My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome. I stayed on Market St. last summer: Saw two car break-ins before I even got a chance to park at the hotel, got harassed by tweakers every time I stepped outside, watched 3 shoplifters waltz out the door while talking to a disenchanted police officer at the Target, caught a man shooting up on the steps of the federal building ... but I didn't see any human biowaste so I guess I should be thankful.
I've lived in rough neighborhoods before but even I was clutching my pearls! I can handle gangsters and cold shoulders, but this is another breed of degenerate. They're like zombies, slowly losing humanity!
The caveat being I met many kind folks too, homeless or otherwise.
[edit: I now remember I actually did see human biowaste.]
A mix of stockholm syndrome, aggressive gaslighting, denial. It's not just SoMa or the Tenderloin either. These are some of the recent local reports on Chinatown:
Shop Owners Forced to Take Extra Precautions as Thieves Hit SF Chinatown Businesses
Yet we keep hearing that this isn't happening. Things are fine. It's exaggerated. Even in this very thread. I can't help but think of this quote, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
I am constantly gaslit about this on r/sanfrancisco.
People say “the data” show that crime is actually decreasing! It’s bizarre because the data I’m collecting with my very own eyes is staggeringly contradictory. The amount of crime I witness daily is heartbreaking and sometimes frightening.
I understand the knee jerk response, which is to defend your home, but the moment I propose the data are being manipulated/spun, I’m called a conspiracy theorist. There’s a concerning lack of curiosity, critical thinking, and skepticism when it comes to this topic.
The only explanation I have for the discrepancy is the normalization of crime. We have gotten so accustomed to theft, assault, drug use, public camping, illegal immigration, and property damage that we no longer count these as crimes. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy. I’m saying our standard of living has shifted down dramatically and we have adjusted our metrics down, too.
There’s a theory called the Normalization of Deviance [1] which I think offers a pretty good explanation even though it was originally used to describe a spiral of tolerance for unethical behavior in corporations. The principle makes sense in social constructs too.
I am not saying they are committing the assaults, theft, etc. I’m saying that it is illegal to be in the US without documentation. It is also illegal to get forged or stolen documents and work.
>I am constantly gaslit about this on r/sanfrancisco.
The mods and too many of the members believe that discussing actual crime would make San Francisco look bad in the eyes of "Trump supporters"/"Rethuglicans", so must be suppressed. (Check out the subreddit's rules sometime.)
Yeah, that’s what I’m suggesting when I talk about the normalization of crime. I have been victim of about a dozen crimes since moving here 2 years ago, but only reported 3. At a certain point it just became a hassle with no upside other than helping compstat collect better data. Talk to any San Franciscan about crime and you’ll realize that people have become so accustomed to it. I think that there’s very little reporting for that reason, so the stats don’t reflect the reality. Additionally, many crimes have effectively been decriminalized here, so I think that has totally skewed the stats when compared to other cities with stronger enforcement.
I’m really not sure, it’s an emotional subject, especially after the home invasion, but I feel entitled to be skeptical and angry about how dysfunctional the government is here.
It seems funny that there's many downvotes to responses in these threads. It's like people don't want to acknowledge how messed up SF has been, and how unsafe it has become, so they're just downvoting folks.
It used to be that I'd even gotten my roof rack stolen off the top of my car. Then without much to steal during the pandemic, and with drug use off the charts, things just became unsafe. People I knew started carry mace. There was a firearm homicide in the Civic Center station (yes, really, in the station). You have to be absolutely crazy to go back to the office right now.
Although it's sorta not in line with the HN rules to introduce downvotes as a conversation topic, I'll just say that mere observation of the problems in SF used to face way more downvoting. I was not a popular guy years ago when I was honest about why I promptly left SF after finishing school there. Now I get upvoted when I talk about SF because it's all out in the open so much that mainstream news articles discuss the crime, the urban decay, the feces, the drug use in broad daylight, the homelessness, etc.
Those left who are still apologizing for SF have either never experienced anything else or are in denial.
Trust me, it breaks my heart the extent to which SF has let itself go. As bad as it was a decade ago, there was still a lot to like about it and it was a fun place to be as a young guy. I criticize SF because I want to love it, not because I hate it.
As much as there's also a lot to criticize about places like New York and Los Angeles (my hometown), they really have nothing on San Francisco in terms of social issues. Yeah, LA probably has the largest homeless encampments, but in my whole life I've rarely or never have seen what can be seen in SF. SF is the only city in America I've been to so far that's featured drug use in public parks during broad daylight, huge packs of rats running around, fentanyl zombies that actually resemble fictional zombies, elevators covered in urine, poop smeared on walkways and walls, gutters overflowing with rotten restaurant food, gangs spraying graffiti with bystanders around and no fear of being caught, and of course public displays of nudity (and occasionally other distasteful displays).
It's really amazing what the human mind can be conditioned to accept. We can become accustomed to anything.
> but in my whole life I've rarely or never have seen what can be seen in SF.
I was wondering if that had to do with the profit chain of helping the homeless. The city spent $1.1B on homeless for year 2021-2022. I'd assume many people want the government to spend like that: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-has-an-unpre...
> gangs spraying graffiti with bystanders around and no fear of being caught
For the record, they do try to crack down on those. I witnessed a couple of pissed off cops coming down on some kids doing graffiti at Battery Crosby last month.
The nudity thing seems mostly tied to some pockets of the LGBTQ+ community, my impression is that people generally don't want to criticize it out of respect for freedom of expression for those communities.
The drug abuse and rampant theft in broad daylight though are definitely disturbing though, for sure.
I lived there 10 years ago. Back then it was bad but manageable. I used to park my motorcycle on the street and once a month it would barely start. It was because someone busted off the top of my spark plug to use as a crack pipe.
My wife and I just visited, the parts that were bad parts are worse, and the nice parts still seemed fine.
Anecdotal, of course, but my wife used to wander around downtown and SOMA when she would accompany me on business trips circa 2011-12 to SF. When I went back in 2019-20 after not having been there for 5+ years, I was shocked. I did my best to avoid being outside my hotel, and had my wife come with me on those trips, I would have stayed outside the city and commuted in.
On a single trip from my hotel about 4 blocks away to our offices, I saw a guy tweaked out unconscious against a parking meter with the needle still in his leg, was accosted by a mentally ill dude trying to get me to take dope to a guy on the next block, saw a pretty obvious pimp give a stack of money to a young girl who should have been in school to run it somewhere, and two open drug deals happening literally right on Market by the Westfield Mall. I also saw a couple of tent encampments, folks starving on the street, and an incredibly long line for food at a soup kitchen. I was so...perturbed? Upset? by the whole experience that I kind of lost it in the bathroom when I got to work. The amount of human suffering one can witness in a 15 minute timespan there is just...galling.
I don't think folks who live in SF have Stockholm Syndrome as much as it just becomes part of the scenery in some weird disconnected way. When I brought all that up to folks at work, they were like, "Oh yeah that's just how it is here" and dismissed it. I remember seeing two of my co-workers sipping coffee looking out the window of our expensive, air-conditioned office surrounded by pricey furniture and motivational posters, pointing out the various tweakers and drug dealers who were harassing folks trying to get food from the shelter nearby. It was just a snapshot of a mindset of disconnection about it that I still don't really understand.
I guess at some point you just have to shut your brain off to the horror you're witnessing in real time or you will eventually snap, but I just couldn't do it. I asked on my next trip to stay at a much closer hotel, and when I left that company, if I'm honest, that was a not-inconsequential part of why.
I had more or less the same experience when it was Covid. The streets were empty nobody outside, with everything of what you said happening. Plus all the stores closed and tagged on their wood protection things. It was surreal. The 4-5 « normal » guys I saw weren’t even looking normal with this scene. They were in perfect suits talking at the top of some perfect white marble stairs at the entrance of some federal building. It’s was really looking black and white. Or maybe just black.
Similar experience in Seattle. I lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood for 11 years and left in 2012. I went back to visit a few years ago and it looked like the homeless population had doubled or tripled in the time since. And it was already bad when I lived there.
These cities seem to have a lot of fundamental societal problems and they have no idea whatsoever how to solve them.
I worked for a company in SF from 2017 until 2019. Then a Seattle based company. SF was bad then, around the edge of Chinatown and the financial district. But I'm from NY, so I can deal with that. Generally. The mentally ill screaming at walls and other random people was a bit much though.
Seattle had aggressive people on the street. This didn't worry me so much, though they had many of them. Again, more than a few mentally ill.
I recall SF from the late 90s/mid 2000s. It was nice then. As was Seattle. Something happened.
Similar things happened in NYC, after Bloomburg left.
Its not hard to find the policy proximate causes that rendered these once great cities into steaming sh!tholes with rampant crime. My question is, when will people move beyond their political tribalism and virtue signalling and start addressing the core issues?
FWIW, I live near Detroit MI USA. It is on a long slow recovery from decades of terrible policy, horrible and criminal politicians. It is showing signs of growth and recovery. Cost of living is low. Crime is falling.
All it took was jailing some pols, electing competent (non-ideologue) management, and forming public-private partnerships. It may take another 20 years or so before its really showing what it could be. But its changing.
And as someone who has lived in the area for 30+ years, you kinda root for Detroit. It was destroyed by grifters and ideologues, by bad and corrupt management, and many other things. But it has character. It has a presence. And you like to go to the Science Museum (my wife used to be director of education there), and the programs at the universities. And the parks (yes, really). And the restaurants.
I hope, one day, that SF, Seattle, NYC, and others can elect competent non-ideologue management, sweep out the grifters, implementing good policy, and help hasten the rebuilding of these once great cities. But then again, this also requires doing the same at the state level. Here in Michigan we had a pro-growth governor and traded down to an ideologue. That person doesn't look likely to remain in office, so here's hoping we don't get yet another grifter.
Amazon is moving from Seattle to Bellevue over the next few years. 13 skyscraper buildings are going up in Bellevue for Amazon. The tallest building on the eastside will be Amazon's new building in Bellevue.
To a close approximation, all of the "rough" homeless (i.e. the ones you see on the street) are mentally ill or addicts, not people down on their luck who cannot afford to rent or buy a home.
Most people with drug addiction or other mental illnesses have no problem keeping a roof over their head in other parts of the US. 20% of Americans experience mental illness any given year.
The chronically homeless are incapable of benefiting from affordable housing because that's not why they're homeless in the first place. It's pretty much always mental health, drug and alcohol addiction.
If that were the case we wouldn't see the chronically homeless all disproportionately clustered around areas where housing costs have exploded, and it's not just because of money spent on services there.
The homeless are always going to flock to where the people with money are.
It does seem counterintuitive, but when your local economy is shit (i.e. panhandling in ghettos), you're going to emigrate somewhere with more opportunity.
>> 70% of people homeless in San Francisco in 2019 reported becoming homeless while living in San Francisco: 22% came from another county within California, and 8% came from another state.
This has been my experience. Most "normal" people will just move somewhere else. They're not going to stay homeless in SF when they can move 100 miles away and live in a safe town with a roof over their head.
I think it's pretty obvious what point he is trying to make.
I lived in Hoboken, NJ for nearly five years and had some friends who volunteered at the homeless shelter through church that entire time. The homeless there had pretty good access to food, water, shelter, and drugs (mostly cigarettes and alcohol but I'm sure others). At some point there was talk of a program to move some of the chronically homeless into government housing; when asked if they wanted to participate nearly all of them said no.
Think about that. In a city with very little housing where students and young families are clamoring to make rent payments, and the temperature in the winter gets below zero, they were offered free housing (on taxpayer dime) and turned it down. They actively preferred to be homeless.
Why? Maybe there were too many carrots being given out, and not enough threatening with sticks. (Mind you, the sticks do not have to be cops and jail, although those are pretty big sticks. Forced rehab sounds pretty good.)
Did someone ask why they didn’t want to move into government housing? Because this is a known issue and it’s not because the homeless aren’t being punished enough. People are afraid to be split from their community, don’t want to be forced to leave if something goes wrong, or don’t want to move to an area far away from the resources they need for their daily lives [0].
1. If someone asked for the reason I don't know it.
1.5. Full disclosure, "shelter" was probably the wrong word because I don't think anyone was sleeping at the church. There were definitely some people eating multiple meals a day there, though. So I don't know if you would call that temporary housing. That makes it even wierder (to me) that they would refuse permanent housing.
2. "Punished" might not quite be the right word here. I remember there was a guy - I think his name was Don - who was very mentally ill and very scary. Well over 6 feet tall and looking absolutely wild, he would roam the streets shouting incoherently at people, usually women. He interacted with one of my friends at the shelter so often they were on a first name basis and several times he would just approach our group screaming at him. He had little sense of his surroundings and would often wander right into oncoming traffic, it was a miracle he live through my time at college.
Whether you think scooping Don up and sticking him in a mental hospital is "saving" him or "punishing him" depends on your worldview, but I lean towards thinking that Don's situation wasn't good for him or anyone else and that someone should have done something. And give his nature, I would expect that to require force...
> "shelter" was probably the wrong word because I don't think anyone was sleeping at the church
I assume you're referring to the former church at 3rd + Bloomfield? AFAIK it's legitimately a shelter with 50 beds. The building was still an active church until 5-10 years ago so maybe it wasn't fully a shelter before then, not sure.
> he would roam the streets shouting incoherently at people, usually women
Sadly there are multiple people here who fit this description! My guess would be either Nicky or Chuey, as these guys are well-known in town -- they've been doing this for over a decade. But especially since the pandemic, a few additional unhinged shouty guys have appeared.
I don't know what the solution is. Clearly the local government doesn't know either, because I've personally seen them arrest one of these guys quite a few times, usually when he gets particularly riled up or violent. He's always back though, sometimes in just a few days.
Feels like most people want a ethical system for guiding people like this out of the street and to a place that is safe and healthy for them and their community. This is impossible when you need to argue over who’s gonna pay for it.
So instead, poor systems are put in place, forcing the police to deal with these situations using the few tools they have at hand, including arrest, sweeps, etc.
It costs a massive amount to keep arresting and releasing these same people, on a weekly or monthly basis, year after year. Funding isn't necessarily the issue... the problem is the lack of any clear alternative.
Concretely, what ethical solution do you propose in the situation of a violent schizophrenic who refuses to take their medication, or a violent meth addict who won't stay clean? These people want to remain in their local community, but their community isn't large enough to have specialized facilities for their problems. And even if such facilities were local and taxpayer-funded, these people repeatedly refuse to remain in any voluntary treatment facility anyway. So what do you do, even if you had unlimited funding?
I agree funding isn’t the issue. The issue is the constant arguing over whose fiscal responsibility it is, causing the funds to be poorly used.
As for an ethical solution, I can’t say concretely in either of the cases you’ve listed because they are hypotheticals with no actual human details. Therein lies one of the biggest issues: social services do not scale easily. The only solution I’ve seen work is to get more professionals out and solving each case, one by one, according to their specific needs. This costs a fortune, but I guess we agree money isn’t a problem.
Hoboken NJ is only one square mile, so those factors don't really apply.
Also the link you provided is about why they don't want to move to shelters. GP is talking about people who are in shelters but do not want to move to permanent housing.
Fair enough. Here [0] is a survey of the homeless population in Hudson County. Last page shows pretty much everyone wanted housing help. But it doesn’t specifically ask about permanent housing, so I might need to keep digging to get a clearer picture.
In the mid-2000s when I lived there the city had a policy of not actively disrupting homeless encampments. There was a very well-known encampment located under the I-5 overpass just south of downtown called "The Jungle" [0]. SPD was prohibited from clearing it out and was only authorized to respond to reports of violent crimes. Not theft, drugs, prostitution, public inebriation, etc.
Occasionally, it seemed maybe once per year, they would actually get a task force to go sweep it out. But that was mostly only in response to outrage from residents of the adjacent Beacon Hill neighborhood. And then they would go back to ignoring it. And a month later the whole camp was back.
This is just one anecdotal example of Seattle's long history of indifference, even tolerance, of "shanty towns" and homeless camps. I don't know how it is now, but King County in general used to be littered with these things and people just seemed to think it was normal.
Seattle has, until recently, tolerated encampments on public property. The city council spends great chunks of money on outreach nonprofits that have dubious effectiveness (there are organizations doing good/effective work, to be clear).
The Seattle Police Department is woefully understaffed and has given up on responding to many quality of life and public order calls. In addition to drug use, car prowls, etc there is a thriving shoplifting-fencing business going on in spots throughout downtown. Enforcement has been very limited, so the problem has gotten out of hand. I have no clue why the Target near Pike Place remains open - they must be locked in their lease.
Sad as it is, I'm not optimistic that this problem will be solved any time soon, as long as people in SF (and in CA in general) believe that every social issue is purely a moral problem. You point out that SF is not safe? You're an oppressor, or worse in some people's mind: you're the Right. You are saying looting is bad? Oh, that's the worst offense, for you're now a white supremacist. You link increasing crime rate to lenient law enforcement? You're a racist. Note I'm not saying leniency is necessarily the cause of the higher crime right. Instead, I'm saying the discussion gets shut down so we don't make progress.
Everything seems to get framed morally instead of economically. By economically I don't mean with classism or monetarily, but game theoretic cause and effect. All proposals must be found to be overwhelmingly righteous before they can be analyzed for being effective.
>Sad as it is, I'm not optimistic that this problem will be solved any time soon
That should scare people more than anything. Right/left/center/up/down doesn't matter, I don't know anyone from any "side" that genuinely believes things are improving or will improve.
> My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome
This is true of everybody who takes a position first and finds arguments for it second. Their position is irrational to begin with. It's the same thing with baltimore: people defend it up and down as an amazing city, when in my opinion it's a nightmare of a place to live. SF sounds similar in that regard. The worst part is when people eventually get fed up and leave, their stockholm syndrome will cause them to repeat the mistakes that made their previous place so bad to begin with.
Every American city has rough parts (some more than others, including SF). There are definitely some very miserable and dangerous parts of San Francisco: Tenderloin, SOMA, Civic Center. But as someone who has lived here a while, I think this narrative that it's nothing but homelessness and crime is misguided. If you go West of Van Ness, there are so many beautiful and lively neighborhoods. Haight Ashbury, Hayes Valley, North of Panhandle, Pacific Heights, Japantown, Castro, Golden Gate Park, Inner/Outer Sunset, Inner/Outer Richmond, etc. The problem is that tourists mostly see the bad parts, probably because they're most accessible by public transit. The northern-most Caltrain stop is not in a nice area for example. There's a reason it's so enormously expensive to live here: demand.
Ehh... i live by the panhandle, and many of the common concerns are present here as well. People are just used to the idea of never leaving anything in their car, ever, and that smashed windows are just part of the costs of owning a car. I call 311 to report used needles laying on the sidewalk multiple times a year.
My gf lives near Castro, and she got her rear window smashed (nothing stolen because nothing in the car), and had to clean up a pile of human shit on her lower stoop, both this year alone.
I love SF, but I'm not one of those people who pretends this is normal. This biggest misconception is danger. It's a very safe city, that said, the anti-social behavior is really, really totally unbelievable to me. Only comparable to other west coast cities really.
Yes. It’s honestly a shame that the most trafficked parts of SF are the most dangerous, I’ve always thought that the narratives about crime were overwhelmingly because of this.
But isn't it the parts that the tourists go to that set the tone for outside perceptions?
It's got a chilling effect (I don't take mass transit to Downtown Denver, and I pay for my son to park on-campus at Metro, specifically due to similar crime happening on the light rail systems.)
Yes it got really bad during the pandemic. It’s as if the upper classes clearing out of downtown back to the burbs, avenues, and condos created a vacuum that all the other elements of the city filled. They were always there but more hidden. Now they’re in the open because nothing’s pushing back.
With all the shuttered businesses, downtown is basically dead right now. Whole blocks of nothing.
But the tide is shifting. Traffic is back, farmers market is packed, morning sidewalks are full of commuters. A few mor months and it will only be as bad as it was a few years ago.
in SFs dry season, my friend just leaves his windows open because his car got broken into so many times. Since hes left the window open he doesn't think his car got touched.
Same with Seattle. It’s better to just leave your car unlocked if you don’t want your windows broken. Sadly even if you leave a sign that nothing is inside and car is unlocked they still break the windows.
> Sadly even if you leave a sign that nothing is inside and car is unlocked they still break the windows.
Leaving the sign leads people who might be considering theft to believe that (1) there is something inside that you are trying to protect, and (2) the car is locked and wasting time trying to open the locked door will set off an alarm and reduce the chance of them getting the thing you are trying to protect before being noticed. So, yes, of course it has that effect.
These guys aren’t afraid of alarms one bit or getting caught. They want the change sitting in your cars cup holder but would gladly take a night in jail instead.
Stockholm syndrome is a fake condition invented on the spot, with no supporting scientific evidence or other basis, by the person most responsible for a particular incident of excessive police violence unnecessarily endangering hostages to leverage misogyny to discredit criticism of that event.
It being cited by advocates of increased violent policing as an explanation as to why the people who would be subject of that policy don’t support it is…perfectly on-brand.
This is a good point. I tried to use it in the more popular sense of "becoming over-accommodating to forces that are inherently against your interests," but there is an interesting psychological lens to view that argument from.
My one point of contention is that I didn't advocate for more violence, or even policing. I didn't advocate for anything at all! The comment was meant to frame the underlying topic without proposing a solution.
I was in the city all last weekend, in a hotel right on market street, and we walked everywhere (ferry building, chase center, SFDC) and it was safe, pleasant and delightful.
I live just outside the city and have for 12 years and while there is plenty of room for improvement, it’s always a joy to be there.
Meh, my own anecdote is I visit all the time and it's lovely. I feel like these sorts of things are just right wing never actually lived their rage bait.
Translation: Everyone else's anecdotes don't match mine so they've never 'actually' lived there and whoever disagrees with my anecdote is 'just right wing'.
I mean, you would have to refute the sources in some of the comments about the increasing crime in San Francisco then. [0] [1] [2] [3] If you think they are 'wrong' that is.
So the only link with actual data and not clickbait youtube or anecdotes was the link with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities... and rather than look at that link they still just said it "felt bad". It's crime rate is no worse than a place like Arizona, where I live.
If you think about it critically, it's similar to the manufactured panic around bail reform in New York.
The data shows it is working, but the police / entrenched folks are putting a lot of propaganda / money into reversing it.
There are always going to be loud folks proclaiming the end of times, especially when things change. And especially when there's money involved (policing has boatloads of cash involved, they don't want to see things change).
This is a little like saying LA is terrible because you stayed on Skid Row…
The in your face human suffering is awful but things are a lot less bad in other parts of the city. SF has a similar proportion of homeless people as other big cities but with no right to shelter (as in NY) far too few shelter beds are provided.
SF is fairly safe by American standards with a homicide rate half that of the country as a whole.
To the down voters, yeah the SF homicide rate is high for a developed country, but thank goodness it’s only half as bad as the US as a whole. If you plan to stay in the US where do you plan to move to that’s actually safer?
Well, where I live in the US, the homicide rate is way less than half of SF, I have never been accosted by a tweaker, never seen a carjacking, never seen or heard of a mugging, closest homeless/panhandling person I have ever seen was about 5 miles away (friendly and polite dude), and perhaps most importantly the only crap I see on the sidewalks tends to be avian in nature.
Where do you live? There is of course a lot of crime nearby me in SF but it's pretty dense so its spread across a large number of people so my personal risk is low. (There's maybe a million people in a 5 mile radius.)
Sadly most of the country has even weaker gun control so doesn't enjoy the relative safety of living somewhere like San Francisco where there are only four times the number of homicides compared to the UK/France/Germany. (4.5 homicides per 100k in SF vs 6.3 homicides in the US and 0.8-1.2 homicides per 100k in UK/France/Germany.)
Edit: Fixed SF crime rate to use full year figures since Wikipedia incorrectly links to half year figures.
I choose not to disclose my location on HN, but will say it’s on the rural outskirts of a larger metro area with a multi million population. There are areas within the metro with higher crime, but no where near SF.
I would argue that our lack of stricter gun control laws is why we are safer here. Almost everyone I know is armed in their home, and at least 33% of folks I know concealed carry. I realize that here on HN that statement will likely get me downvoted, but there is a reality to the preventative nature that being able to provide deadly defense to crime that I have experienced.
I’d have to see a reputable source on that statistic. The sense I get is places like Chicago, NY, Baltimore, other larger urban centers have some pretty strict firearms laws and still tend to have high homicide rates. Do those skew the numbers for the state?
As an example: Illinois may have lax state laws, but Chicago has strict gun laws, and lots of homicides. If you removed Chicago from Illinois statistics, how would that affect the state’s statistics
> My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome
There do seem to be a whole lot of people around CA with outright delusional ideas about Scandinavian cultures and policy choices. For all their much vaunted "socialism" (with Scandinavian characteristics) Stockholm is a lot less dysfunctional than San Francisco.
Somebody broke the passenger window of my car to unlock it and steal my stuff while I was sitting in the driver's seat talking on the cell phone, in Langton alley next to Brainwash. But that was decades ago. It's always been like that. Just get their attention and politely ask them to go away and steal somebody else's stuff.
Edit: I was being sarcastic, role playing an evangelist with Stockholm Syndrome, and was actually quite impolite to him, once I finally managed to get his attention!
Edit 2: Once I was lucky enough to observe the iconic green Art Nouveau neon sign of HOTEL ESSEX in the Tenderloin when just the right letters were burnt out to spell "HOT SEX".
Hotel Essex, at the corner of Ellis St. and Larkin St., in The Tenderloin, San Francisco.
>Hotel Essex. 684 Ellis Street. Hotel with 128 rooms and seventy-two baths. Architects: Righetti and Headman. 1912.
>Though unique amid the surrounding architecture, the Art Nouveau-inspired facade of the Essex was nevertheless crafted to blend in by its designer, James Francis Dunn. The hotel’s neon blade sign is especially fine. Now owned by the Community Housing Partnership, the Essex began undergoing renovation late in 2006.
>Night-Sign---Essex
>By the end of April 2008, its renovation was complete. The paint job is unfortunately garish and unbecoming, but the new marquee and restored blade sign are spectacular, although it seems the latter may still have some electrical problems. Even so, the corner of Ellis and Larkin is utterly transformed after dark by the torrid glow of neon.
Basing your experience in SF on what happens on Market Street is like going to LA and basing your experience on visiting Skid Row. The vast majority of the city is just not like that. If you run into resistance from people who live here when recounting experiences like this, it’s probably because your statement is one that doesn’t pass the smell test, it seems plainly like you’re being willfully misleading. Next time you come to SF, I recommend reading a travel guide and staying somewhere that isn’t Market Street. Public transit is good enough that you can do that, your experience will be much more enjoyable.
That’s awful. I hope they find the perpetrators and they are punished. The Sunset District is not an unsafe place by any metric. I’ve walked every inch of it, it’s quiet and pretty much a suburb within the city. The crime rates are low as well. I think crime could always be lower, but painting one of the safest neighborhoods in SF as being unsafe because crime happens at all is not a fair characterization.
Maybe you didn't venture out much, but you should realize that is _mostly_ exclusive to market street. One street of a thousand. Yes it occasionally happens elsewhere like any city, but Market and especially the tenderloin are infamous for the drug use and depravity.
Why people keep staying there instead of the hundreds of other and safer hotel locations? Maybe hotels need better regulated ratings to take into account the surrounding area.
Open to how you'd solve it. Fill up the overfilled jails and hospitals? Can't force people unless it's a 5150. You literally cannot stop what is happening without going full militarized police and how is that better?
Best thing you can do as a tourist is know where you are. It's no different than unsafe areas of Mexico and LA? You gonna stay near skid row?
SF weather and wealth is going to attract homeless and drugs, and unless you want to break the law to stop it, adapting is the next best thing.
Actually NVM it's just easier to shit on SF and act like everyone there is an idiot and the solution is simple.
The Bowery can be even worse then Market Street at times. There have been a couple of serial killers targeting rough sleepers over the last few years. The day to day experience of the Bowery is much safer than Market Street though because NYPD aggressively targets the area.
I've lived in rough neighborhoods before but even I was clutching my pearls! I can handle gangsters and cold shoulders, but this is another breed of degenerate. They're like zombies, slowly losing humanity!
The caveat being I met many kind folks too, homeless or otherwise.
[edit: I now remember I actually did see human biowaste.]