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Comment by simonbarker87 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel all over the world and hands down the most dangerous feeling city I’ve been in is SF. I have no idea why people want to visit there, let alone live there.

In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities. Not that I don’t keep my awareness up in other places but something about the US sets off my spidey senses. NY felt fine but SF, Miami, Buffalo all felt iffy.

*clarification: I’m not saying that SF is the most dangerous city in the world, but of the cities I have been to around the world, it has felt the least safe.

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+1 for weirdest vibe city being SF. The wealth disparity there is enormous, and evident to see in the faces of the people who walk the streets there: people adorned in designer hoodies and expensive sneakers, exuding an air of smugness as they sip their artisanal lattes, pretending the rest of world doesn't exist, as they walk past an alleyway where homeless people stare out at them hungrily. It was surreal. I've never been in a city where your average pedestrian is supremely pleased with themselves for existing in it.

I saw more humanity in an LA bus station, where random strangers traded USB battery packs whilst waiting for the bus, and the bus driver himself breaking his back to haul in and strap down a disabled person to their seat, and waving on the others in who didn't have the right change.

While I was in SF this wealth disparity feeling was present, but it was an order of magnitude less than what I saw in Mumbai. There you have 30+ story building acting as the personal residence for a multi bilionare (complete with 2 helipads) and across the street a family of 3 living on a "tent", cooking food on a makeshift fire made from trash and a baby drinking milk out of a transparent plastic bag - all of this under the nauseating smell of human feces. This wasnt a one off thing, its all over the place.

And yet, our tv stations and metro editions of newspapers go on and on about the spirit of Mumbai.

Still, there’s no city like Mumbai in the whole of India. It’s literally got something for everyone.

On the positive side it's a whole lot better than 20 years ago where there was virtually no middle class in India at all.

It comes down to the part of the city you visit. LA, Sac, Sf all have similar areas to what you saw in SF.

They have other nice areas too, where the residents can ignore the problems that concentrated in certain neighborhoods. And they continue opposing building up single family home areas.

All major west coast cities have massive disparities and homeless problems.

And even other cities like Phoenix have big homeless problems. But building cities super spread out does serve to make the homeless problem go elsewhere, I.e a downtownish area.

If you write, “In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities”, I wonder if you have ever been to, say, Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario), South Africa (Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town), Peru (Lima), or Kenya (Nairobi). There it is one’s local contacts who encourage one to be vigilant and plan routes across the city carefully. The US has wacky urban safety issues, but it is just one member of a whole set of countries with urban safety issues.

It’s likely that none of these other countries suffer from American exceptionalism.

I assume it was intentional, but the irony of this comment is fantastic.

You're correct, I don't have any experience in those cities. I would expect those places to be sketchy (maybe not Lima but today I learned I guess) - I think what made my SF experience worse is that its a well known city in the richest country in the world and it's awful.

I've been to and grown up in a bunch of those African cities. As long as you don't go to dodgy areas you're perfectly fine, even dirt-poor areas are fine. Sure your houses are little mini fortifications and security is everywhere in "rich" neighborhoods. .. but it's a nothing burger for the most part.

I have cycled Africa extensively and I would agree for most cities on the continent. Africa is very safe in spite of dumb stereotypes, even when one is entering cities through the sprawling impoverished neighborhoods, and locals don't warn a visitor against anything. But Nairobi and South African cities have a mugging problem that all local people showed great concern about, and sometimes "dodgy area" is a central district of the city.

I guess it depends a bit on what you compare it to but the murder rate in Cape Town is about 10x that in SF and both seem quite bad to me as a Brit.

How's Monrovia?

It has been a few years, but I don’t remember it as any different from the previous West African capitals (Dakar, Bissau, Conakry, Freetown) that I had cycled into.

Definitely do not come to Brazilian big cities then. It is another order of magnitude more dangerous.

Especially for women, yeah. I grew up in rough neighborhoods but you need to know the area or have a guide and a good rep doesn't hurt.

Yeah, was looking to see if this comment existed. Sao Paolo feels like one of the richest cities in the world surrounded by one of the poorest cities in the world. I've been to more than 50 countries and hundreds of big cities, and Sao Paolo feels like it has the craziest gradient between rich and poor. I'm not even sure San Francisco would make the top 10.

(High up would be: Sao Paolo, Rio, Bangalore, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Riyadh, ...)

SF isn't Haiti but it is in decline. It's sad because it was so cool back in the 1990's and 2000's.

I think the counterintuitive thing about bringing up Brazilian cities here is that central Sao Paolo (where just the central part has about 3x the population of San Francisco) feels richer than San Francisco. And the favelas on the edges, which have a population larger than the whole Bay Area, feel poorer than almost anywhere in the world, with nowhere in the US that can hold a candle to such. And just the favelas of Sao Paolo have a population larger than most US states.

Cities wax and wane. SF boomed from the gold rush, 1880s-1906, 1920s, 1940s, 60s, and as you noted, dot com period. In between it’s varied from stasis (1870s, 50s) to quite grim (30s, 80s — the latter much worse than today).

The swings in Silicon Valley and other parts of the Bay Area have been much less extreme in these regards. Most of the wealth is in the Valley, just more diffuse and harder to see.

Yeah, it still sucks though. The US is going through a slump and it really shows in some of our major cities.

> The US is going through a slump

The US economy is growing gangbusters but 40+ years of "Reagan revolution" have really taken their toll. That ideology has infused many with the belief that if something is broken it should not be fixed; rather that its problems mean that further intervention will simply make things worse.

Even SF, that supposed "liberal" city (whatever that means), suffers from this sickness.

Yeah I guess that's what I mean. The US economy is doing well but not good. I feel like people have less these days. Business is great but the middle class is evaporating. For the average worker it seems pointless to engage with our great economy. Incentives are all out of whack.

What happened to you in Bangalore?

Nothing. To be clear, I wasn't talking about actual danger, as much as the felt gradients in rich and poor between the places, often in a small distance. And the gap between, say, the Infosys campus, and bits of Bangalore only a couple kilometers away is huge. Kind of the GINI of a city...

Lagos is also high up there... Had some friends basically get robbed by the police on their first night in town. :p

Haven't been, but would have expected such from things I've heard. But corruption and inequality to a large extent vary independently. There's some correlation, but not as much as one might expect. Case in point: the Balkans are very corrupt, but inequality isn't especially high.

Maybe the Balkans just didn't have the time to reach those levels yet, because the tendency is there. Case in point, Romania, where more and more pieces of land (city, national parks, whatever) get fenced off and used for the whims of the ruling kleptocracy, while (certain) suburbs are decaying year after year by every indicator.

Romania is actually the least corrupt Balkan country (if one counts them as Balkan). In my experience, former east-block countries tend to have high corruption, but relatively good infrastructure and relatively low inequality. They're fairly unique in where they sit on the development ladder, because it seems like quashing corruption is the major missing piece to reaching prosperity. (Whereas in many / most poor countries, there's a lack of intellectual capital, and solving education and growing the professional sector is at best a multi-generational project.)

Riyadh is dangerous and has a clear gradient between the poor and the rich?

I stayed in the Al Bat'ha district when I was there, where there were virtually no short-term visitors (can't say "tourists" since Saudi Arabia didn't have tourist visas; I was speaking at a conference, but stayed for an extra week). It never felt dangerous, but there was a massive gap between ritzy central Riyadh and the market district. Close to half of the population of Riyad are guest workers with limited rights and low salaries; I can't remember if that seemed to be the reason for the gap. This was also 20 years ago, so I don't have any sense for how it's developed since, but I'd be surprised if it has changed.

20 years ago? Man Riyadh is a completely different city now, even locals from other cities can't believe how much it has changed.

This the first result from a quick search about it https://www.visitsaudi.com/en/see-do/destinations/riyadh

And the 40% of the city that are Desi immigrants also enjoy that improvement? There were very nice things in the city 20 years ago (and all of the cities I listed); they just weren't available to a major chunk of the population. I'm skeptical that that part has changed in Riyadh?

Things did definitely improve for them though the gap remains. Still, the gap does not mean it’s dangerous. I haven’t been to Riadh but if it’s similar to Doha/Dubai, then you can walk into a worker’s neighborhood at anytime with no consequences.

A good friend went with his buddy to São Paulo couple of decades ago, as part of a multi-country holiday trip.

As they got out of the taxi in front of the hotel, someone got shot further down that same street. They checked in, and went for some food. When they got back they learned the people in the room next door had just gotten all their stuff stolen.

They left right away after that.

Sure this isn't a unique experience, but coming from Norway it was pretty far from what we're used to.

Coming from the United States this is pretty far from what I'm used to.

While we're sharing anecdotes, I've visited 30+ cities. I've been SF twice, for 10 days total.

SF the only one I've been attacked and had car broken into. Two separate occasions!

The contrast with the wealth had a dystopic feel.

I felt thee same. 50+ countries, and the only place where I was genuinely scared? San Francisco. It looked like the intro of a dystopian scifi movie.

> In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities.

The US is a big place with a lot of diversity. I've been to many US and European cities and they all seem to have sections that are safe and those that are not safe.

Most Eastern European cities are safe. They don't have big immigration, either.

Most western European cities that I have visited are safe and they have big immigration. I think low immigration might be a factor in some cases, but the big thing is having a working social security net that gives people opportunities when they're down. That improves safety in all cases.

>big thing is having a working social security net that gives people opportunities when they're down.

Bruxelles, Amsterdam, Paris have welfare. And that attracts the wrong people. I wouldn't want to wander in many neighborhoods in those cities. Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest, Belgrade, Sofia, Prague are much safer.

> Bucharest, Belgrade, Sofia

the problem in eastern europe isn’t violence. it’s cars.

the deaths/injuries in those specific countries from car accidents is greater than general deaths/injuries in western countries from any reason (violence, cars, etc).

Most of car related deaths or accidents are happening outside of cities.

You'll be most probably fine even in the sketchy neighborhoods in Sofia, e.g.

https://youtu.be/2qmpfsW-J34?si=wR7FyFv8ocnVCJLC

The car accidents problem is real, though ... there's the half-serous saying that accidents of this type are our form of mass-shootings.

It's not welfare that attracts people but the better economic prospects. No idea about Bruxelles and Amsterdam, but I work in Paris and it is quite safe.

> The wrong people

TIL I am "the wrong people". Ok then. Have a nice life.

I can't comment about other capitals but there are entire neighborhoods in Bucharest where police just doesn't go in. Same in Brasov - and these are just my two Romanian examples. I know it's common to blame the immigration for the issues, but let's not forget part of Western immigration also comes from the Eastern Europe.

If there are entire neighborhoods in Bucharest and Brasov, then name them. I suspect that this is complete hyperbole, because when I think of the worst and most shunned neighbourhood in Cluj – Pata Rât where the Roma population was gathered to dwell on a rubbish dump – it isn’t a dangerous, no-go area by USA or South American standards at all. I and fellow cyclists have often passed through Pata Rât at night when returning from cycling trips in the surrounding mountains, felt no danger when stopping to chat with some kids in the street curious about the bike, and the real danger is merely the fumes of burning plastic. Quite a few tourists and Erasmus students also go to get a look at that neighbourbood.

Living there, I don't believe you. I went often in Ferentari and never had trouble.

This really isn't true for much of Europe. There aren't 'dangerous areas' in Germany, Ireland or the UK, that compare to the extreme risk profile of skid row in LA or San Francisco, or the projects of many American cities. The degree of ghettoisation in the US, as well as of course the wealth disparity, outstrips anything in most of Western Europe.

One notable exception would be a 100 metre stretch of road near the Frankfurt central station. Berlin is safe, but one or two places are getting sketchy.

A part of the issue, allegedly, is that the Taliban cut Europe’s heroin supplies when it burnt the poppy fields, and addicts have turned to harder drugs. You certainly see a lot more broken people around, even if they don’t seem dangerous.

what is a harder drug than heroin?

Fentanyl is 20-40x more potent.

Krokodil

I’d have to disagree with you on the stretch of road near Frankfurt HBF.

Sure, it’s a tad dicey in comparison to other streets in Frankfurt but it’s in no way comparable to what I’ve experienced in SF.

From my experience (I visit multiple times a year as my dad lives there) the homeless people and drug addicts in Frankfurt largely keep to themselves and just sit outside the subway together, albeit taking drugs.

It was for me. The main difference was that it was a small stretch of a side street at 11PM versus a whole city block in the middle of the day. SF was bad!

That’s fair, everyone’s experience is unique to them I guess. Maybe you had a unlucky encounter. I generally feel pretty safe around the area at any time of day/night. SF on the other hand, I definitely felt a bit like I had to be on guard most of the time.

I’ll never forget the fact that the lady in the Thai restaurant I visited literally locked the door and you had to knock in order to enter. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I feel safer wandering the streets of Delhi and Meerut in the early hours than SF at noon.

You're not crazy, that's the way SF is these days. It's the same with PDX. People on the MAX look scared. If you take a bus heading out to Gresham things get super sketchy. The East Coast is okay. NY is cool but Baltimore is nuts and then D.C. is hella cool.

You’re fear mongering and spewing ignorance. I live in Portland and it’s not even close to what you say. It sounds like you’re scared and pushing it off on everyone else. The only thing to be really scared of is the police here because they by and large don’t help anything or anyone. They’re also rife with white supremacists who can’t be fired because of their union and an absolutely pathetic wormlike mayor. This same dialogue blames “homelessness” for downtown being dead instead of overpriced rents and an absolute lack of culture that never recovered from covid.

My coworker who lives in Vancouver, Washington calls it the Portland war zone. When the riots were going on he would say I’m not sure if I see smoke or tear gas over there but it’s definitely not fog.

They were protests not riots. The police were gassing non-violent protests in residential neighborhoods. This is exactly the fear mongering I’m talking about. Some people who you “know” have second hand information, or just made things up, and you’re peddling it third hand. Once again, there were no riots, and anyone who stated this is lying or being fed bullshit from their TV news.

The protests were protests, the riots were riots. I knew some of the people at both. It was half panic and half LARPing. I had to work because I was put my wife through college at the time.

I’ve been visiting Portland since 2002. I knew all the old school business owners and locals. I was at Occupy Wall Street PDX. I lived there off and on for ten years after 2008. For the first half I worked in Chinatown. For the second half I worked with police, hospitals, social workers, homeless shelters, etc. through Covid and the George Floyd riots. Cops still do stuff but their role has been limited by public opinion and they’re trying to keep crime stats low so the turn break-ins into welfare calls. The transplants after 2014ish turned Portland into a mess.

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