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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

A big difference between SF (and Portland for that matter) and other US cities seems to be that there is no clear line between "the good parts" of town and "the bad parts". You know the Bronx Concourse is bad, but in SF it's less clear which part isn't bad. Even 14 years ago I had friends visit from LA who walked 1 or 2 blocks in the wrong direction from Union Square and felt unsafe enough that they walked into a store and called a taxi to not have to walk "back to safety".

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Is that really true?

If you're in the Tenderloin, Civic Center area, parts of the Mission or SoMA, then sure, you know you're in a dodgy area. But I'm pretty sure that if you're in Forest Hills, West Portal, Lake Merced, or the Presidio, you'll feel pretty safe, and crime maps seem to bear that out. I'll take my preschoolers alone to visit friends in the city on public transportation - I drive to Forest Hills, park in the neighborhood, muni to the Castro. Never had a problem.

I think that what gets tourists to SF is that areas you'd expect would be safe are actually bad. Normally you'd expect that major shopping districts like Union Square, or the city government like Civic Center, would be safe. In SF they're right next to the Tenderloin, which is a cesspit of filth and addicts. And gentrified vs. dodgy areas in SF are very close together, like walking two blocks toward Valencia and Guerrero in the Mission is dramatically different from walking two blocks in the opposite direction to Van Ness and Folsom, or being on the north side of Potrero is dramatically different from wandering the south side.

In New York City, crime almost never spills out of the local "tenderloins" (projects, bad neighborhoods, etc.). For example, I recently lived about 5 blocks over from a housing project in Manhattan that had fairly high crime. At [x]th avenue and [y]th street, crime was very high because it was right next to the project. At [x]th avenue and [y + 1]th street, there was almost never a violent crime. When there was a murder on [x + 1]th avenue and [y + 4]th street, it was major local news. In SF, crime actually does spill out of the Tenderloin into areas that are major tourist centers, so it blurs the lines a lot if you are used to NYC.

There's some truth to this - I was talking to a friend about potentially moving to an apartment at [X] Street. They were aghast, hoping that I wasn't talking about [X] Street and [Y] Avenue, since its pretty bad at night. When I told them its [Y+3] Avenue, they were relieved and said that's a pretty nice area.

Eh I lived in tenderloin for a couple years and would often walk around alone past midnight to make a snack run or go to the gym. Definitely sketchy but never felt unsafe.

I have no delusions though, I would not consider any part of the city as truly safe, the metric being I'd be ok with my wife walking around alone.

You sound like Kara Swisher who lived in SF years ago and pretends nothing has changed since then.

I just said I don't consider any part of the city safe enough to let my wife walk around at night alone. Contrast that to any major city in say Japan, where I'd let my kids walk around alone at night.

Kara Swisher is a self-involved imbecile, please don't compare me to her.

This is just 100% wrong.

Much of SFs homeless population and crime is concentrated around the Tenderloin and SOMA areas with downtown also being relevant. You can use something like the Citizen app to get a rough geographic understanding.

This is an important topic but so many clueless individuals (not OP, in general) decide to comment anyways.

this is definitely not true of SF...its very obvious for anyone walking around when you are in a good or bad part (parts of SOMA/Tenderloin/Civic Center/Western Addition). Most other parts of the, including where this crime happened, feel completely safe (and statistically are very safe).

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