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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

Same I've been to Philly and Barcelona, and live in Oakland, CA. Never felt like I was about to be robbed. I guess at the risk of being downvoted for victim blaming, "don't be stupid." It wouldn't surprise me if people let their guard down when they felt they were in a "safe" area.

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Depends on when you lived in Oakland, CA. When I lived there (Lake Merritt and 17th) in 1998/1999, it was a total war zone. Absolutely nobody went out a night, and cars would typically drive through red lights rather than stop.

I visited it recently, and the entire Lake area has become gentrified. Almost like an entirely new city, with lots of people out at night. And I wasn't too worried about being robbed. Of course, I was robbed at gunpoint just a few years ago walking home from work in Redwood City - so it just goes to show it can happen almost anywhere. Except, of course, Singapore. Gotta be the safest city in the world.

> live in Oakland, CA. Never felt like I was about to be robbed. I guess at the risk of being downvoted for victim blaming, "don't be stupid."

Unless things have improved a lot in the last fifteen years, it's really pretty easy for a tourist inclined to walk between touristy areas in Oakland to wander into an unsafe area. I wouldn't blame that on stupidity, it's not as if the city puts warning signs up.

> I've been to Philly and Barcelona, and live in Oakland, CA. Never felt like I was about to be robbed.

Maybe you don't know what the feeling is like? I mean, how long have you lived in Oakland? If you grew up in the city with the 3rd highest crime rate in the US, maybe your barometer isn't calibrated the best?

On the other hand, I lived in Detroit for years. I think most people conflate "visibly poor" with "actively dangerous" and feel scared when they shouldn't. So many people would come in from the suburbs and visibly panic because they saw a crumbling building or a homeless person and figured they were about to get mugged, even though they were by the DIA in broad daylight surrounded by a crowd of people. My university's campus had less reported crimes than U of M's while I was there, and I still had a middle aged suburban woman try to get my professor to end a 6-9pm class at 7pm because she was scared to walk the 100 well-lit feet from the lecture hall to the parking structure after dark.

I am a native Detroiter though I don't live there now. It has always puzzled me that people view Chicago as a safe and fun place to visit. Yet South Chicago is in many ways more dangerous than most Detroit neighborhoods. But they don't hold that against the city because most visitors never enter South Chicago. Yet people are afraid to visit downtown Detroit because of the crime in neighborhoods like precinct nine.

I think you are placing undue weight on the statistics. Just because it's the 3rd highest in the US does not mean every waking second is spent looking over your shoulder lest you be robbed.

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