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Comment by dawhizkid | Hacker News Reader

SF has the highest per-capita property crime rate in the country among top 50 cities: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/us/san-francisco-torn-as-...

You can't use a personal anecdote to suggest SF is at least as safe as NYC or other major urban centers. "Anecdotally" I saw way more broken glass on sidewalks from car break-ins, saw several phone jackings in broad daylight, and, at the same day, remember wondering to myself on many days why I hadn't seen a single police officer/car on my regular commute...

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I'm frankly surprised the situation in SF has not garnered more attention. At Ed Lee's funeral, it was endless adulation. You wouldn't know what the city had become. We've gone well beyond trash-chic...SF has become downright dangerous and teetering on something far worse.

I don't go to SF unless I have to now. I have no idea why rich people are still flocking to SF. It is only a matter of time before the homeless set up at Broadway and Broderick.

Last time I was there I saw a nice woman driving in a top-line Range Rover with her cute blonde kids in the back. They stopped at an intersection near the Bay Bridge. The underpass was jammed with tents and all manner of desperate people. Some young guy from the camp made eye contact with them and stared them down from a distance...they were oblivious. These people think the invisible wall will hold. I don't want to be in SF the day it breaks down, and I am convinced it will.

The city government isn't liberal enough to raise a local tax to build a solution, but also not conservative enough to take a hard line. They're just letting it fester and it will become worse and worse until someone decides to break through the invisible line separating the tent cities from the Pac Heights mansions.

Sorry, how do you know the woman was nice? And what do the kids being blonde have to do with the situation you witnessed?

It dog whistles the hair color of the evil person staring at their car.

I see what you're fishing for. Look, if you want to accuse someone of racism, just come right out and say it.

I'm not looking to accuse anyone of racism here. It just felt as though there were some underlying values being expressed in the comment that were not being stated explicitly.

I find it extremely difficult to have meaningful conversations when we obscure our values and are not transparent about our ethical reasoning. The commenter said the driver was nice but clearly didn't interact with her. "Nice" is a signifier of value and I was hoping to tease out a conversation about that.

San Francisco is far from Detroit or East St. Louis or even other places in California.

Though I may have a different perspective on “crime” since I’m not as easily scared and use my senses to keep me out of trouble. It’s a city, shit happens just make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

Yeah... no. Not all cities are equal - as the crime stats you just ignored show.

I just moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn - it's not the same as Manhattan, but I still feel safer in Brooklyn than in SF.

And you say "avoiding the tenderloin even during the day is common sense" - it's not the Bronx, it's in the middle of town. Make a left from a $400/night hotel room and you're standing next to human feces and needles.

That would be like if I told NYC visitors to "avoid midtown west in Manhattan, it's just common sense."

But you know what is interesting - you would've gotten that advice in NYC in 1985. Times Square wasn't safe. Now it's a shithole of a different variety - but a safe one.

SF doesn't need to be the way it is.

> Make a left from a $400/night hotel room and you're standing next to human feces and needles.

To be fair, there are human feces all over downtown.

Personally, I think pooping is a human right. Cities which don’t provide public toilets are de facto sanctifying defacating on the sidewalk.

What are broke people supposed to do, hold it until they get a job?

I think there’s a transgressive element to pooping on the sidewalk specifically, as opposed to areas that are still accessible but not directly in people’s walking paths.

That said, I certainly don’t blame them for being transgressive.

We had friends recently stay at the Hilton near "Union Square". It didn't describe that it was basically in Tenderloin and the area was pretty shitty, and even worse at night. Had we known we would have warned them, because it's very deceiving.

Pretty much all hotels in the city are around the Tenderloin. You can't really avoid it, it's in the heart of the city.

The Hilton is legitimately in the Union Square area. The problem is that if you take the most obvious route to Market St. and the Moscone, that takes you right through the Tenderloin if you don't know to avoid it. (That said, I try to avoid the Hilton on O'Farrell if I can.)

You see what you want to see. If you think it’s such a crime ridden place horrible, when really every place in the first world deals with the same issues, then fine. I choose to see it for what it is, it’s not anarchy here, things are just fine

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