Hacker News Reader

Comment by zghst | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com