San Francisco has more drug addicts than students enrolled in public high school

The combination of high housing prices in Bay Area suburbs and more yuppies willing to stay in the city has noticeably altered the demographics. There are now fewer groups of single 20-somethings walking about, and more families.

I will be curious to see the numbers at the next census.

That describes many cities so much better than it describes SF.

To answer your question. I like it alright. Not enough to live there. But filled with 9-5ers? When I think of SF I think of the incredibly packed dolores park on a sunny saturday, the small 2 story homes running towards the ocean in outer sunset, or the huge amount of music venues.

But if you lived in say, the Mission, and didn't own a car, those things would be mitigated. (You'd get used to the smell).

Definitely not the case. Lots of people live in the city of San Francisco, though it's also true a lot of people commute in from the South and East Bays.

There are good things about the city, but the homeless problem (and really, that's what I think this is about) is a very serious issue that makes the place much, much less desirable.

I doubt you've had a chance to explore the city district-by-district if you think it's soulless.

There are many homeless people but they don't bother anyone and they're a product of the city's open culture.

Maybe I spent hours and hours sauntering through all the wrong parts. I could have totally missed the worthwhile bits of the city, just as I can imagine a visitor to Paris doing. But I'm starting to think that the people who live in San Francisco are, in some sense, kidding themselves. Or at least they don't travel much.

(For Europeans, I'd compare the lack of interesting-ness to Geneva, maybe.)

Perhaps if you are coming here to conduct commerce and nothing else it will just feel like... a place to conduct commerce! But that's something you can say about every financial district in the world. The places that have "soul" are almost never the places dominated by office towers.

Don't get me wrong, SF has many, many serious problems. Not being a city is not among them.

I lived near 24th and mission spent most of my non-work time in that area (mission / noe valley). I took BART to work and back. I picked up groceries at local grocery stores, fishmonger, and butcher. There was a butcher, fishmonger, and grocery stores nearby, with both south-east asian and hispanic ingredients.

Mission street has various grocery stores, hispanic restaurants, and Sun Fat Seafood. Valencia had some quirky stores, good restaurants, and coffee shops. If you head east on 24th, it's similar to mission, plus dynamo donunts and humphrey slocombe ice cream. West on 24th is Noe Valley, which is a little more upscale and full of people with either strollers or dogs. Lots of single-family and small multi-unit housing in the area.

It had pretty much everything I needed in walking distance.

The financial district does fit your description (it's a ghost town on weekends), but I presume that's typical of financial districts.

For the record, Texas still openly admits to shipping its homeless and drug addicts to California.

That didn't clear it up for you?

Unless them being enrolled, but not attending class because they are drug addicts makes them not students.

San Francisco has more drug addicts than San Francisco has students enrolled in highschool.

Using a number like 25000 is difficult to understand in your head.

4 years is a lot of time!

You probably see or are aware of high school age individuals throughout your day-to-day.

Now imagine for every 1 high school age young-adult, your city also has 1.5 injection drug addicts.

I think that puts things in perspective pretty well.