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Comment by rajup | Hacker News Reader

You probably don’t want to step in SF ever. FTFY.

I feel like there are two SF's - the one that other people write about on 6th Street and the tenderloin, and then the one I visit west of that which is one of the most beautiful and vibrant American cities I have ever spent time in.

I think you need to be a bit desensitized to problems that are visible all over the city (e.g. trash under and along freeways etc) for that to not be the memory that sticks rather than the beauty.

It is like SF needs a “clean up the city volunteer day” once a month that is broadly attended.

Hmm, having just visited SF and then spent a week in New Haven and Hartford in CT, I can't agree. What American city doesn't have trash? I can't think of a city I have visited in the world that meets that standard. I haven't been, but maybe Singapore?

The homeless problem is very bad in California and SF in particular, and it is very concentrated in a small area to the east that looks positively dystopian. But that doesn't represent the whole city. If there is a next time you visit, I recommend spending some time in the panhandle, the Haight, the sunset, basically anywhere bordering golden gate park.

FWIW, I visit golden gate twice a week in average.

I guess I’m saying something a bit different. When people visit SF from SFO they get on the 101 and within 2 hours they have a feeling of things are broken and that memory sticks. I’m desensitized to those problems so I mostly see the beauty.

If people land at SFO and took 380 onto 280 thn straight to golden gate perhaps their impressions would be different.

They might have also taken Bart to the cheapest hotel they could find near Union Square.

I lived in New Haven for 4 years. The difference in the amount of trash between American cities is vast, compare NYC with Chicago. Or really any city on the east coast with Chicago for that matter.

I'm not sure if you mean that Chicago is clean or dirty? I saw a lot of both last time I visited, it's hard to say. It certainly seemed a lot cleaner than, say, Rochester NY or Philadelphia when I visited, but not sure if that was just the areas I was in.

Of course the difference is vast, I think you could compare one part of NYC with NYC even and end up with vastly different ideas of trash. And that's kinda what I am going on about; the trash under highways in some part of the city is a meaningless metric.

Chicago is a much cleaner city. No comparison with New Haven, NYC (where I used to live), Philly (where I live now) or really anywhere else on the east coast. The culture of throwing trash on the ground is endemic on the east coast.

I was flying from NYC to Denver a few months ago and a Denverite and I struck up a conversation on this very topic after observing multiple people throwing trash on the floor in LGA. Speaking of which, Denver, another city that is much cleaner than anywhere on the east coast.

It's because Chicago has alleyways to hide their trash and NYC doesn't. It's not that Chicagoans are any cleaner or have cleaner habits

Chicago also uses cans instead of throwing trash onto the streets. In conjunction with using alleyways I think we have planned structural differences between the two populations. Surely the beginning of an argument for the "cleaner" and "cleaner habits" between the two.

In my experience, empathy is a much better solution for these kinds of emotional reactions than desensitization.

So basically any big city. The tourist trap where one wrong turn can lead you to homeless encampments, and the actual city that people live in.

I used to live in the South Bay and go up to San Francisco and Oakland every other weekend. It was bad, but it seems to have completely gone to hell in the last decade.

I would not set foot there unless all of human existence depended on it.

I’ve wanted to leave SF for a few years as I don’t connect as well after having kids. It has slid but it is very easy to avoid the big problem areas and you get desensitized. But there is still lots to love about the city. It soul isn’t crushed yet.

hear hear! San Francisco is still a beautiful place, leagues ahead of the south bay strip mall.

I had Paris syndrome for SF real bad because of how it was described by people and portrayed in movies and when I finally went there it was uhh.. not somewhere I would live forever. I'm sure it's amazing if you live in the rich areas but I got an apartment in the mission which was sold to me by some of my native friends as one of the good semi-affordable areas for young professionals and it was culture shock.

All the novels and biographies I've read that make SF out as a cool bohemian wonderland were all written in the 60s/70s and even then they were lamenting about the good old days being gone. It's remarkable to see a city living so long off a reputation it earned generations ago.

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