![grandlake Oakland's Grand Lake Theater. Photo by Thomas Hawk/Flickr.](http://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2013/01/grandlake.jpeg)
Golden Gate Park or Lake Merritt? The Castro or the Grand Lake? First Thursday or First Fridays?
Oakland or San Francisco?
Those are some of the questions many ponder when making a move into the Bay Area. San Francisco is a major metropolis, but it's also among the most expensive places to live in the country. Oakland is cheaper and has a growing and diverse entertainment scene, yet it continues to struggle with crime.
But the cities also have at least one thing in common: they can instill a fierce sense of pride in their residents. Blogger and filmmaker Sarah Verena Kleinman touched on that pride in "A Beginner's Guide to Oakland," a post this week on the blog The Bold Italic. An Oakland resident, Kleinman notes that it can be difficult to convince her San Francisco friends to pay her a visit.
To make her friends and other residents of the City by the Bay more comfortable crossing the Bay Bridge, Kleinman describes several East Bay attractions in terms of what she believes are their San Francisco equivalents. Her post is generating some heated discussion on other local blogs like Mission Misson.