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Where exactly is this war zone in California...? Growing up in the sticks I'd heard so much about it and had hilariously low expectations when I went out for a

by s5300 6y ago

Where exactly is this war zone in California...? Growing up in the sticks I'd heard so much about it and had hilariously low expectations when I went out for an internship, but then I found out that it's a fucking amazing place. I swear there's got to be a decades long campaign to make outsiders think the place is terrible in an attempt to keep density down. Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy if so. Don't want my paragliding ocean bluffs overpacked with people. :P

femiagbabiaka 6y ago
sssshhhhhh
anonymoushn 6y ago
I lived near 5th and Market and walked to a tech company I love very much near Giants Stadium. This is a short walk. One place I regularly walked by was the site of a random slaying by a person who had been released from prison after being arrested for randomly assaulting people in the same place years before.
flukus 6y ago
> Where exactly is this war zone in California...? No idea how universal these things are in all of California, but nearly every Australian that visits LA and a few other areas come back with stories about hearing gunshots from the hotel, accidentally ending up in a seedy/crime ridden part of town or something similar. This is very alien to us and more in line with what we'd see on the news from Somalia. Statistics like homicide rates and gun crime show there's at least some truth it. We're also a fairly egalitarian society, so much more likely to judge other nations on how well off the poorest are and not the richest.
- rxhernandez 6y ago
  I have lived in LA county for more than 25 years and lived in East Hollywood ~1 year. I have never heard gunfire anywhere in LA. I'm sure it happens in the worst areas but I've never heard it and I've been around plenty of recreational gunfire (outside of LA). Do you think it's possible they're mistaking gunfire with fireworks? There are plenty of fireworks here.
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    > I'm sure it happens in the worst areas I think the fact that those areas exist comes as a shock to Australians, who are used to gun control and probably never heard let alone seen a single gun in their lifetime
ironmagma 6y ago
People in San Francisco will threaten you with violence just for wearing a nice-looking jacket. Nothing about that is healthy.
InvertedRhodium 6y ago
While I agree that the other poster was being a bit dramatic, it's no stretch to say that California performs objectively poorer in a number of areas that people tend to pay attention to. Just take one crime - the murder rates in California are 4.3 per 100,000 and only 0.8 in Australia. I can see why some people could see a 450% increase in the likelihood of being murdered as a comparitive warzone.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Looks like (from a quick googling, may be something I'm not taking into account here) violent crime is actually more common in Australia than in California. Australia 692 violent assaults per 100k [1] California 430 assaults per 100k [2] So, you'd also be trading more of a rare really bad thing for less of a relatively common bad thing. 1 - https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report/37b4538d-f4c9-4880-a7d0-1871c7ba488e#:~:text=Violent%20crime%20in%20Australia%20is,these%20are%20alcohol%2Drelated%20incidents https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report.... 2 - https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/#:~:text=Prior%20to%20the%20pandemic%2C%20California's,residents%20between%202018%20and%202019.&text=In%202019%2C%2060%25%20of%20reported,%2C%20and%201%25%20were%20homicides https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/....
  - InvertedRhodium 6y ago
    An obvious flaw is that it's comparing an entire country to a singular (and disporoprotionately wealthy) state. If you expanded the rate to America in general the violent crime rate is around 800 per 100k, and if you reduced "Australia" to "New South Wales" then you also see a similar drop - but the site doesn't provide an easy to consume summary. The web app doesn't seem to support direct linking to query results, but it's in here: http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ under Assault - Non Domestic. At the end of the day though - people tend to consider being murdered a significantly more disruptive event than getting punched in the face.
    - nostromo 6y ago
deminature 6y ago
Market St in SF is what most Australians see when attending conferences. The homelessness, human waste, open drug use, and visibly serious mental illness is pretty confronting for anyone not used to it, and that's at daytime - it gets significantly scarier at night if you make the mistake of walking back to your hotel. I've never understood why all the hotels international guests stay in are in by far the worst neighborhood.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  It's grodey and depressing but hardly a "war zone".
  - deminature 6y ago
    Last time I was there, someone was openly defecating in front of city hall, next to multiple people shooting heroin. I had to step over someone who had collapsed apparently from drug use, in front of a restaurant entrance, and nobody seemed to care. It's about as close to the third world as exists in the west. I recognize there's extremely nice parts of SF, but most out of state/international guests stay around Tenderloin/SOMA and would never know that.
    - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
      I stayed in Tenderloin and was shocked when walking back to hotel people having sex on the footpath in front of their tent, while a few tents down someone shooting up. Then what looked like a 14 year old (at most) prostitute soliciting at the corner. I’ve spent a lot of time on the depths of the Philippines, and never saw anything that bad... and that was during a single stroll to the hotel!
  - InvertedRhodium 6y ago
    I'm not sure if you appreciate how utterly surreal that visage is to someone who is 3 hours off a flight from Sydney. It honestly feels like a scaled down version of the slums you see in South Africa butting right up against typical suburban homes.
monkeycantype 6y ago
The poster was being hyperbolic. I love California, but as on outsider I didn’t have the sense of which areas were or weren’t dangerous, and to be honest just couldn’t read it, and got myself into dangerous situations. That would never happen in Australia because I can read people and places in ways, and it surprises me that this is true, that I seemed to be culturally blind to in the US. I’m still confused about Compton, to my eyes it read as an easy going middle class neighborhood, is it? - was Dre exaggerating all this time? . In both LA and Oakland (where I mostly lived) there were nights where there was extended gunfire. To be honest this happens in Australia too, but I assume that it’s people out hunting. Oh hang on - I take that back the Proudlock brothers used to shoot each other with air rifles.

by s5300 6y ago

femiagbabiaka 6y ago

sssshhhhhh

anonymoushn 6y ago

I lived near 5th and Market and walked to a tech company I love very much near Giants Stadium. This is a short walk. One place I regularly walked by was the site of a random slaying by a person who had been released from prison after being arrested for randomly assaulting people in the same place years before.

flukus 6y ago

> Where exactly is this war zone in California...? No idea how universal these things are in all of California, but nearly every Australian that visits LA and a few other areas come back with stories about hearing gunshots from the hotel, accidentally ending up in a seedy/crime ridden part of town or something similar. This is very alien to us and more in line with what we'd see on the news from Somalia. Statistics like homicide rates and gun crime show there's at least some truth it. We're also a fairly egalitarian society, so much more likely to judge other nations on how well off the poorest are and not the richest.

rxhernandez 6y ago
I have lived in LA county for more than 25 years and lived in East Hollywood ~1 year. I have never heard gunfire anywhere in LA. I'm sure it happens in the worst areas but I've never heard it and I've been around plenty of recreational gunfire (outside of LA). Do you think it's possible they're mistaking gunfire with fireworks? There are plenty of fireworks here.
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  > I'm sure it happens in the worst areas I think the fact that those areas exist comes as a shock to Australians, who are used to gun control and probably never heard let alone seen a single gun in their lifetime

ironmagma 6y ago

People in San Francisco will threaten you with violence just for wearing a nice-looking jacket. Nothing about that is healthy.

InvertedRhodium 6y ago

While I agree that the other poster was being a bit dramatic, it's no stretch to say that California performs objectively poorer in a number of areas that people tend to pay attention to. Just take one crime - the murder rates in California are 4.3 per 100,000 and only 0.8 in Australia. I can see why some people could see a 450% increase in the likelihood of being murdered as a comparitive warzone.

ALittleLight 6y ago
Looks like (from a quick googling, may be something I'm not taking into account here) violent crime is actually more common in Australia than in California. Australia 692 violent assaults per 100k [1] California 430 assaults per 100k [2] So, you'd also be trading more of a rare really bad thing for less of a relatively common bad thing. 1 - https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report/37b4538d-f4c9-4880-a7d0-1871c7ba488e#:~:text=Violent%20crime%20in%20Australia%20is,these%20are%20alcohol%2Drelated%20incidents https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report.... 2 - https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/#:~:text=Prior%20to%20the%20pandemic%2C%20California's,residents%20between%202018%20and%202019.&text=In%202019%2C%2060%25%20of%20reported,%2C%20and%201%25%20were%20homicides https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/....
- InvertedRhodium 6y ago
  An obvious flaw is that it's comparing an entire country to a singular (and disporoprotionately wealthy) state. If you expanded the rate to America in general the violent crime rate is around 800 per 100k, and if you reduced "Australia" to "New South Wales" then you also see a similar drop - but the site doesn't provide an easy to consume summary. The web app doesn't seem to support direct linking to query results, but it's in here: http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ under Assault - Non Domestic. At the end of the day though - people tend to consider being murdered a significantly more disruptive event than getting punched in the face.
  - nostromo 6y ago

deminature 6y ago

Market St in SF is what most Australians see when attending conferences. The homelessness, human waste, open drug use, and visibly serious mental illness is pretty confronting for anyone not used to it, and that's at daytime - it gets significantly scarier at night if you make the mistake of walking back to your hotel. I've never understood why all the hotels international guests stay in are in by far the worst neighborhood.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
It's grodey and depressing but hardly a "war zone".
- deminature 6y ago
  Last time I was there, someone was openly defecating in front of city hall, next to multiple people shooting heroin. I had to step over someone who had collapsed apparently from drug use, in front of a restaurant entrance, and nobody seemed to care. It's about as close to the third world as exists in the west. I recognize there's extremely nice parts of SF, but most out of state/international guests stay around Tenderloin/SOMA and would never know that.
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    I stayed in Tenderloin and was shocked when walking back to hotel people having sex on the footpath in front of their tent, while a few tents down someone shooting up. Then what looked like a 14 year old (at most) prostitute soliciting at the corner. I’ve spent a lot of time on the depths of the Philippines, and never saw anything that bad... and that was during a single stroll to the hotel!
- InvertedRhodium 6y ago
  I'm not sure if you appreciate how utterly surreal that visage is to someone who is 3 hours off a flight from Sydney. It honestly feels like a scaled down version of the slums you see in South Africa butting right up against typical suburban homes.

monkeycantype 6y ago

The poster was being hyperbolic. I love California, but as on outsider I didn’t have the sense of which areas were or weren’t dangerous, and to be honest just couldn’t read it, and got myself into dangerous situations. That would never happen in Australia because I can read people and places in ways, and it surprises me that this is true, that I seemed to be culturally blind to in the US. I’m still confused about Compton, to my eyes it read as an easy going middle class neighborhood, is it? - was Dre exaggerating all this time? . In both LA and Oakland (where I mostly lived) there were nights where there was extended gunfire. To be honest this happens in Australia too, but I assume that it’s people out hunting. Oh hang on - I take that back the Proudlock brothers used to shoot each other with air rifles.