  • Oakland is confusing to drive. Wackadoodle lights and stop signs.
  • I kinda want to spend a summer just taking in all the events at Jack London Square.
  • Lake Merritt is impressive. It’s like a flatter Griffith Park. So much to do and see.
  • Downtown Oakland is beautiful. I could spend a day or two just shooting the architecture.
  • Driving through parts of San Francisco on our way out, I realized that one could get the impression that San Franciscans are all fitness freaks. I know watching them made me want to go run or bike.
  • Antioch is hotter than Hades. My friends likened it to Santa Clarita or parts of the IE. Yep. Exactly.
  • The only place in Oakland you can legally smoke besides your house is pretty much in the middle of the street.
  • The males in Oakland are very fashion-conscious.  Even the security guards were looking fly in their uniforms.
  • I also declare Oakland Home of the Sexiest Black Men. Brothas in LA need to step up their game. For serious.
  • I don’t understand how it’s so relatively clean up there, when there are practically no trashcans on the street. Meanwhile, we have trashcans at the ends of almost every block here and it’s filthy.

I’m sure there’s more, but this is just the stuff that stuck with me.

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The A Different View of the Bay Area by Anika Malone, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 9:12 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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