There are some more “rock” places on Gillman in Berkeley. One quirky thing about SF is, if you live in the wrong neighborhood your commute can be shorter in the East Bay on public trnasit. Case in point, my friend lived in SF and worked downtown. It was about a 20 minute drive, 15 minutes on a motorcycle, from his place to down town. It took about 90 minutes on MUNI (the buses). He moved to Berkeley and the Bart ride to downtown is about 25 minutes.

So is it safe? Well as safe as anywhere. Cab rides are around $20 to go over the bridge. BART (the train/subway) stops around 12:30a. I have taken BART/Buses plenty of times late and I felt totally safe in my neighborhoods. Use common sense. I don’t really frequent the super sketchy neighborhoods.

One note about Berkeley:

Summer is a blast once summer school starts and people come back to town.

The closer you are to campus the crappier the apartment.

West and South Berkeley are a bit sketchy, you will feel less comfortable walking around there at night.
Rockridge/Elmwood Areas of Berkeley and Oakland are nice, safe and fairly cheap compared to other areas. The best benefit of those neighborhoods is the proximity to BART and the all night bus route. Also there are a lot of good restaurants across price ranges and walking distance to Safeway and a Gourmet market. (whole Foods too)

Another good neighborhood in relationship to safety and price is North Berkeley. These are pretty cool but uphill, you live to high you might not want to walk. :) Some of those hills are steep!

More cheap nearby neighborhoods: Piedmont Avenue and the Grand Lake neighborhoods. These are a bit further from BART, but are really cheap with a good number of nice apartments and proximity to SF and everywhere else. (I live by Piedmont AVe, which is maybe 1.5 miles from Rockridge and 2.5 from Berkeley….but my rent is 20-40% cheaper!

The question you have to ask: how urban of a neighborhood do you want? For me all of the cool neighborhoods in SF are too pricey so I stayed in the East Bay with easier parking and more grocery stores. If you can survive without living in a super dense neighborhood, you will find the East Bay has bette weather, easier parking and great food!