Good Reads: San Francisco Magazine's "Oakland" Issue

The current issue of San Francisco magazine offers a special 30-page package on "The New Oakland," detailing the set-to-explode art, housing, neighborhood, culinary, nightlife, political, and retail scenes here, and comparing my beloved adopted city to such white-hot areas as San Francisco's SoMa, New York's Brooklyn, and L.A.'s downtown.

It's the sort of thing that fills me with equal measures of heart-swelling hometown pride and bristling annoyance.

On the one hand, it's great to get some well-deserved recognition from our big-sister city across the Bay, and even beyond. On the other, just because the residents and media movers and shakers in that sometimes-snooty, often myopic, 49-square-mile burg have discovered that Oakland -- right under their nose and either ignored or dissed for so long -- is, indeed, pretty damn happening doesn't mean we needed their blessing for that to be so.

Still, I have to give them props: The issue boasts some stellar writing, and it even clued this longtime Oakland booster in to a few cool things I hadn't known about.

If you live anywhere near these parts or are just curious about what the "new" Oakland is all about, be sure to pick up a copy of San Francisco's current issue, or check it out online.

(P.S. If the cover models above look a little familiar, there's good reason: They're Old Oakland entrepreneurs Alfonso Dominguez of the new FiveTen Studio and Johnelle Mancha of Mignonne, both recently highlighted in this blog.)