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I work for a large foreign (but global retailer) with locations in the Bay Area including San Francisco. The bill for our monthly necessary armed security excee

I work for a large foreign (but global retailer) with locations in the Bay Area including San Francisco. The bill for our monthly necessary armed security exceeds $20,000 a month. My foreign coworker’s minds were blown that even every starbucks location needs security.

hallway_monitor 5y ago
This honestly blows my mind. So SF is basically a third world country now?
- oneplane 5y ago
  Isn't that most of the densely populated city in the US in general? Fear, weapons and violence as soon as it gets dense. Every large/chain business comes with lots of armed protection. I haven't travelled to all the cities in the entire US, but whenever you enter/exit such areas is seems very distinct.
  - adjkant 5y ago
    Not my experience at all with most cities in the US, as someone who has lived in many and visited far more. I wouldn't categorize NYC, Boston, Chicago, LA, Philly, or DC that way when you're not in literal capitol buildings. I live in one of the densest US cities, take transit all over the place and have felt unsafe maybe one time in the past 3 years. No weapon was involved.
  - AlexCoventry 5y ago
    I've personally witnessed more violent crime in approximately two month's total presence in SF over the last seven years than I have in a total of 14 years living in Boston. Maybe I'm an outlier, though.
- adjkant 5y ago
  Why is your first reaction to any description or decrease in safety to go directly to the phrase "third world country"? Even forgetting the phrase, what you likely mean by it is also not true in all or even most aspects. It's incredibly reductive to use a single category classification of "how nice do I feel something is" for everyone to project on their own ideas how they will. SF can be both having an increase in homelessness and petty crime at the same time as it maintains a top economy of the US, a big arts scene, many diverse cultures, and more. It's not as simple as "is this a country I would label a bad place". With that said, SF's latter categories have also slowly eroded, but these symptoms needs to be examined individually. The tech industry did much itself to destabilize SF's arts and culture long before any crime issues. More of a tangent there, but the point is you can't forgo nuance here.
  - b9a2cab5 5y ago
    The tech industry didn't do shit, San Francisco NIMBYs were the ones who refused to build housing causing the price of everything to only be affordable for tech workers. I don't know how you can blame a high paying employer for causing "destabilization". People getting pushed out by gentrification are getting pushed out because there is no new supply of housing but massive new demand for housing.
    - adjkant 5y ago
      You need both NIMBY's and a large population influx to cause the core issue here. The tech industry indisputably caused the latter. You also imply some/many tech workers were also not NIMBY's as well, as if these two groups are entirely separate. Growth is not inherently good, and the tech industry absolutely did not help alleviate the issues NIMBY's helped to cause. There was no reason SF couldn't have gone on being the same size city it was decades before in a healthy way. It takes two to tango here, and I see no reason why we wouldn't blame both. The tech industry chose profits for its own companies over the good of the city. They had no legal obligation to make any other choice, but maybe if they cared about the city for itself or even the longterm health of the area, if not only in self interest, they would have regulated their own growth. That's just not in line with the philosophy that took root there though, which was growth at all costs. These ideas expand out beyond the tech world it turns out.
      - Gimpei 5y ago
        The problem with this argument is that, if not for NIMBYs, growth really could have helped all the people of San Francisco. Dense cities are the places with the greatest opportunity and the greatest mobility (see for example Chetty). But for this to be the case, housing has to be affordable enough for working people to afford. So basically, NIMBYs took something that could have been great and made it awful instead. How is tech to blame for this? Tech provided a wonderful opportunity and the people of SF blew it. I'd also add that I am a San Francisco native and it was not some midsize paradise in the 80s. It was broker, the schools were worse, the public transportation was worse, there were already plenty of homeless, and, like every other major US city, it was far more violent. The only thing that was better was housing affordability and the niners.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 6f8986c3 5y ago
  Has been for some time.

hallway_monitor 5y ago

This honestly blows my mind. So SF is basically a third world country now?

oneplane 5y ago
Isn't that most of the densely populated city in the US in general? Fear, weapons and violence as soon as it gets dense. Every large/chain business comes with lots of armed protection. I haven't travelled to all the cities in the entire US, but whenever you enter/exit such areas is seems very distinct.
- adjkant 5y ago
  Not my experience at all with most cities in the US, as someone who has lived in many and visited far more. I wouldn't categorize NYC, Boston, Chicago, LA, Philly, or DC that way when you're not in literal capitol buildings. I live in one of the densest US cities, take transit all over the place and have felt unsafe maybe one time in the past 3 years. No weapon was involved.
- AlexCoventry 5y ago
  I've personally witnessed more violent crime in approximately two month's total presence in SF over the last seven years than I have in a total of 14 years living in Boston. Maybe I'm an outlier, though.
adjkant 5y ago
Why is your first reaction to any description or decrease in safety to go directly to the phrase "third world country"? Even forgetting the phrase, what you likely mean by it is also not true in all or even most aspects. It's incredibly reductive to use a single category classification of "how nice do I feel something is" for everyone to project on their own ideas how they will. SF can be both having an increase in homelessness and petty crime at the same time as it maintains a top economy of the US, a big arts scene, many diverse cultures, and more. It's not as simple as "is this a country I would label a bad place". With that said, SF's latter categories have also slowly eroded, but these symptoms needs to be examined individually. The tech industry did much itself to destabilize SF's arts and culture long before any crime issues. More of a tangent there, but the point is you can't forgo nuance here.
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  The tech industry didn't do shit, San Francisco NIMBYs were the ones who refused to build housing causing the price of everything to only be affordable for tech workers. I don't know how you can blame a high paying employer for causing "destabilization". People getting pushed out by gentrification are getting pushed out because there is no new supply of housing but massive new demand for housing.
  - adjkant 5y ago
    You need both NIMBY's and a large population influx to cause the core issue here. The tech industry indisputably caused the latter. You also imply some/many tech workers were also not NIMBY's as well, as if these two groups are entirely separate. Growth is not inherently good, and the tech industry absolutely did not help alleviate the issues NIMBY's helped to cause. There was no reason SF couldn't have gone on being the same size city it was decades before in a healthy way. It takes two to tango here, and I see no reason why we wouldn't blame both. The tech industry chose profits for its own companies over the good of the city. They had no legal obligation to make any other choice, but maybe if they cared about the city for itself or even the longterm health of the area, if not only in self interest, they would have regulated their own growth. That's just not in line with the philosophy that took root there though, which was growth at all costs. These ideas expand out beyond the tech world it turns out.
    - Gimpei 5y ago
      The problem with this argument is that, if not for NIMBYs, growth really could have helped all the people of San Francisco. Dense cities are the places with the greatest opportunity and the greatest mobility (see for example Chetty). But for this to be the case, housing has to be affordable enough for working people to afford. So basically, NIMBYs took something that could have been great and made it awful instead. How is tech to blame for this? Tech provided a wonderful opportunity and the people of SF blew it. I'd also add that I am a San Francisco native and it was not some midsize paradise in the 80s. It was broker, the schools were worse, the public transportation was worse, there were already plenty of homeless, and, like every other major US city, it was far more violent. The only thing that was better was housing affordability and the niners.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
6f8986c3 5y ago
Has been for some time.