SFist tipster Harvey Stafford snapped this advertisement in an area BART station, and added the conspicuous-in-its-neutrality remark that "A lot of people in Oakland have some very strong opinions about it." ALL POSITIVE I'M SURE.
Ha ha, of course, I am kidding! You, I, and Harvey all know that Oakland "struggles to be the anti-San Francisco," and for years now some area residents have been vocally protesting things like "Google-and other-commuter buses that ferry workers to Silicon Valley campuses from around the Bay" as "symbols of displacement and privilege" (as Live Work Oakland wrote in 2013).
Does this present-day advertisement, which appears to be for an Oakland data center in which (I'm quoting the company's web site) "Businesses can leverage the cloud and enable highly-connected deployments ranging from 4kw to custom-built cages," serve as an additional "symbol of displacement and privilege"? After all, it does says that West Oakland is "the new edge of Silicon Valley," which in addition to being geographically incorrect seems like the last thing many residents want to hear suggested.
And how does that jibe with the area's ranking as, per the Chron, the place "with the highest rate of violent crime in the state — and the second highest in the nation"? Can Oakland be all these things at once? Should it?
Related: Airline Marketing Oakland As 'The Wild Side Of San Francisco' Angers Residents