Talk:Oakland, California

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[edit] Demographic data needs updating

The U.S. Census Bureau 2006 estimates show estimates show 34.1 percent White 30.3 percent African American, 0.9 percent Native American, 15.6 percent Asian American, 0.7 percent Pacific Islander, 14.6 percent from other races, and 3.8 percent from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 25.9 percent of the population.[1]

[edit] North Oakland neighborhood split

There are several ways to define neighborhoods in Oakland. Realtors use maps that simplify (see Metro Rent's map) and gloss over certain hard-sell areas; police safety and crime stats maps use simplify as well but not in the same way (see Urban Strategies 2005 homicides map) while the city planning office uses maps with smaller areas named and defined such as the one developed by Fern Tiger Associates in 1982, available here, which unexpectedly calls the northeastern hill section of Oakland "NorthWest Hills". The way this article divides neighborhoods doesn't conform to any of the above methods; I wonder how the division was reached for this article. North Oakland (as defined here) includes the hills east of Piedmont. Most would call that Claremont/Montclair or Northeast Hills, and all would agree that reported violent crime and racial composition differ dramatically between the hilly sections and the flatter sections. I propose to split North Oakland neighborhood into at least two sections: North Oakland and Northeast Oakland. Such a split would affect the North Oakland, Oakland, California article, too. Binksternet (talk) 22:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "Northeast Oakland". The list should have the hills as a separate entity from North Oakland, East Oakland, Downtown/Lake Merritt, West Oakland. The north hills have much more in common with the south hills than either do with their respective flatland areas. Argyriou (talk) 16:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
It's true that Oaklanders don't use the phrases "Northeast Hills" or Northeast Oakland" in normal conversation, though those phrases exist in documents about crime statistics and home sales. Perhaps you would agree to "Oakland Hills" as the other neighborhood. Binksternet (talk) 16:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay, the Oakland Hills, Oakland, California page is up. Other pages have been/still need adjusting. Binksternet (talk) 19:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
There's no "Oakland Hills" either, apart from the common misuse of the name with respect to a geologic feature. The districts that overlap the hills are already named. For the most part, the really hilly section of Oakland encompasses Montclair. I don't understand why the articles on these districts aren't sufficient. Why is it necessary to concoct intermediate articles grouping them together? And if the relevant dichotomy is "hills v. flatlands", why not an "Oakland Flatlands" article? It all seems excessive, repetitive, and unnecessary. The groupings here in this article ought to be the limit. Tmangray (talk) 23:09, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Part of the problem lies in the designation of the larger parts of Oakland as "neighborhoods" when they are actually simply geographic sections (hence the use of modifiers such as "East", "West", "North", etc.), except possibly in the case of West Oakland. Even most of the neighborhoods are in practice referred to as "districts", as in "Montclair District" or "Fruitvale District". I don't know of any historically-named part of Oakland that is known as a "neighborhood", but perhaps there are some. Tmangray (talk) 00:02, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
We must be careful not to concoct ahistorical names for parts of Oakland, simply because we wish to group neighborhoods by geography. If we must group, then we must also make sure to notify the reader that our grouping names are not (unless they are) historic local names in common usage. For example, obviously, "Northeast Hills" is not a common usage. Nonetheless, with the simple addition of the word "section" or "area" (and no capitalization if used in the text since it is not a proper name) it might be just fine as a grouping header on this page. It would not, however, merit a separate article. Tmangray (talk) 00:25, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chauncey_Wendell_Bailey

Why are Chauncey Wendell Bailey & your_Black_Muslim_Bakery not mentioned in the articles of Oakland, Santa_Barbara,_California?

[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 00:45, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nicknames revisited

I propose that we remove the entire "nicknames" section and any mention of them in the article.

To those who protest that this is too severe an excision of material, I'd like to point out that the current paragraph, consisting of 3 sentences, has 4 "citation needed" tags and no references whatsoever. This makes that part of the article an eyesore and a weak spot. Imagine coming across this article on some other site, with its content scraped from Wikipedia, and seeing all those red flags in the text.

To paraphrase another aphorism, if you can't say anything notable and verifiable about something, better to say nothing at all. There has been plenty of time for editors to supply valid references for these statements. The article can live without this bit of trivia. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 18:49, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The nicknames are absurd, I live in Oakland and I've never heard of those nicknames before. Verifiability has not been made at all, except for maybe that last sentence in the section, so the whole section can justifiably be deleted. WinterSpw (talk) 22:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)