I actually prefer to travel a bit farther to fly out of Oakland instead of San Francisco. Oakand has much fewer weather related delays. SFO is fully scheduled for departures and landings in clear weather. But when it fogs in, they must shut down one of the two runways being used for the wind conditions they have at the time, as the runways are too close to each other to use in poor visibility. Major traffic jams ensue. Oakland does not have that problem, as it has only one runway to start with for each wind direction. And Oakland gets fogged in much less frequently to start with.

That said, Southwest Airlines is the way to go from Oakland. They have a whole terminal to themselves.