Not disagreeing, but just to test this a bit. I'm in San Francisco. What's the safest and easiest way for me to go acquire Bitcoin or Ethereum right now? Note, I don't have a credit card.
It gets harder if you're somewhere more rural, and many of the LocalBitcoins online traders (at least in the UK) require a lot of KYC information, but you should be able to find somebody if you look for long enough.