Upper B Street

This is the northeasternmost section of Hayward. As the name indicates it sprawls out from B Street slipping under De Anza and Carlos Bee parks and going from Foothill Boulevard to Center Street, right where you will find Curly’s Place, a friendly neighborhood bar.

On the far western end near Foothill Boulevard, North Hayward is mostly a commercial neighborhood with some of those newer boxy apartments and strip mall style office areas. It is the kind of place where you can get a haircut, go to the bank, get a bottle of wine and meet with your realtor---if that makes any sense. Nothing spectacular.

As you head farther up B Street, though you continue to find businesses, increasingly they are interspersed with private residences. These are mostly run down looking older homes like Mission and California style bungalows and many of them have boarded up windows and unkept front lawns giving the whole area a bit of a ramshackle look to it. There are some nicer spots on the quieter inner streets, but even in these sections the barred doors speak to crime worries.

With Cherryland and Ashland nearby, there is no doubt that there is probably more than a little reason to worry. The farther you get away from Foothill Blvd., however, the less the stats support this worry. Though there have been about a half dozen assaulta even in the part of the neighborhood away from Foothill, this is still fairly minor as compared to many other sections of the East Bay. (Even in the most dangerous areas of Hayward should not make you worry too much, in fact, so long as you use common sense, stay out of gangs and don’t hang out with gang members, you are very unlikely to get killed and can mostly avoid trouble.)

Rents here are, for the reasons already cited, fairly affordable, with a typical two bedroom home going for about $1200/month. Pretty good, and part of what makes this a favorite spots for singles and the occasional hipster. If it weren’t for the lousy schools in this area, you might even be able to make it a good spot for young families--unfortunately, I think most people with families will find the gangs and bad schools deal breakers.

You also have excellent public transportation here and are well situated for commuting virtually anywhere in the Bay Area from San Jose and SF to Pleasanton and Walnut Creek.

Okay, so I can’t quite recommend it for settling down permanently, but for that period when you are still waiting to get it together and are just starting out in the “real world,” it might just do the trick.