Jefferson

Like many of the neighborhoods in the Fruitvale district, this is an older neighborhood filled with pre-World War II bungalows and Victorians. The neighborhood is twice as dense as the rest of Oakland—which is also typical of Fruitvale. And, of course, another thing that makes this typical is the crime rate that is also high for Oakland. Even though the population for this neighborhood is only about 4,000, about 2 murders occur here every year. Pretty bad.

There are, however, some really cool places here. For example, if you love giant burritos for dirt cheap, you will want to drop into El Taco Zamorano right on Foothill. It is right down the street from one of the best named tattoo parlors around—Evil Ink Tattoo. Now I am not much of a tattoo fan, having never been inked myself—but this seems like the kind of name I would choose if I were looking for a dive bar feel for my tattoo parlor.

This is definitely not a poser sort of an area however that only pretends to be into the gang way of life, as you will note by the bail bonds store right next to Evil Ink. As a general rule, if a bails bond store is in your neighborhood, this is a sure sign that a significant segment of your population is having regular run-ins with the law.

One of the positive things about Jefferson is the neighborhood’s attempts to answer problems of overcrowding and poor academics by setting a strong foundation for future schooling. Along one stretch of Jefferson you will find three schools. One is Global Family Elementary. Global Family is a public school that takes an interesting approach to teaching. They teach their pupils half the time in English and half the time in Spanish. (Not just the ESL students—all its pupils.) The majority of the residents of Jefferson are Latino, but studies have shown that the approach of teaching two languages early in education helps increase a whole series of cognitive abilities including pattern recognition and vocabulary acquisition. Right next to it is Learning Without Limits. LWL’s approach is to set students on a path they hope will lead to college by including the arts as part of the critical thinking process. The third school is the Jefferson Early Childhood Development Center. I don’t really know much about it except that it is just a kindergarten.

Despite these positive steps, by most objective standards these school still rank near the bottom of most measurements.

At the far eastern end, there is also Brookdale Park which has a nice baseball field but which is largely underused.

Overall, not a neighborhood most people would want to live in.