Let’s take a moment to smile about how Oakland looks to a hip San Franciscan and her friends.  This now-former Yahoo employee commuted from San Francisco to Sunnyvale daily, and decided to map her commute a while ago.

You can see the length of her daily drive and world view, in a thick blue line running 36 miles along 101S.   It’s a classic and traffic-filled journey that she endured for many years.

The ex-Yahoo displayed the whole Bay Area map, and began annotating areas beyond the commute.  A friend joined the game, and described an unknown and unexplored East Bay:  The mysterious land to the East.  Here be Berkeley and Oakland (and dragons).

I wonder how often some San Franciscans leave their tip of land and head east?  Maybe Marco Polo should be shipped out on an adventure, to find the shortest routes to spices.  I swear there is already a there, there…we’re here and willing to conduct trade.

Then our commuter pointed to the Oakland Hills again, singling out what appears to be our 94611 zip code:  This is the mysterious section known as “French Oakland.”  They speak in an entirely different dialect over there.

At least we all speak the same language, right?  I could not have described our world any better than this hip chick, who has only passing interest in our city.  Touche.