Prescott

Prescott is a poor neighborhood on the farthest western portion of West Oakland. The map here includes not only the neighborhood itself but also the part of the Oakland docks that are adjacent to it—the ones right by the Bay Bridge.

The residential section of Prescott is filled with a bunch of tiny old bungalow homes that look to be in fairly bad condition with many of the them having boarded up windows. About half the homes in the area were built before WWII. There are also some boxy looking newer homes on its northern boarder. These almost look like those newer gentrification type constructions that are popular throughout Oakland. Here however, they are so tightly packed that the whole thing feels more like public housing than pricey condos.

There are also a couple of parks that might be nice if they weren’t located here. Raimondi Park where locals gather to play soccer just about every weekend it seems and Middle Harbor Shoreline Park which has great open green spaces and excellent views of the opposite.

The way that I know this neighborhood, however, is from having worked here a few years ago. I had been working for an inter-modal company that monitored and prepared for the transporting of goods internationally and throughout the country. As part of our services, we kept many container boxes in the yards. I was in charge of keeping track of which ones we had in the yards and which ones were somewhere else.

The streets around the docks themselves are just very industrialized. Once you get by how harsh they look, you come to find a certain aesthetic pleasure in the rusty look of the place and the pleasant Bay breeze the keeps you cool and brings with it a slightly salty tang. Also compelling to look at are the giant cranes that load and unload the ships. Of course, most people would just find going into this place day after day rather depressing, and I must admit that I didn’t really enjoy my job.

Although it was an interesting stop along my career, I would not want to have continued working there and I would not recommend that anyone live in this rather downtrodden looking neighborhood.