Oakland, CA Hotels, Vacations, Tourism

OAKLAND , the workhorse of the Bay Area, is one of the largest ports on the west coast. It has also been the breeding ground of revolutionary political movements . In the Sixties, the city's fifty percent black population found a voice through the militant Black Panthers, and in the Seventies the Symbionese Liberation Army, kidnappers of heiress Patty Hearst, obtained a ransom of free food for the city's poor. It's not all hard graft, though: the climate is often sunny and mild when San Francisco is cold and dreary, and there's great hiking in the redwood-and eucalyptus-covered hills above the … more »