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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Three of these things are pretty normal in big cities --- having your car broken into (it was unbelievably bad back in the days where car stereos were valuable), having the soap locked up at the Walgreens, and feeling unsafe after dark.

But the other ones, having lived in San Francisco for a couple years and visited semifrequently afterwards, do feel sort of distinctively west coast.

Certainly the reported normalization of daylight retail store robberies seems pretty abnormal!

Later

Oh, my god, people, yes, I am referring to what’s normal in North America, not Europe. I assumed that was obvious but, whatever, I’m not here to defame Antwerp.

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> Three of these things are pretty normal in big cities --- having your car broken into (it was unbelievably bad back in the days where car stereos were valuable), having the soap locked up at the Walgreens, and feeling unsafe after dark.

At least here in Antwerp this is not normal at all, even though there is apparently a pretty big mafia who like making grenades explode.

In fact, I can't recall visiting any city, even in other countries, where this is considered "normal".

GP said American cities….

Outside of the US these are absolutely not normal in big cities.

My wife's empty car was broken into five times in 5 years in SF (we stopped replacing the stereo finally), the license plate stolen once.

Sorry, most of these are not normal in big cities in the developed world, e.g. Scandinavian countries or Western European countries (I only have personal experience with these outside the US).

Definitely not normal in southern Europe either.

You're being down-voted for some odd reason. This response is very accurate with regards to the types of crime that happen in most major cities.

EDIT: Having read the additional comments I understand that the perspective is those in US cities versus other locations in the world. The crime being described is common in major US cities.

I've never experienced this once in Texas cities like Austin or DFW. Neither have any of my friends. Less experienced with Houston, and it's generally less safe, but never a problem in the weeks I've spent there either. I was worried Austin was on the cusp of such problems a year or two ago when the mayor implemented SF style policies, but those have been rolled back and things are mostly back to normal.

Austin is extremely safe and barely even qualifies as a "large" city. Outside of downtown DFW is like a huge extended suburb, and listen to the way residents there talk about their downtown. Houston is a much better comparison and does deal with similar problems.

> I was worried Austin was on the cusp of such problems a year or two ago when the mayor implemented SF style policies

Extreme eye rolling here...

> Extreme eye rolling here...

Every underpass was filled with tent cities and trash. Downtown was covered with urine and there were protests that got out of control. Very little of that now.

Maybe if you watch the news rather than leaving your house, this is what you would think.

The encampments just got moved, they still exist. The cops left behind a ton of garbage too that was otherwise mostly handled by the homeless when the city was distributing garbage bags. Protests never got serious here at all, so curious what gave you that impression.

I do live here. I don't watch local news, I'm telling you my own observations, which may differ from your part of town. I don't live downtown, but my friends that do did observe protests turning violent on their block(localized,not in mass) and that's why they no longer live downtown.

There are many areas of DFW that are not safe. Perhaps if you don't leave Preston Hollow, Highland Park or Mckinney.. But, there are many parts of the city that I wouldn't want to be on a Friday night (and definitely not my wife and kids). I lived in a decent area and there were frquent break-ins on North East Dallas. Had a double homicide down the street about a month before we relocated to Europe. But, you can keep telling everyone how friendly it is. I know better.

--most major "American" cities.

Context is important...for example in Tokyo this would be highly unusual.

My suspicion with Japan is that they commit large numbers of their population -- who would be homeless -- into shadowy psychiatric hospitals. Which I think is worse.

I have never visited a city where any of that is normal, at least here in Europe.

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