Oakland is a town often misunderstood. As someone who’s lived in the city and still spends a ton of time there, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. And yet, there’s no place like it. People who know the real Oakland — the ones who’ve explored neighborhoods from Chinatown to Fruitvale to Temescal, who’ve caught sunsets over the entire Bay from the Oakland hills, who’ve admired art in downtown and watched films at the historic Grand Lake Theater — will tell you there’s so much more to “The Town” than it gets credit for. During her post-Olympics homecoming at Frank Ogawa Plaza, figure skating gold medalist Alysa Liu summed up Oakland with one word: “Soul.” Locals beamed. With her unapologetically funky style, zen-like confidence and YOLO mentality, this athlete had clearly been shaped by the city. Located on the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay, Oakland is a midsized city with an outsized reputation, having long served as a pressure cooker for grassroots activism. The Black Panther Party, the hyphy subgenre of …