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Comment by tayo42 | Hacker News Reader

Don't let the doom porn get to you. I lived in bernal for 5 years and never had a problem. Cole valley is right next to haight ashbury which attracts a fair amount characters. There's other neighborhoods that aren't in the middle of everything. Bernal heights, glen park, noe valley, pacific heights, the richmond and the sunset will be a little less crazy.

I think any American city will have some culture shock compared to Japan or Singapore. Just don't leave stuff out in the open, lock your stuff and maybe don't drive a prius, people like to steal the catalytic converters.

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> Just don't leave stuff out in the open, lock your stuff and maybe don't drive a prius, people like to steal the catalytic converters.

IME this is becoming an increasingly common attitude in many cities besides SF. And it’s a problem of social decay - fear of being considered an asshole by calling some behaviors just unacceptable. Americans are (somewhat ironically) terrified of being perceived as assholes, and we’re letting our social standards erode more and more each decade.

We don’t have to relent to this. Expecting to be able to leave something out and it not be stolen is not unreasonable. Expecting not to be assaulted is reasonable. Expecting people to not shoplift is a reasonable expectation in any civilized society.

For almost 30 years I've done that in US, suburbs and big cities.

I can think of like 5 different cities in Mexico that are safer than SF. Merida might top the list.

Californians should be ashamed but they continuously vote for this shit.

In bernal heights, someone smashed my window and stole my camera out of the back seat of my car while I was in the car. It was quite traumatizing, and I don't really like going to San Francisco anymore. (They knew we were in the car, but went for it anyways. Pretty brazen, and they got away with it.)

Sure the point is, people who experience these things are going to talk about and make it seem like it happens all the time. Everyone who has nothing to say is quiet so it can seem like nothing good happens

You are making it sound like it’s normal to have your car broken in, and the only difference is rate.

This is not the case. In many places, you can leave car unlocked for years, and no one is going to steal stuff from it.

Under those circumstances, even one case is a reasonable evidence that the crime situation is bad. And here we have an evidence of much more than one case.

I mean stuff gets broken into all the time. Unless your talking small town suburbs and rural areas. That doesn't seem fair to compare to a city. Your all making it sound like if you park in sf it's guaranteed your windows will be broken. It might feel like that if you only look at all the negative things people say.

And this won't be prosecuted as an armed robbery, if they even bothered to catch the perpetrator, even though it was.

Perks of living on top of a giant hill.

No one wants to hike bernal to rob someone.

I thought that, but in the last 6 months living at the top of golden gate heights, the number of garage and car break ins was crazy. Felt like one a day.

They’d case the block in broad daylight. I used to leave my car unlocked so at least there’d be no broken glass. Garage door openers were getting stolen and they’d come back to those houses later to empty out the garage. Cops never turned up when called.

Anyway we moved out of SF a month ago. No chance I’m paying that rent or mortgage in a city that won’t enforce its laws. Seattle’s been awesome so far.

Wow. If you think Seattle is awesome SF must've been bad. Please come to lovely Bellevue sometime. Much cleaner and safer than Seattle.

Eh, we looked on the east side. To each their own, but it felt lacking to us. I spent a great decade in Northern New England before heading west for a career, and I'll probably end up back there one day, but I value the diversity and even a bit of the grit Seattle has. I don't live in Belltown, so I find the city to be pretty clean and safe.

This isn't a swipe at Bellevue, it's just not for us. That was probably a swipe at Belltown though :D

> Seattle’s been awesome so far.

Seattle might be headed that way with our city council. Make sure to vote.

Let's make sure SF is the example of what not to do.

In order for that to happen, SF needs to be more progressive and more restorative justice.

If this actually works, then we would love to learn that lesson.

Don't stop yelling at police, your colleagues, and city leaders. Keep yelling, so they won't prosecute petty crimes.

This is true in southwest portland as well.

> Just don't leave stuff out in the open, lock your stuff and maybe don't drive a prius, people like to steal the catalytic converters.

These are not things you should have to do in a sane first-world country

You'd leave an expensive laptop or camera in your car in Paris?

I wouldn't leave an expensive laptop or camera in my car in Stockholm, Sweden. I certainly wouldn't in Paris, which is way worse.

Living near Boston I can tell you we often leave stuff outside, like a Weber grill, strollers, kid bikes and scooters, etc. If it's something expensive like my $1500 bike we do lock it even in the basement. It's been years and nothing was stolen. I know bikes are stolen in the neighborhood, but that mostly cases where people left their bikes unlocked in their yard for a while.

What I'm trying to say is that there are major US cities that are relatively safe. Fortunately not every city in the US has been following the CA politics.

Isn't "living near Boston" the key part here? You can live near sf and live in really quiet areas. Right next to sf is Daly city, pretty quiet, you can go across the bridge to Marin, near sf extremely different life style. 20 min to the south is a quiet beach town, half moon bay. You can live only near sf and have the same experience your talking about

Are you still in SF? SF today is vastly different from 2019 SF.

I moved mid 2020 to take advantage of remote work opportunities

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