SF has the highest per-capita property crime rate in the country among top 50 cities: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/us/san-francisco-torn-as-...

You can't use a personal anecdote to suggest SF is at least as safe as NYC or other major urban centers. "Anecdotally" I saw way more broken glass on sidewalks from car break-ins, saw several phone jackings in broad daylight, and, at the same day, remember wondering to myself on many days why I hadn't seen a single police officer/car on my regular commute...

I'm frankly surprised the situation in SF has not garnered more attention. At Ed Lee's funeral, it was endless adulation. You wouldn't know what the city had become. We've gone well beyond trash-chic...SF has become downright dangerous and teetering on something far worse.

I don't go to SF unless I have to now. I have no idea why rich people are still flocking to SF. It is only a matter of time before the homeless set up at Broadway and Broderick.

Last time I was there I saw a nice woman driving in a top-line Range Rover with her cute blonde kids in the back. They stopped at an intersection near the Bay Bridge. The underpass was jammed with tents and all manner of desperate people. Some young guy from the camp made eye contact with them and stared them down from a distance...they were oblivious. These people think the invisible wall will hold. I don't want to be in SF the day it breaks down, and I am convinced it will.

The city government isn't liberal enough to raise a local tax to build a solution, but also not conservative enough to take a hard line. They're just letting it fester and it will become worse and worse until someone decides to break through the invisible line separating the tent cities from the Pac Heights mansions.

Sorry, how do you know the woman was nice? And what do the kids being blonde have to do with the situation you witnessed?

I see what you're fishing for. Look, if you want to accuse someone of racism, just come right out and say it.

I'm not looking to accuse anyone of racism here. It just felt as though there were some underlying values being expressed in the comment that were not being stated explicitly.

I find it extremely difficult to have meaningful conversations when we obscure our values and are not transparent about our ethical reasoning. The commenter said the driver was nice but clearly didn't interact with her. "Nice" is a signifier of value and I was hoping to tease out a conversation about that.

It dog whistles the hair color of the evil person staring at their car.

San Francisco is far from Detroit or East St. Louis or even other places in California.

Though I may have a different perspective on “crime” since I’m not as easily scared and use my senses to keep me out of trouble. It’s a city, shit happens just make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

Yeah... no. Not all cities are equal - as the crime stats you just ignored show.

I just moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn - it's not the same as Manhattan, but I still feel safer in Brooklyn than in SF.

And you say "avoiding the tenderloin even during the day is common sense" - it's not the Bronx, it's in the middle of town. Make a left from a $400/night hotel room and you're standing next to human feces and needles.

That would be like if I told NYC visitors to "avoid midtown west in Manhattan, it's just common sense."

But you know what is interesting - you would've gotten that advice in NYC in 1985. Times Square wasn't safe. Now it's a shithole of a different variety - but a safe one.

SF doesn't need to be the way it is.

> Make a left from a $400/night hotel room and you're standing next to human feces and needles.

To be fair, there are human feces all over downtown.

Personally, I think pooping is a human right. Cities which don’t provide public toilets are de facto sanctifying defacating on the sidewalk.

What are broke people supposed to do, hold it until they get a job?

I think there’s a transgressive element to pooping on the sidewalk specifically, as opposed to areas that are still accessible but not directly in people’s walking paths.

That said, I certainly don’t blame them for being transgressive.

We had friends recently stay at the Hilton near "Union Square". It didn't describe that it was basically in Tenderloin and the area was pretty shitty, and even worse at night. Had we known we would have warned them, because it's very deceiving.

Pretty much all hotels in the city are around the Tenderloin. You can't really avoid it, it's in the heart of the city.

The Hilton is legitimately in the Union Square area. The problem is that if you take the most obvious route to Market St. and the Moscone, that takes you right through the Tenderloin if you don't know to avoid it. (That said, I try to avoid the Hilton on O'Farrell if I can.)

You see what you want to see. If you think it’s such a crime ridden place horrible, when really every place in the first world deals with the same issues, then fine. I choose to see it for what it is, it’s not anarchy here, things are just fine

> it’s common sense not to be out there wandering around even during the day

It seems pretty bad that a major western city has a completely no-go area right in the middle. Dismissing it as not a problem because it’s common sense to avoid a large area of the centre of the city doesn’t help the argument!

Ellis & Taylor: https://youtu.be/RNXNrPwyJuk

The Tenderloin is a shithole. Don't go there. And don't park your car on the street down there unless you like replacing window glass. Loads of shady looking people standing around, selling and buying crack, screaming at the top of their lungs at ghosts as they zigzag down the street dodging cars, and homeless people shitting and pissing on the sidewalks. Also lots of petty theft and assault, and the SFPD doesn't do much about it.

It's not at all a no-go area. The Tenderloin is one of the most expensive and desirable neighborhoods in SF. It's no worse than the Mission or 6th and Market. It's definitely the best place I lived in all of SF, including the Mission, SOMA, and the Sunset. No wonder people are paying $3-4k a month for studios there. Yes, there are drug spots and such but it's definitely not a place to fear or avoid. That's nonsense.

This is the first time I've heard about The Tenderloin being a desirable neighborhood. Are you sure you were actually living in the Tenderloin and not one of its adjacent neighborhoods?

Yes. I'm also sure of my rent going up $600 in one year and not being able to afford to live there anymore.

I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an infant. The main 'problem' people have is that there are poor people living there in SROs, and a good number of homeless people loitering all the time. But they mostly keep to themselves. Some folks certainly have substance abuse or mental health problems and will be talking to themselves, and if you walk through you might get shouted at, and sometimes there is a shouting match out in public, and statistically there is some amount of crime between residents, but it's generally not a physical threat to people walking through. It is by no means a 'no-go area'.

> I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an infant.

Are you joking? Or just insane?

I'm a 160 lbs male and would not walk through the tenderloin at night. It's really fucking scary. Almost everyone there is homeless and on drugs. The bad kind of drugs.

I would go so far as to say that someone carrying an infant through that area might be endangering the child.

Kid or no kid, the Tenderloin is fine as long as you "fit in"... but if it looks like you can be scared out of some cash, you will get the predatory stare.

My wife got attacked in San Francisco in Tenderloin around 11am, a few blocks away from Clift Hotel on the second day of the trip. I guess her carrying a Starbucks cup made her a target.

The fact that SF tolerates shit like this under the banner of "acceptance", "it is mental health" or whatever the hell it may be is mind blowing.

CCW would help, though that’s not available in CA.

Between hot coffee into his face and her doing a little bit of a small joint manipulation, she was fine. Just shocked.

People living in a snooty wealthy bubble get 'really fucking scared' pretty easily. It's not like drug addicts sitting on the sidewalk go out of their way to attack strangers walking by in the middle of a busy public street. I'm not recommending you find a big angry looking person and insult his mother.

There are lots of people with kids who live in the Tenderloin and presumably pass through their own neighborhood at all hours.

Walking around near poor homeless people now counts as 'child endangerment' I guess...

Not to be mean but 160 lbs isn't heavy at all. If you're pushing 200 lbs and go to the gym regularly you'll have a lot less people bothering you on the street. I still wouldn't recommend walking through the Tenderloin alone though.

> I would go so far as to say that someone carrying an infant through that area might be endangering the child.

This is nonsense. You must be extremely easily scared. For normal people, it's perfectly fine.

Looks like a proper shithole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zzhVQRO9jY

I mean I've lived in Bolivia and never seen _anything_ as bad as this at it's worst, in Bolivia's worst areas.

Do people in Bolivia shit on the side of the street or in other public areas? Because that's what they do in SF. So many homeless people shit on the BART escalator that it once took a station's escalations out of service.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down...

Shitting onto the escalator? How exactly? Is it moving during the process?

Yes, off hours it's one of the few places people can defecate in almost private (thanks to its side walls).

Privacy isn't necessary. Homeless people shit right on Market street in broad daylight.

Last time I spent a week in SF for WWDC, I saw one car breakin (near Height-Ashbury) and one woman get her phone snatched and shoved to the ground so violently she hit her head on the pavement and started bleeding (Market street).

I've never witnessed a single act of crime like that in any other city I've been to on earth (I lived in Europe, now in Asia), so it was quite shocking.

Thanks for your anecdote. I have had friends beaten up and robbed in the Mission. I have a friend who lives in Bayview who had his windows shot out. My friend's friend was mugged in Glen Park BART station, she was punched in the face and the mugger grabbed her bag, no one did anything. My wife's friends had their phones stolen off their table at a Starbucks in Noe.

Sure, and the same anecdotes hold in Manhattan. I've had friends robbed at knifepoint in the Upper West Side, I've seen phone jackings at 1pm in front of Gristedes in the Upper East Side. Hell, my brother's roommate in Harlem was clocked with a baseball bat in the head while leaving his apartment and subsequently robbed blind.

By and large NYC and San Francisco are both very safe cites in the grand scheme of things. (Unless you are a car window in San Francisco. Then you are screwed).

Look at the crime stats: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/public_safety/crime-selec...

In 2014 (NYC has only gotten better), SF is substantially worse by virtually every measure - some metrics over 3x worse per capita.

Trying to equate them - or even consider them similar - is generally dishonest.

or if you are on BART are terrorized by a gang of teens

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/11/25/group-of-teens-strik...

Sure, and groups of teens in NYC have been sucker punching random people on the streets for a few years now. [1]

[1] http://www.newsweek.com/new-yorkers-are-getting-sucker-punch...

Sure - NYC isn't crime free. But you're ignoring the actual data that shows the prevalence per capita to be substantially lower than SF.

I never said San Francisco was safer than NYC, but even looking at those statistics they are mostly comparable in terms of violent crimes (notice that I did say your car is much more likely to get burgled in San Francisco), and the rate of aggravated assault is higher in that study in NYC. My point is that that both San Francisco and NYC are by and large safe cities by American city standards.

Need CCW.

I once had dinner at Montesacro Pinseria at night and parked a couple of blocks away....the walk to the alley where the restaurant is was interesting. I didn't feel unsafe simply because so many people were outside and there was lots of traffic but I still was pretty surprised that SF had areas like that. I joked with my wife , who was terrified, that it reminded me of CJs first neighborhood in GTAV.