15 ms·

Kraken shuts down global headquarters because ‘San Francisco is not safe’

222 points by tlogan 5y ago

Bud 5y ago
- ahoy 5y ago
  It does seem that way. Violent crime in us cities is at historic lows, despite a small uptick in the past year or two. You have to assume anyone making a fuss over it is doing it for political reasons.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    Crime is seriously under reported, between a culture of not trusting police (snitching, etc) and police being either understaffed or underfunded.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    That seems irrelevant given that this is about one specific US city, not US cities in general. SF has gotten significantly worse in the past few years.
  - logicalmonster 5y ago
    > Violent crime in us cities is at historic lows, despite a small uptick in the past year or two. It might take some years to put the current numbers into proper context, and maybe it's technically accurate that things aren't as bad as say the roughest part of the 70s, but as a current big city resident, this definitely feels like gaslighting given the actual lived experience. Friends have gotten mugged. People here have changed their behavior: many people are no longer wanting to take the subway without a friend. You can find a ton of articles like this. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/05/us/new-york-city-crime-wave-2022/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/05/us/new-york-city-crime-wa... > Major crimes in New York City spiked nearly 60% in February compared to the same month in 2021 -- a large majority occurring in a small swath of the metropolis -- as Mayor Eric Adams rolled out his plan to combat gun violence and crime in the city. The New York Police Department tracked increases across every major crime category. The city recorded a 41% increase in overall major crime through the first months of 2022 compared to the same period last year, including a nearly 54% increase in robberies, a 56% increase in grand larceny incidents and a 22% increase in rape reports, the data shows.
- fourstar 5y ago
  >Trump Must be a huge bummer to not go a day without thinking of him... Rent-free. Still...
  - chowchowchow 5y ago
    This is rich given crowds of his fans still chant “lock her up.” Who is in whose head?
    - fourstar 5y ago
      ...Says the person who must relate everything to politics and politicians...
      - chowchowchow 5y ago
        What?
patio11 5y ago
Pro-tip for HNers which journalists don’t seem to understand yet: if you see a company using 548 Market St as a mailing address, that is almost certainly their EarthClassMail serviced inbox, not their actual office address. (This is entirely legitimate, and common for companies big and small. Cryptocurrency companies don’t want anyone breaking into their office to grab crypto or attempt to strongarm staff into reversing e.g. a risk or compliance decision. Many companies are similar. VaccinateCA used the same address on all our paperwork so that anti-vaxxers didn’t show up at the WFH offices of organizers. And you don’t even need a reason for doing this; the convenience of it is very high. Decoupling mailing address from physical locations will save you so, so much pain in a few years when you inevitably move offices and realize there are 100+ organizations that need to have an accurate address on file.)
- Operyl 5y ago
  I thought this address looked familiar, it is! EarthClassMail is an incredibly useful service and I recommend it entirely, used it for a small thing I ran a while back.
- xyst 5y ago
  cool service - bookmarking this. I notice they do not have locations in all major cities though (missing Austin, TX).
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  That means they have to deal with all kind of crazy people. Scapegoat-as-a-service is unironically a great idea
teegaw 5y ago
SoMa has been this bad for a while, so any new company moving in can read headlines and know what they’re getting themselves into. Looking at Krakens job postings they’ve adapted the remote first work culture. Sounds like Powell is just trying to make some noise on his way out of town to attract attention to his company…
- thatfrenchguy 5y ago
  Yeah you'd have to be an idiot to not know about SOMA's issues. Most of San Francisco is infinitely safer than Paris for example.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    It was sketchy 25 years ago... things have moved a few blocks here or there. "I'm shocked to find gambling in this establishment!"
  - browningstreet 5y ago
    SOMA's issues were already rampant 10+ years ago when I had an office at 9th and Howard, and Twitter was moving in. That it's gotten so much worse is, indeed, a strike against the city. Plenty of the rest of town is just fine.. but out of towners may not understand that because there are shocking displays all over. And, frankly, there are definitely parts of town I won't park on the street anymore.
    - hackernewds 5y ago
      The government decided to convert a high value oceanfront property surrounded by residential apartments into a homeless shelter in SOMA - with access to spouse and pet care. The residents protested against it, got accused of NIMBYism, and were forced upon it anyways by admins that live predominantly on the West side. The whole neighborhood cannot be parked in, and right next week had multiple cases of assault that went uninvestigated.
  - williamscales 5y ago
    I’d put them on the same level…I feel equally unsafe in the sketch parts of Paris and SF. I speak both French and English fwiw.
bingohbangoh 5y ago
As somebody who despises SF and thinks crime is out of control in most US cities, this move by Kraken feels a bit absurd and over the top. Can it really be that bad?
- Ambolia 5y ago
  “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
- VerminOctopus1 5y ago
  No, it’s not that bad, this is a PR move to pander to a specific politically oriented audience.
  - smcl 5y ago
    Yep it has the feel of one of those items (ab)used by Rubin, Shapiro and friends as evidence that the dang leftist, communist Demoncrats in charge of California are turning it into a living hell for good god-fearing citizens. Culture war nonsense basically.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - themanmaran 5y ago
    And who is that specific customer base Kraken is trying to attract by shutting down it's headquarters? The right-wing crypto investors that needed a reason to switch away from Coinbase? As far st PR moves go, this one seems dubious.
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    Yes that makes sense. They are just doing it to own the libs? Sorry but that's ridiculous, it sounds like you need to tune off the culture war a bit.
- duxup 5y ago
varenc 5y ago
This website seems relevant: https://poopscoop.io/ https://poopscoop.io/ (A real-time map of sidewalk poop in SF)
- tines 5y ago
  Most of these are animal feces which, needless to say, is a lot less offensive.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Why is it less offensive? I've seen some dogs that leave a larger pile than I do. Is it because imagining a dog relieve itself on the street is less offensive than imagining a human doing it?
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      The danger to your personal health of poop is approximately proportional to how close that animal is to you on the family tree. So human poop is worst, and insect/reptile/fish poop isn't really a worry. The "ewwwwe" factor pretty much matches up with that, and I'm sure an element of that is evolutionary.
    - dunefox 5y ago
      > Is it because imagining a dog relieve itself on the street is less offensive than imagining a human doing it? Yes? How is it not?
      - dylan604 5y ago
        I'm offended by the pet owner that doesn't clean up after their animal. I'm offended by the city for not providing for its citizens with proper facilities and treating them like animals. I am equally offended. That's how it is not to me.
    - sharkjacobs 5y ago
      > Why is it less offensive? Human faeces is more disgusting to us than animal faeces because the bacteria, parasites and toxins it contains are the ones most dangerous to us and we've evolved a strong aversion reaction to them, in particular to the smell of e coli in human waste. Other animals with other gut biomes eliminate different micro organisms which are less "tailored" to humans and evoke a less dramatic response. In general, animals with omnivorous diets similar to humans (notably dogs) will have faeces more like our own, but I think you would still find yourself instinctually reacting more strongly to stepping in human shit than dog
thebean11 5y ago
SF seems pretty insane these days. It makes NYC (even post covid) look like Disneyland.
- Bud 5y ago
  Key word: "seems". Any evaluation vs. historical crime levels (especially violent crime levels) will reveal that this is little more than a blip. Yes, the Tenderloin is a complete mess. Yes, it's true that the DA is experimenting with measures that are different from the usual mass-incarceration approach. Yes, this is causing some issues. The rest of SF is extremely safe by any reasonable standards.
  - csande17 5y ago
    Violent crime levels as reported by the police departments who are allegedly ignoring all the crime, or are you getting your data from some other source?
    - KarlKemp 5y ago
      Violent crime rates overall are well correlated with murder rates. Murder is pretty hard to ignore and rather unlikely to not be reported.
      - csande17 5y ago
        It is not clear to me that correlation would hold if there were dramatic changes to the reporting and enforcement of non-murder crimes. (And that's assuming that murders are in fact being reported at the same rate, and not being misclassified by police as "accidental deaths" or something.)
    - pjlegato 5y ago
      SFPD is not ignoring crime; they are vastly understaffed, as a result of London Breed's "defund the police" move in 2020. They do not have the resources to respond to all crime anymore. They have to do triage with the depleted resources they have available. They only have enough officers on duty to respond to the most serious violent crimes (and sometimes, not even that.) Everything else is tier 2.
softwarebeware 5y ago
I am skeptical that the claims made are accurate. I am sure that there is crime in San Francisco, however, SF is a large city, and it doesn't add up to me that a large company would completely move out of an entire city over the issue of crime. It sounds like a clumsy PR play tbh.
- ProAm 5y ago
  What about when Amazon does it in Seattle? [0] [Q] https://seattlemedium.com/amazon-relocates-workers-due-to-crime-in-downtown-seattle/ https://seattlemedium.com/amazon-relocates-workers-due-to-cr...
  - bufferoverflow 5y ago
    Seattle has a similar crime and drug problem.
    - ProAm 5y ago
      Exactly, I dont think this is a clumsy PR play as the OP suggested. All big cities are experiencing increase in homelessness, crime and violence, drug use. You see it in Austin, Denver, SF, Seattle, LA, Chicago. Many of these cities were already bad and are getting worse, but others used to be 'good' cities and are now moving into thunderdome territory.
      - saila 5y ago
        The city I live in has been an ongoing target of this kind of "thunderdome" rhetoric, and while there are well-known problem areas, the reality is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be. With regard to things getting worse over the past couple years, I'm not sure what people were expecting to happen when sky high rents intersected with a global pandemic, especially in places where there's not much of a safety net.
      - softwarebeware 5y ago
        There's two things happening. There's a "{{YOUR_CITY}} is dying" narrative that is constantly being pushed by far-right-owned media companies. It has been going on for years. (see https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/24/fact-check-linking-city-violence-democratic-politics-reach/3248102001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/24/fac...). And that narrative is now having some success. It is getting people to apply a confirmation bias such that they perceive their city as crime-infested. Meanwhile, crime statistics in many (most? all?) of these cities are actually down or flat. And compared on a per-capita basis look like even weaker support for that narrative.
KarlKemp 5y ago
“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too full”
warning26 5y ago
SF absolutely has crime issues that it’s not doing enough about, but based on this CEO’s history this feels like grandstanding. Here’s some past statements by the CEO: > Powell gave an entire bitcoin to the protesters on February 6th out of a belief that the Canadian government went too far with its trucker vaccine mandates. “I'm personally against the mandates. I think they're just immoral. I also think there's, at this point, a lot of evidence to suggest that we've been lied to or information has been withheld. And I think its efficacy is dubious at best.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/02/23/kraken-ceo-backs-truckers-and-bitcoin-as-defense-against-canadas-weaponized-financial-system/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/02/23/kraken...
- tlogan 5y ago
  Sure kraken, Wallgreens, and Safeway are all using this “crime” as PR. But San Franscisco changed and definitely feels unsafe now. Is it really more unsafe? I do not know - before I was not worrying about being attacked or harassed but I do all the time. Here are some examples… Before, I was able to walk dog on the ocean beach in morning and everything was was fine. Yes there always homeless people. Now I’m getting harassed by scary looking 100% drugged out young homeless all the time. Or take example of sunset: in last 20 there were no home invasions in our block: last two years we had two. Or Walgreens in Richmond: we were always taking a walk thru the park and we would ended up in that Walgreens to pick up random things. But in last two years that Walgreens is like a war zone. I think the latest robbery was on the internet. So these are anecdotal evidence. And this is why I feel it is unsafe.
- csomar 5y ago
  This seems like a PR move since skeptics, conspiracy theorists are the most likely people to get into crypto.
  - hi5eyes 5y ago
    If this were true coinbase/cdc/ftx wouldnt be advertising in traditional media, esports; but would be plastered over infowars/qanon communities the idea that conspiracy theorists would be using a public blockchain that tracks their every transaction doesn't sound too logical the conspiracy theorists are mainly in one crypto community, but that demographic doesnt matter nearly enough but believe what you want
terminatornet 5y ago
Hard to have sympathy for tech companies that push out working class people, raising rents, and generally making it impossible for anyone outside of tech to live there and having it come back to bite them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- therealdrag0 5y ago
  Supply and demand. I think the problem is nimbyism and lack of building housing. Desirable places are in demand and cost $$ this isn’t some tech companies fault.
m0llusk 5y ago
This issue is dramatically real, but exactly how to solve it is not clear. Specifically targeting Chesa Boudin does not make much sense. A good illustration of how the problems go much deeper than the DA was when hooligans smashed up a high end shop in Union Square. Chesa swore to being them to justice and prosecute them with serious charges. That happened and then a short time later the perpetrators were released from incarceration. Pretending that Chesa is the problem may be fun and satisfying, but that approach cannot solve this problem.
- copium 5y ago
  How does targeting Chesa Boudin "not make much sense"? He has made things materially worse with policies of catch and release and mismanagement of the DA's Office. Bringing directly elected officials to account is a good first step. Also if the suspects you talked about were prosecuted with "serious charges", why were they released? Surely there is a related policy which allowed this. Electing people to change those policies is the central method of effective change.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Is Chesa also responsible for the spikes in crime rates in Spokane, Phoenix, Laredo, and Nashville? There’s an asymmetry to this narrative where progressive DAs are responsible for all crime in their districts but conservative DAs are not. No matter what the facts are, the solution for some reason is always to swing in the tough-on-crime direction.
    - dogman144 5y ago
      That's making an interesting comparison b/t the population density and economics of SF/NYC/etc and... Laredo?
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        Please, engage in the topic. Why do the crime rates of San Francisco disprove the theories of progressive policies, but the crime rates of Memphis, the nation’s most dangerous city by far, do not disprove the tough-on-crime theories of that jurisdiction’s district attorney?
duxup 5y ago
Crime is as much a perception thing to individuals as much as real stats: “We shut down Kraken’s global headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco after numerous employees were attacked, harassed and robbed on their way to and from the office.” (they also mention business partners robbed) I'm sure it doesn't take many of those incidents to make a really bad impression. It wouldn't take many for me either.
- lhorie 5y ago
  I've lived in Sao Paulo (a city with notoriously high crime rates) for ~18 years, Toronto for another ~16 and San Francisco for ~5. Out of the three, San Francisco is the one where I personally witnessed the most number of crimes, ranging from theft, to destruction of property to assault/harassment (and I personally was the victim in a few instances). The frequency of hearing about crimes experienced by people around me is also highest in SF (I'm measuring both per year and absolute number of incidents) So, sure, it's not as bad as having drugs-related gunshots fired at your general direction or getting your shoes robbed at gunpoint, but it kinda speaks volumes that I feel it's more appropriate to compare SF more closely to Sao Paulo than Toronto...
  - digianarchist 5y ago
    I've had a couple of shootings outside of my apartment building [0], other than that Toronto is the safest city I've lived in, second only to Singapore. [0] - https://www.toronto.com/news/young-man-shot-to-death-at-yonge-and-eglinton-in-toronto/article_0fa6ac33-4f5a-575f-a69b-4259e6ada75e.html https://www.toronto.com/news/young-man-shot-to-death-at-yong...
timcavel 5y ago
[dead]
ipnon 5y ago
My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome. I stayed on Market St. last summer: Saw two car break-ins before I even got a chance to park at the hotel, got harassed by tweakers every time I stepped outside, watched 3 shoplifters waltz out the door while talking to a disenchanted police officer at the Target, caught a man shooting up on the steps of the federal building ... but I didn't see any human biowaste so I guess I should be thankful. I've lived in rough neighborhoods before but even I was clutching my pearls! I can handle gangsters and cold shoulders, but this is another breed of degenerate. They're like zombies, slowly losing humanity! The caveat being I met many kind folks too, homeless or otherwise. [edit: I now remember I actually did see human biowaste.]
- GoodJokes 5y ago
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Somebody broke the passenger window of my car to unlock it and steal my stuff while I was sitting in the driver's seat talking on the cell phone, in Langton alley next to Brainwash. But that was decades ago. It's always been like that. Just get their attention and politely ask them to go away and steal somebody else's stuff. Edit: I was being sarcastic, role playing an evangelist with Stockholm Syndrome, and was actually quite impolite to him, once I finally managed to get his attention! Edit 2: Once I was lucky enough to observe the iconic green Art Nouveau neon sign of HOTEL ESSEX in the Tenderloin when just the right letters were burnt out to spell "HOT SEX". Hotel Essex, at the corner of Ellis St. and Larkin St., in The Tenderloin, San Francisco. https://gedris.org/node/327.html https://gedris.org/node/327.html Close but no cigar: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/479000110337911544/ https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/479000110337911544/ Up from the deep: The Tenderloin https://upfromthedeep.wordpress.com/uptown-tenderloin/comment-page-10/#:~:text=essex https://upfromthedeep.wordpress.com/uptown-tenderloin/commen... >Hotel Essex. 684 Ellis Street. Hotel with 128 rooms and seventy-two baths. Architects: Righetti and Headman. 1912. >Though unique amid the surrounding architecture, the Art Nouveau-inspired facade of the Essex was nevertheless crafted to blend in by its designer, James Francis Dunn. The hotel’s neon blade sign is especially fine. Now owned by the Community Housing Partnership, the Essex began undergoing renovation late in 2006. >Night-Sign---Essex >By the end of April 2008, its renovation was complete. The paint job is unfortunately garish and unbecoming, but the new marquee and restored blade sign are spectacular, although it seems the latter may still have some electrical problems. Even so, the corner of Ellis and Larkin is utterly transformed after dark by the torrid glow of neon.
stuaxo 5y ago
"There are applications to track human waste" - build some public toilets.
- cvhashim 5y ago
  Put a porta potty in every block.
- adolph 5y ago
  They are: https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/02/bart-reopens-bathroom-shuttered-for-20-years-bringing-much-needed-rider-relief/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/02/bart-reopens-bathroom... "All 10 underground restrooms closed after 9/11 are slated to reopen by 2026"
  - istjohn 5y ago
    Why on earth will it take 4 years?
    - adolph 5y ago
      Probably supply chain issues with the needed bidet upgrades.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    As a point of reference, Paris has around 420 Sanisettes (single-occupant self-cleaning public restrooms). Paris has about twice as many inhabitants, but half as many homeless people, so if anything Paris should need fewer public bathrooms than SF. If SF has too few now adding another 10 over the next four years won't come close to solving the problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette
    - adolph 5y ago
      Nice, and it's a pity about the loss of Pissoirs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir
causi 5y ago
attacked, harassed and robbed on their way to and from the office I cannot imagine how pissed-off I would be if I went through the hell of living in a major, congested, city with an insane cost of living and had to put up with also being exposed to dangers like that.
- hackernewds 5y ago
  Which explain the mass migration out of the city. San Francisco is going to be a massive learnings of a pooched opportunity for economic prosperity and innovation. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/sypaol/oc_the_exodus_from_california_from_20152019/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/sypaol/oc_...
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    Haven't locals been trying to drive off the tech crowd for a few decades now?
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    Note that this is a pretty useless visualization. The dots are just shown traveling at a constant speed with a little randomization (note how it takes until halfway through the video for dots to start showing up in the Northeast -- the travel difference of CA->NY vs CA->TX is not measured in years unless these folks are walking). In addition, the visualization makes it look like some mass exodus, but for the time frame covered, California grew in population (until 2021, where there was a whopping... .46% population loss -- the decimal place is not an error, it is less than 1%).
  - zionic 5y ago
    >San Francisco is going to be a massive learnings of a pooched opportunity for economic prosperity and innovation. Does anyone actually expect the people responsible for this scenario to _learn_ from their mistakes? I feel like we both know they'll just blame something else and move on to ruin another location.
kharak 5y ago
Why is there so much denialism in this thread?
- joemazerino 5y ago
  Because people would rather stay in a defeatist or learned helplessness attitude than look at the root of the problem. That is, until they get mugged walking to work or have their car broken in to.
  - rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 5y ago
    >That is, until they get mugged walking to work or have their car broken in to. Some people will still be blind even after something like that. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/seth-rogen-flamed-dismissing-la-155639143.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/seth-rogen-flamed-dismis...
- educaysean 5y ago
  Is there a fundamental truth you know that is being denied? I commute to Market St weekly and my own experience is that the city is emptier and less vibrant but not unsafe for workers going on about their daily lives. Poop and homelessness are plenty, sure, but that's sort of always been the case and not a new phenomenon. Am I now participating in denialism by sharing my own experience? How does your experience in SF look like?
  - pcmoney 5y ago
    This has not always been the case, it is a new phenomenon. It was not like this is the 90s or early 2000s
- asdhuer812 5y ago
  because they've bought property in SF
  - rvz 5y ago
    correct.
a4isms 5y ago
> In light of Kraken’s decision and the social crises in San Francisco, the region’s hold on crypto and the future of finance may falter. It is interesting that one of crypto's guiding principles is to decentralize finance, however venture capital-backed startups and technology companies are still subject to physical network effects.
- CyberDildonics 5y ago
  An exchange's guiding principle is facilitating trades with a spread so they make money when it changes hands.
  - a4isms 5y ago
    non sequitor?
    - CyberDildonics 5y ago
      Kraken is an exchange, that's what their business model is and how they make money. Talking about "crypto's guiding principles" is a non-sequitir because that has nothing to do with this. Kraken is a corporation, did you not realize this?
      - a4isms 5y ago
        I'm fully aware. I was just musing that it is interesting that the culture around the digital instruments of crypto is not always aligned with the corporate culture around companies making/trading/facilitating/mining the digital instruments of crypto. I also find it interesting when I see companies making organic-this and organic-that, but their factories aren't particularly eco-friendly. There's no law saying that a company can'r greenwash its products, but it's interesting when you see it.
        CyberDildonics 5y ago
        I don't even know what point you are trying to make. You think that because the money that an exchange uses is decentralized (in an automated way) that they wouldn't have an office or that they wouldn't care about crime around their office affecting their employees?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hrdwdmrbl 5y ago
That tracks pretty closely with what I experienced when I last visited. I would call SF a failed city in that it cannot perform its basic functions to house or care for its people.
simonw 5y ago
Every city has rough neighbourhoods. Is San Francisco relatively unique in that those rough neighbourhoods are the heart of downtown? I think I've heard that downtown LA has had a pretty bad reputation in the past.
londons_explore 5y ago
Could these be targeted employee attacks? Ie. some customers who aren't happy with the company are deliberately causing trouble for anyone going in or out of the company HQ? Having seen behind the curtain of a crypto exchange, I can tell you there are massive numbers of really angry customers when, for example, their account gets hacked and then drained because they used SMS 2 factor and a weak password, or when they invest in some lolcoin that then goes to zero.
xyst 5y ago
SF is a ground zero test bed for policy making. Other cities will learn from their mistakes and hopefully all of us will benefit. I think we can just agree decriminalizing and not prosecuting "petty theft" is just a disaster.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  People just don't learn. We've known that it was important to keep petty crime in control since NYC's "No Broken Windows" policies of the 1990s.
  - kilotaras 5y ago
    AFAIK there's not much causal evidence for supporting NYCs "No Broken Window" policies effect. Phasing out of lead has more explanatory power.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > We’ve known that it was important to keep petty crime in control since NYC’s “No Broken Windows” policies of the 1990s. Actually, it is clear that that local policy either did nothing at all but was simply adopted at the right time to be given local credit for broader demographic (e.g., population bulge aging out of the main crime-driving age band), economic, and environmental (e.g., lead exposure) factors, or it was so successful that it somehow managed to effect places outside of New York across the country that didn’t adopt similar policies.
    - dllthomas 5y ago
      The "people don't learn" phrasing is particularly amusing, since the disagreement seems to be between those who "learned" once and those who "learned" twice (leaving aside whether what was "learned" in either case was right or wrong).
    - swearwolf 5y ago
      Living in a place where you see crime and decay all around you, but the data doesn’t back up what you see with your eyes, you really start to question the quality of the data and the conclusions built on top of it.
justinzollars 5y ago
SF has a crime problem and citizens recognize this in polling [1]. They are responding with a Recall of The District Attorney [2] 1. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-residents-unhappy-poll-says-17045784.php 2. https://www.safersfwithoutboudin.com/
shadowgovt 5y ago
Should we be taking this story at face-value, or is this a post-COVID decision to avoid rent on a property (with blame-shifting to the government because the CEO doesn't want to alienate everyone else with property to rent by making it look like they're a client that will bail)?
honkycat 5y ago
We need a federal state of emergency and we need to do something about the unhoused crisis. I don't know the solution but we need to start experimenting. Right now 0.2% of the US population is homeless. They are all over many cities on the west coast and each state and city has to deal with it themselves. I am not aware of any who have succeeded so far. This issue is the only thing anyone can talk about. I get into Ubers and the driver starts talking about the camps. You see it on the Internet constantly. I don't understand how everyone can be so laser focused on this but for nothing to ever happen.
xwdv 5y ago
I used to live in SF during the mid 2010s. I feel like that was the last time it was truly habitable, although even then there were rumblings of rising crime. I personally witnessed several crimes ranging from arson, purse snatches, bike thefts, car break ins… Nowadays the city is a complete shit hole. No one with money should be there by choice, no company should establish a headquarters there. It is a failure of government policies that have turned the city into what it is; a festering den of mentally degenerated homeless people, drug addicts, predatory sexual deviants, illegal aliens, gangsters and thieves. For me the killing of Kate Steinle is what marks the end of the glory days of SF and the beginning of its decline into ruin. I will always remember the city for the pleasant, hopeful place it used to be, and hope to one day find a home like that again.
rootusrootus 5y ago
I was having a related discussion with my wife a few days ago after we drove into downtown Portland. People who live in the city full time may not see the changes evolving around them if it does not happen suddenly, but if you are from outside the city and drive in only occasionally, the changes are astounding. I am tempted to say that the city government has clearly failed. But I hear stories about other cities experiencing similar things in the last couple years, so ... what's going on? The amount of graffiti everywhere has skyrocketed, homeless tents and camps, broken down RVs surrounded by trash littering the sides of the roads, and no sign that the city is actually doing anything about it. No social workers, no clean up crews, not even police. I also wonder if the shift towards remote work is only going to exacerbate the problem in the near term. Restaurants and retail are leaving the urban core because many of their customers were office workers who no longer leave home.
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  > what's going on? My guess is that we are seeing the psychological responses to massive inequality. People have realized that they're trapped in a system they have little control over and are falling behind economically. For some this manifests as what we saw in China as the "Lay Flat" movement, but others are more willing to be aggressive. For myself, the political situation of the last half decade has more or less led me to believe that law in the US is essentially meaningless; it's applied capriciously if at all and it seems that others have had this realization. Just my pet theory.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    I agree it is a psychological issue, but have a polar opposite conclusion. What we are seeing is the result of general disillusionment in our social systems coupled with moral post-modernism. People have become so obsessed with the flaws in our economic, social, and legal system that they accept anarchy and mob rule. The worst cases in our current system are widely publicized, and not viewed as an area for improvement but reason for abandonment . The whole system of government is not seen as a slow march towards progress, but an inherently racist institution which serves primarily to oppress. under such a world view, criminals are the victims, and and those trying to improve the existing systems are villains.
999900000999 5y ago
Good. We don't need offices at all, with the exclusion of some hardware testing. For iOS and Android testing I'd rather drop 2k of my own money on test devices than have to deal with living in California. People are still catching COVID, I personally feel comfortable in my 3 vaccine shots, so I'm going to concerts. But we shouldn't force people back into the office.
hermannj314 5y ago
It is interesting if these events happened on company property, Federal OSHA laws would be involved since it is illegal to ignore unsafe work conditions - including violence and harassment on the job. If a municipal government can not make it safe for your employees to come to and from work, you have an ethical duty as a business to protect your employees and not support that government with continued operation in their jurisdiction. There are plenty of municipal governments that have solved the problem of safe travel on public rights of way, in fact the majority of local governments have solved this problem.
Shadonototra 5y ago
"not safe"? maybe because wealth isn't properly redistributed? they are moving the problem to Texas and Miami, what a joke this country is
Trenmexa 5y ago
I visited SF last july and it was crazy.I stayed at a hotel near Powell st. After 6 pm there was no one in the streets only homeless. Walking near the museum of modern art there was this guy hitting the air and saying things to everyone who walks by. That part of SF is scary af and I'm from Mexico so I know how to deal with scary areas. The issue here is this people are on hard drugs, so you have no idea how they're going to react. Pd: sorry if I made some grammar mistakes
- xtracto 5y ago
  Mexican dude here as well. The last time I visited SF I was assaulted by some random dirty homeless drug addict: I was waiting my wife outside of a Sephora near Market Street drinking some bottled water, when suddenly a huge dude (I'm a small Mexican, 1.67m) stands extremely close to my side and starts shouting shit to me. I could not understand what he was saying, and it was evident he was disturbed. After about a minute of him shouting at me I got to grasp something about "water", I guessed that he wanted my bottle of water, so I gave it to him and walked to the Sephora shop. It reminded me of here in Mexico, because all people passing by were just getting away from both of us, and nobody did anything. I haven't returned to SF and don't plan to return if I can prevent it.
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teucris 5y ago
It seems like many people walk away from this kind of article with the hypothesis “liberal cities are dangerous” when a more accurate hypothesis is “urban business districts attract crime”. The solution isn’t simple, but it’s not endemic to urban environments, and I’ve seen all types of city government manage the issue well and poorly.
- baja_blast 5y ago
  Urban business districts generally don't attract crime, look at Midtown Manhattan, Chicago's loop are some of the safest parts of the city. SF is unique in that its CBD is the most dangerous.
  - teucris 5y ago
    > Midtown Manhattan Making midtown safe, especially at night, took a ton of effort.
brocket 5y ago
I know this thread is long already but I can give my personal perspective as someone who has lived and worked in SF for the past 5 years. I completely understand their decision. I've lived in some bad places but SF is a different kind of bad. The average person's exposure to the bad parts is impossible to avoid and feels higher than other cities (despite whatever the stats might say). The longer I stay the more nervous I get walking around the city even in broad daylight and "safe" areas. Family members have visited and had their phones snatched right out of their hands, homeless grab my bags, harassed everywhere, had my (and friends) cars broken into, and gunshots right outside my home. Witnessed all kinds of crazy things on my short walk from muni station to my office including avoiding the infamous poop, throw up, pee, needles, and broken glass. My partner's coworker was robbed at gunpoint then pistol whipped in the head like in a movie, had to stay in the hospital and has a bad scar now (wish I was making this up). One time a lady was spreading poop all over the walls and our office door handle so I couldn't open the door. Another day someone spread, what seemed like, lard all over the sidewalk so people would trip. Homeless blocking traffic throwing and shouting things at cars. Saw so many of my favorite places to eat windows smashed and broken into over and over. I'd pickup something quick from Walgreens and see someone grabbing a bunch of things then walk out, even with a 24/7 security guard. It feels so futile seeing so much crime and nothing being done. I love some of the food and exploring the city but the high costs combined with my growing uneasiness just make it not worth it anymore. I've recently been working from home and been a lot more relaxed (although home breakins are on the rise).
da-x 5y ago
If it this is the situation I am somewhat surprised that real estate prices in the city are still through the roof. What am I missing?
bichiliad 5y ago
I was in SF yesterday for the first time in about eight years. I can't say I witnessed crimes, but I will say that the homelessness problem is much, much worse than I remember. It's hard to see any of these problems changing without it becoming cheaper to live in the city, and without more housing, I don't know how that's a possibility. I see a lot of people talking about how people are homeless because of addiction or mental health problems, and there are certainly people who are homeless because of those reasons. That being said, homelessness seems to track much more closely with housing availability than social policies[0]. SF is such a beautiful city — it's sad to see all this abject poverty throughout it. 0: https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/ https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housi...

222 points by tlogan 5y ago

Bud 5y ago

ahoy 5y ago
It does seem that way. Violent crime in us cities is at historic lows, despite a small uptick in the past year or two. You have to assume anyone making a fuss over it is doing it for political reasons.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  Crime is seriously under reported, between a culture of not trusting police (snitching, etc) and police being either understaffed or underfunded.
- thebean11 5y ago
  That seems irrelevant given that this is about one specific US city, not US cities in general. SF has gotten significantly worse in the past few years.
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  > Violent crime in us cities is at historic lows, despite a small uptick in the past year or two. It might take some years to put the current numbers into proper context, and maybe it's technically accurate that things aren't as bad as say the roughest part of the 70s, but as a current big city resident, this definitely feels like gaslighting given the actual lived experience. Friends have gotten mugged. People here have changed their behavior: many people are no longer wanting to take the subway without a friend. You can find a ton of articles like this. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/05/us/new-york-city-crime-wave-2022/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/05/us/new-york-city-crime-wa... > Major crimes in New York City spiked nearly 60% in February compared to the same month in 2021 -- a large majority occurring in a small swath of the metropolis -- as Mayor Eric Adams rolled out his plan to combat gun violence and crime in the city. The New York Police Department tracked increases across every major crime category. The city recorded a 41% increase in overall major crime through the first months of 2022 compared to the same period last year, including a nearly 54% increase in robberies, a 56% increase in grand larceny incidents and a 22% increase in rape reports, the data shows.
fourstar 5y ago
>Trump Must be a huge bummer to not go a day without thinking of him... Rent-free. Still...
- chowchowchow 5y ago
  This is rich given crowds of his fans still chant “lock her up.” Who is in whose head?
  - fourstar 5y ago
    ...Says the person who must relate everything to politics and politicians...
    - chowchowchow 5y ago
      What?

Pro-tip for HNers which journalists don’t seem to understand yet: if you see a company using 548 Market St as a mailing address, that is almost certainly their EarthClassMail serviced inbox, not their actual office address. (This is entirely legitimate, and common for companies big and small. Cryptocurrency companies don’t want anyone breaking into their office to grab crypto or attempt to strongarm staff into reversing e.g. a risk or compliance decision. Many companies are similar. VaccinateCA used the same address on all our paperwork so that anti-vaxxers didn’t show up at the WFH offices of organizers. And you don’t even need a reason for doing this; the convenience of it is very high. Decoupling mailing address from physical locations will save you so, so much pain in a few years when you inevitably move offices and realize there are 100+ organizations that need to have an accurate address on file.)

Operyl 5y ago
I thought this address looked familiar, it is! EarthClassMail is an incredibly useful service and I recommend it entirely, used it for a small thing I ran a while back.
xyst 5y ago
cool service - bookmarking this. I notice they do not have locations in all major cities though (missing Austin, TX).
mardifoufs 5y ago
That means they have to deal with all kind of crazy people. Scapegoat-as-a-service is unironically a great idea

teegaw 5y ago

SoMa has been this bad for a while, so any new company moving in can read headlines and know what they’re getting themselves into. Looking at Krakens job postings they’ve adapted the remote first work culture. Sounds like Powell is just trying to make some noise on his way out of town to attract attention to his company…

thatfrenchguy 5y ago
Yeah you'd have to be an idiot to not know about SOMA's issues. Most of San Francisco is infinitely safer than Paris for example.
- kurthr 5y ago
  It was sketchy 25 years ago... things have moved a few blocks here or there. "I'm shocked to find gambling in this establishment!"
- browningstreet 5y ago
  SOMA's issues were already rampant 10+ years ago when I had an office at 9th and Howard, and Twitter was moving in. That it's gotten so much worse is, indeed, a strike against the city. Plenty of the rest of town is just fine.. but out of towners may not understand that because there are shocking displays all over. And, frankly, there are definitely parts of town I won't park on the street anymore.
  - hackernewds 5y ago
    The government decided to convert a high value oceanfront property surrounded by residential apartments into a homeless shelter in SOMA - with access to spouse and pet care. The residents protested against it, got accused of NIMBYism, and were forced upon it anyways by admins that live predominantly on the West side. The whole neighborhood cannot be parked in, and right next week had multiple cases of assault that went uninvestigated.
- williamscales 5y ago
  I’d put them on the same level…I feel equally unsafe in the sketch parts of Paris and SF. I speak both French and English fwiw.

bingohbangoh 5y ago

As somebody who despises SF and thinks crime is out of control in most US cities, this move by Kraken feels a bit absurd and over the top. Can it really be that bad?

Ambolia 5y ago
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
VerminOctopus1 5y ago
No, it’s not that bad, this is a PR move to pander to a specific politically oriented audience.
- smcl 5y ago
  Yep it has the feel of one of those items (ab)used by Rubin, Shapiro and friends as evidence that the dang leftist, communist Demoncrats in charge of California are turning it into a living hell for good god-fearing citizens. Culture war nonsense basically.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- themanmaran 5y ago
  And who is that specific customer base Kraken is trying to attract by shutting down it's headquarters? The right-wing crypto investors that needed a reason to switch away from Coinbase? As far st PR moves go, this one seems dubious.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Yes that makes sense. They are just doing it to own the libs? Sorry but that's ridiculous, it sounds like you need to tune off the culture war a bit.
duxup 5y ago

varenc 5y ago

This website seems relevant: https://poopscoop.io/ https://poopscoop.io/ (A real-time map of sidewalk poop in SF)

tines 5y ago
Most of these are animal feces which, needless to say, is a lot less offensive.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Why is it less offensive? I've seen some dogs that leave a larger pile than I do. Is it because imagining a dog relieve itself on the street is less offensive than imagining a human doing it?
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    The danger to your personal health of poop is approximately proportional to how close that animal is to you on the family tree. So human poop is worst, and insect/reptile/fish poop isn't really a worry. The "ewwwwe" factor pretty much matches up with that, and I'm sure an element of that is evolutionary.
  - dunefox 5y ago
    > Is it because imagining a dog relieve itself on the street is less offensive than imagining a human doing it? Yes? How is it not?
    - dylan604 5y ago
      I'm offended by the pet owner that doesn't clean up after their animal. I'm offended by the city for not providing for its citizens with proper facilities and treating them like animals. I am equally offended. That's how it is not to me.
  - sharkjacobs 5y ago
    > Why is it less offensive? Human faeces is more disgusting to us than animal faeces because the bacteria, parasites and toxins it contains are the ones most dangerous to us and we've evolved a strong aversion reaction to them, in particular to the smell of e coli in human waste. Other animals with other gut biomes eliminate different micro organisms which are less "tailored" to humans and evoke a less dramatic response. In general, animals with omnivorous diets similar to humans (notably dogs) will have faeces more like our own, but I think you would still find yourself instinctually reacting more strongly to stepping in human shit than dog

thebean11 5y ago

SF seems pretty insane these days. It makes NYC (even post covid) look like Disneyland.

Bud 5y ago
Key word: "seems". Any evaluation vs. historical crime levels (especially violent crime levels) will reveal that this is little more than a blip. Yes, the Tenderloin is a complete mess. Yes, it's true that the DA is experimenting with measures that are different from the usual mass-incarceration approach. Yes, this is causing some issues. The rest of SF is extremely safe by any reasonable standards.
- csande17 5y ago
  Violent crime levels as reported by the police departments who are allegedly ignoring all the crime, or are you getting your data from some other source?
  - KarlKemp 5y ago
    Violent crime rates overall are well correlated with murder rates. Murder is pretty hard to ignore and rather unlikely to not be reported.
    - csande17 5y ago
      It is not clear to me that correlation would hold if there were dramatic changes to the reporting and enforcement of non-murder crimes. (And that's assuming that murders are in fact being reported at the same rate, and not being misclassified by police as "accidental deaths" or something.)
  - pjlegato 5y ago
    SFPD is not ignoring crime; they are vastly understaffed, as a result of London Breed's "defund the police" move in 2020. They do not have the resources to respond to all crime anymore. They have to do triage with the depleted resources they have available. They only have enough officers on duty to respond to the most serious violent crimes (and sometimes, not even that.) Everything else is tier 2.

softwarebeware 5y ago

I am skeptical that the claims made are accurate. I am sure that there is crime in San Francisco, however, SF is a large city, and it doesn't add up to me that a large company would completely move out of an entire city over the issue of crime. It sounds like a clumsy PR play tbh.

ProAm 5y ago
What about when Amazon does it in Seattle? [0] [Q] https://seattlemedium.com/amazon-relocates-workers-due-to-crime-in-downtown-seattle/ https://seattlemedium.com/amazon-relocates-workers-due-to-cr...
- bufferoverflow 5y ago
  Seattle has a similar crime and drug problem.
  - ProAm 5y ago
    Exactly, I dont think this is a clumsy PR play as the OP suggested. All big cities are experiencing increase in homelessness, crime and violence, drug use. You see it in Austin, Denver, SF, Seattle, LA, Chicago. Many of these cities were already bad and are getting worse, but others used to be 'good' cities and are now moving into thunderdome territory.
    - saila 5y ago
      The city I live in has been an ongoing target of this kind of "thunderdome" rhetoric, and while there are well-known problem areas, the reality is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be. With regard to things getting worse over the past couple years, I'm not sure what people were expecting to happen when sky high rents intersected with a global pandemic, especially in places where there's not much of a safety net.
    - softwarebeware 5y ago
      There's two things happening. There's a "{{YOUR_CITY}} is dying" narrative that is constantly being pushed by far-right-owned media companies. It has been going on for years. (see https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/24/fact-check-linking-city-violence-democratic-politics-reach/3248102001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/24/fac...). And that narrative is now having some success. It is getting people to apply a confirmation bias such that they perceive their city as crime-infested. Meanwhile, crime statistics in many (most? all?) of these cities are actually down or flat. And compared on a per-capita basis look like even weaker support for that narrative.

KarlKemp 5y ago

“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too full”

warning26 5y ago

SF absolutely has crime issues that it’s not doing enough about, but based on this CEO’s history this feels like grandstanding. Here’s some past statements by the CEO: > Powell gave an entire bitcoin to the protesters on February 6th out of a belief that the Canadian government went too far with its trucker vaccine mandates. “I'm personally against the mandates. I think they're just immoral. I also think there's, at this point, a lot of evidence to suggest that we've been lied to or information has been withheld. And I think its efficacy is dubious at best.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/02/23/kraken-ceo-backs-truckers-and-bitcoin-as-defense-against-canadas-weaponized-financial-system/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/02/23/kraken...

tlogan 5y ago
Sure kraken, Wallgreens, and Safeway are all using this “crime” as PR. But San Franscisco changed and definitely feels unsafe now. Is it really more unsafe? I do not know - before I was not worrying about being attacked or harassed but I do all the time. Here are some examples… Before, I was able to walk dog on the ocean beach in morning and everything was was fine. Yes there always homeless people. Now I’m getting harassed by scary looking 100% drugged out young homeless all the time. Or take example of sunset: in last 20 there were no home invasions in our block: last two years we had two. Or Walgreens in Richmond: we were always taking a walk thru the park and we would ended up in that Walgreens to pick up random things. But in last two years that Walgreens is like a war zone. I think the latest robbery was on the internet. So these are anecdotal evidence. And this is why I feel it is unsafe.
csomar 5y ago
This seems like a PR move since skeptics, conspiracy theorists are the most likely people to get into crypto.
- hi5eyes 5y ago
  If this were true coinbase/cdc/ftx wouldnt be advertising in traditional media, esports; but would be plastered over infowars/qanon communities the idea that conspiracy theorists would be using a public blockchain that tracks their every transaction doesn't sound too logical the conspiracy theorists are mainly in one crypto community, but that demographic doesnt matter nearly enough but believe what you want

terminatornet 5y ago

Hard to have sympathy for tech companies that push out working class people, raising rents, and generally making it impossible for anyone outside of tech to live there and having it come back to bite them.

deleted 5y ago
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therealdrag0 5y ago
Supply and demand. I think the problem is nimbyism and lack of building housing. Desirable places are in demand and cost $$ this isn’t some tech companies fault.

m0llusk 5y ago

This issue is dramatically real, but exactly how to solve it is not clear. Specifically targeting Chesa Boudin does not make much sense. A good illustration of how the problems go much deeper than the DA was when hooligans smashed up a high end shop in Union Square. Chesa swore to being them to justice and prosecute them with serious charges. That happened and then a short time later the perpetrators were released from incarceration. Pretending that Chesa is the problem may be fun and satisfying, but that approach cannot solve this problem.

copium 5y ago
How does targeting Chesa Boudin "not make much sense"? He has made things materially worse with policies of catch and release and mismanagement of the DA's Office. Bringing directly elected officials to account is a good first step. Also if the suspects you talked about were prosecuted with "serious charges", why were they released? Surely there is a related policy which allowed this. Electing people to change those policies is the central method of effective change.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Is Chesa also responsible for the spikes in crime rates in Spokane, Phoenix, Laredo, and Nashville? There’s an asymmetry to this narrative where progressive DAs are responsible for all crime in their districts but conservative DAs are not. No matter what the facts are, the solution for some reason is always to swing in the tough-on-crime direction.
  - dogman144 5y ago
    That's making an interesting comparison b/t the population density and economics of SF/NYC/etc and... Laredo?
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      Please, engage in the topic. Why do the crime rates of San Francisco disprove the theories of progressive policies, but the crime rates of Memphis, the nation’s most dangerous city by far, do not disprove the tough-on-crime theories of that jurisdiction’s district attorney?

duxup 5y ago

Crime is as much a perception thing to individuals as much as real stats: “We shut down Kraken’s global headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco after numerous employees were attacked, harassed and robbed on their way to and from the office.” (they also mention business partners robbed) I'm sure it doesn't take many of those incidents to make a really bad impression. It wouldn't take many for me either.

lhorie 5y ago
I've lived in Sao Paulo (a city with notoriously high crime rates) for ~18 years, Toronto for another ~16 and San Francisco for ~5. Out of the three, San Francisco is the one where I personally witnessed the most number of crimes, ranging from theft, to destruction of property to assault/harassment (and I personally was the victim in a few instances). The frequency of hearing about crimes experienced by people around me is also highest in SF (I'm measuring both per year and absolute number of incidents) So, sure, it's not as bad as having drugs-related gunshots fired at your general direction or getting your shoes robbed at gunpoint, but it kinda speaks volumes that I feel it's more appropriate to compare SF more closely to Sao Paulo than Toronto...
- digianarchist 5y ago
  I've had a couple of shootings outside of my apartment building [0], other than that Toronto is the safest city I've lived in, second only to Singapore. [0] - https://www.toronto.com/news/young-man-shot-to-death-at-yonge-and-eglinton-in-toronto/article_0fa6ac33-4f5a-575f-a69b-4259e6ada75e.html https://www.toronto.com/news/young-man-shot-to-death-at-yong...

timcavel 5y ago

[dead]

ipnon 5y ago

My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome. I stayed on Market St. last summer: Saw two car break-ins before I even got a chance to park at the hotel, got harassed by tweakers every time I stepped outside, watched 3 shoplifters waltz out the door while talking to a disenchanted police officer at the Target, caught a man shooting up on the steps of the federal building ... but I didn't see any human biowaste so I guess I should be thankful. I've lived in rough neighborhoods before but even I was clutching my pearls! I can handle gangsters and cold shoulders, but this is another breed of degenerate. They're like zombies, slowly losing humanity! The caveat being I met many kind folks too, homeless or otherwise. [edit: I now remember I actually did see human biowaste.]

GoodJokes 5y ago
DonHopkins 5y ago
Somebody broke the passenger window of my car to unlock it and steal my stuff while I was sitting in the driver's seat talking on the cell phone, in Langton alley next to Brainwash. But that was decades ago. It's always been like that. Just get their attention and politely ask them to go away and steal somebody else's stuff. Edit: I was being sarcastic, role playing an evangelist with Stockholm Syndrome, and was actually quite impolite to him, once I finally managed to get his attention! Edit 2: Once I was lucky enough to observe the iconic green Art Nouveau neon sign of HOTEL ESSEX in the Tenderloin when just the right letters were burnt out to spell "HOT SEX". Hotel Essex, at the corner of Ellis St. and Larkin St., in The Tenderloin, San Francisco. https://gedris.org/node/327.html https://gedris.org/node/327.html Close but no cigar: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/479000110337911544/ https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/479000110337911544/ Up from the deep: The Tenderloin https://upfromthedeep.wordpress.com/uptown-tenderloin/comment-page-10/#:~:text=essex https://upfromthedeep.wordpress.com/uptown-tenderloin/commen... >Hotel Essex. 684 Ellis Street. Hotel with 128 rooms and seventy-two baths. Architects: Righetti and Headman. 1912. >Though unique amid the surrounding architecture, the Art Nouveau-inspired facade of the Essex was nevertheless crafted to blend in by its designer, James Francis Dunn. The hotel’s neon blade sign is especially fine. Now owned by the Community Housing Partnership, the Essex began undergoing renovation late in 2006. >Night-Sign---Essex >By the end of April 2008, its renovation was complete. The paint job is unfortunately garish and unbecoming, but the new marquee and restored blade sign are spectacular, although it seems the latter may still have some electrical problems. Even so, the corner of Ellis and Larkin is utterly transformed after dark by the torrid glow of neon.

stuaxo 5y ago

"There are applications to track human waste" - build some public toilets.

cvhashim 5y ago
Put a porta potty in every block.
adolph 5y ago
They are: https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/02/bart-reopens-bathroom-shuttered-for-20-years-bringing-much-needed-rider-relief/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/02/bart-reopens-bathroom... "All 10 underground restrooms closed after 9/11 are slated to reopen by 2026"
- istjohn 5y ago
  Why on earth will it take 4 years?
  - adolph 5y ago
    Probably supply chain issues with the needed bidet upgrades.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  As a point of reference, Paris has around 420 Sanisettes (single-occupant self-cleaning public restrooms). Paris has about twice as many inhabitants, but half as many homeless people, so if anything Paris should need fewer public bathrooms than SF. If SF has too few now adding another 10 over the next four years won't come close to solving the problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette
  - adolph 5y ago
    Nice, and it's a pity about the loss of Pissoirs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pissoir

causi 5y ago

attacked, harassed and robbed on their way to and from the office I cannot imagine how pissed-off I would be if I went through the hell of living in a major, congested, city with an insane cost of living and had to put up with also being exposed to dangers like that.

hackernewds 5y ago
Which explain the mass migration out of the city. San Francisco is going to be a massive learnings of a pooched opportunity for economic prosperity and innovation. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/sypaol/oc_the_exodus_from_california_from_20152019/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/sypaol/oc_...
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Haven't locals been trying to drive off the tech crowd for a few decades now?
- bee_rider 5y ago
  Note that this is a pretty useless visualization. The dots are just shown traveling at a constant speed with a little randomization (note how it takes until halfway through the video for dots to start showing up in the Northeast -- the travel difference of CA->NY vs CA->TX is not measured in years unless these folks are walking). In addition, the visualization makes it look like some mass exodus, but for the time frame covered, California grew in population (until 2021, where there was a whopping... .46% population loss -- the decimal place is not an error, it is less than 1%).
- zionic 5y ago
  >San Francisco is going to be a massive learnings of a pooched opportunity for economic prosperity and innovation. Does anyone actually expect the people responsible for this scenario to _learn_ from their mistakes? I feel like we both know they'll just blame something else and move on to ruin another location.

kharak 5y ago

Why is there so much denialism in this thread?

joemazerino 5y ago
Because people would rather stay in a defeatist or learned helplessness attitude than look at the root of the problem. That is, until they get mugged walking to work or have their car broken in to.
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 5y ago
  >That is, until they get mugged walking to work or have their car broken in to. Some people will still be blind even after something like that. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/seth-rogen-flamed-dismissing-la-155639143.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/seth-rogen-flamed-dismis...
educaysean 5y ago
Is there a fundamental truth you know that is being denied? I commute to Market St weekly and my own experience is that the city is emptier and less vibrant but not unsafe for workers going on about their daily lives. Poop and homelessness are plenty, sure, but that's sort of always been the case and not a new phenomenon. Am I now participating in denialism by sharing my own experience? How does your experience in SF look like?
- pcmoney 5y ago
  This has not always been the case, it is a new phenomenon. It was not like this is the 90s or early 2000s
asdhuer812 5y ago
because they've bought property in SF
- rvz 5y ago
  correct.

a4isms 5y ago

> In light of Kraken’s decision and the social crises in San Francisco, the region’s hold on crypto and the future of finance may falter. It is interesting that one of crypto's guiding principles is to decentralize finance, however venture capital-backed startups and technology companies are still subject to physical network effects.

CyberDildonics 5y ago
An exchange's guiding principle is facilitating trades with a spread so they make money when it changes hands.
- a4isms 5y ago
  non sequitor?
  - CyberDildonics 5y ago
    Kraken is an exchange, that's what their business model is and how they make money. Talking about "crypto's guiding principles" is a non-sequitir because that has nothing to do with this. Kraken is a corporation, did you not realize this?
    - a4isms 5y ago
      I'm fully aware. I was just musing that it is interesting that the culture around the digital instruments of crypto is not always aligned with the corporate culture around companies making/trading/facilitating/mining the digital instruments of crypto. I also find it interesting when I see companies making organic-this and organic-that, but their factories aren't particularly eco-friendly. There's no law saying that a company can'r greenwash its products, but it's interesting when you see it.
      - CyberDildonics 5y ago
        I don't even know what point you are trying to make. You think that because the money that an exchange uses is decentralized (in an automated way) that they wouldn't have an office or that they wouldn't care about crime around their office affecting their employees?

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hrdwdmrbl 5y ago

That tracks pretty closely with what I experienced when I last visited. I would call SF a failed city in that it cannot perform its basic functions to house or care for its people.

simonw 5y ago

Every city has rough neighbourhoods. Is San Francisco relatively unique in that those rough neighbourhoods are the heart of downtown? I think I've heard that downtown LA has had a pretty bad reputation in the past.

londons_explore 5y ago

Could these be targeted employee attacks? Ie. some customers who aren't happy with the company are deliberately causing trouble for anyone going in or out of the company HQ? Having seen behind the curtain of a crypto exchange, I can tell you there are massive numbers of really angry customers when, for example, their account gets hacked and then drained because they used SMS 2 factor and a weak password, or when they invest in some lolcoin that then goes to zero.

xyst 5y ago

SF is a ground zero test bed for policy making. Other cities will learn from their mistakes and hopefully all of us will benefit. I think we can just agree decriminalizing and not prosecuting "petty theft" is just a disaster.

zozbot234 5y ago
People just don't learn. We've known that it was important to keep petty crime in control since NYC's "No Broken Windows" policies of the 1990s.
- kilotaras 5y ago
  AFAIK there's not much causal evidence for supporting NYCs "No Broken Window" policies effect. Phasing out of lead has more explanatory power.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > We’ve known that it was important to keep petty crime in control since NYC’s “No Broken Windows” policies of the 1990s. Actually, it is clear that that local policy either did nothing at all but was simply adopted at the right time to be given local credit for broader demographic (e.g., population bulge aging out of the main crime-driving age band), economic, and environmental (e.g., lead exposure) factors, or it was so successful that it somehow managed to effect places outside of New York across the country that didn’t adopt similar policies.
  - dllthomas 5y ago
    The "people don't learn" phrasing is particularly amusing, since the disagreement seems to be between those who "learned" once and those who "learned" twice (leaving aside whether what was "learned" in either case was right or wrong).
  - swearwolf 5y ago
    Living in a place where you see crime and decay all around you, but the data doesn’t back up what you see with your eyes, you really start to question the quality of the data and the conclusions built on top of it.

justinzollars 5y ago

SF has a crime problem and citizens recognize this in polling [1]. They are responding with a Recall of The District Attorney [2] 1. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-residents-unhappy-poll-says-17045784.php 2. https://www.safersfwithoutboudin.com/

shadowgovt 5y ago

Should we be taking this story at face-value, or is this a post-COVID decision to avoid rent on a property (with blame-shifting to the government because the CEO doesn't want to alienate everyone else with property to rent by making it look like they're a client that will bail)?

honkycat 5y ago

We need a federal state of emergency and we need to do something about the unhoused crisis. I don't know the solution but we need to start experimenting. Right now 0.2% of the US population is homeless. They are all over many cities on the west coast and each state and city has to deal with it themselves. I am not aware of any who have succeeded so far. This issue is the only thing anyone can talk about. I get into Ubers and the driver starts talking about the camps. You see it on the Internet constantly. I don't understand how everyone can be so laser focused on this but for nothing to ever happen.

xwdv 5y ago

I used to live in SF during the mid 2010s. I feel like that was the last time it was truly habitable, although even then there were rumblings of rising crime. I personally witnessed several crimes ranging from arson, purse snatches, bike thefts, car break ins… Nowadays the city is a complete shit hole. No one with money should be there by choice, no company should establish a headquarters there. It is a failure of government policies that have turned the city into what it is; a festering den of mentally degenerated homeless people, drug addicts, predatory sexual deviants, illegal aliens, gangsters and thieves. For me the killing of Kate Steinle is what marks the end of the glory days of SF and the beginning of its decline into ruin. I will always remember the city for the pleasant, hopeful place it used to be, and hope to one day find a home like that again.

rootusrootus 5y ago

I was having a related discussion with my wife a few days ago after we drove into downtown Portland. People who live in the city full time may not see the changes evolving around them if it does not happen suddenly, but if you are from outside the city and drive in only occasionally, the changes are astounding. I am tempted to say that the city government has clearly failed. But I hear stories about other cities experiencing similar things in the last couple years, so ... what's going on? The amount of graffiti everywhere has skyrocketed, homeless tents and camps, broken down RVs surrounded by trash littering the sides of the roads, and no sign that the city is actually doing anything about it. No social workers, no clean up crews, not even police. I also wonder if the shift towards remote work is only going to exacerbate the problem in the near term. Restaurants and retail are leaving the urban core because many of their customers were office workers who no longer leave home.

hotpotamus 5y ago
> what's going on? My guess is that we are seeing the psychological responses to massive inequality. People have realized that they're trapped in a system they have little control over and are falling behind economically. For some this manifests as what we saw in China as the "Lay Flat" movement, but others are more willing to be aggressive. For myself, the political situation of the last half decade has more or less led me to believe that law in the US is essentially meaningless; it's applied capriciously if at all and it seems that others have had this realization. Just my pet theory.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  I agree it is a psychological issue, but have a polar opposite conclusion. What we are seeing is the result of general disillusionment in our social systems coupled with moral post-modernism. People have become so obsessed with the flaws in our economic, social, and legal system that they accept anarchy and mob rule. The worst cases in our current system are widely publicized, and not viewed as an area for improvement but reason for abandonment . The whole system of government is not seen as a slow march towards progress, but an inherently racist institution which serves primarily to oppress. under such a world view, criminals are the victims, and and those trying to improve the existing systems are villains.

999900000999 5y ago

Good. We don't need offices at all, with the exclusion of some hardware testing. For iOS and Android testing I'd rather drop 2k of my own money on test devices than have to deal with living in California. People are still catching COVID, I personally feel comfortable in my 3 vaccine shots, so I'm going to concerts. But we shouldn't force people back into the office.

hermannj314 5y ago

It is interesting if these events happened on company property, Federal OSHA laws would be involved since it is illegal to ignore unsafe work conditions - including violence and harassment on the job. If a municipal government can not make it safe for your employees to come to and from work, you have an ethical duty as a business to protect your employees and not support that government with continued operation in their jurisdiction. There are plenty of municipal governments that have solved the problem of safe travel on public rights of way, in fact the majority of local governments have solved this problem.

Shadonototra 5y ago

"not safe"? maybe because wealth isn't properly redistributed? they are moving the problem to Texas and Miami, what a joke this country is

Trenmexa 5y ago

I visited SF last july and it was crazy.I stayed at a hotel near Powell st. After 6 pm there was no one in the streets only homeless. Walking near the museum of modern art there was this guy hitting the air and saying things to everyone who walks by. That part of SF is scary af and I'm from Mexico so I know how to deal with scary areas. The issue here is this people are on hard drugs, so you have no idea how they're going to react. Pd: sorry if I made some grammar mistakes

xtracto 5y ago
Mexican dude here as well. The last time I visited SF I was assaulted by some random dirty homeless drug addict: I was waiting my wife outside of a Sephora near Market Street drinking some bottled water, when suddenly a huge dude (I'm a small Mexican, 1.67m) stands extremely close to my side and starts shouting shit to me. I could not understand what he was saying, and it was evident he was disturbed. After about a minute of him shouting at me I got to grasp something about "water", I guessed that he wanted my bottle of water, so I gave it to him and walked to the Sephora shop. It reminded me of here in Mexico, because all people passing by were just getting away from both of us, and nobody did anything. I haven't returned to SF and don't plan to return if I can prevent it.

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teucris 5y ago

It seems like many people walk away from this kind of article with the hypothesis “liberal cities are dangerous” when a more accurate hypothesis is “urban business districts attract crime”. The solution isn’t simple, but it’s not endemic to urban environments, and I’ve seen all types of city government manage the issue well and poorly.

baja_blast 5y ago
Urban business districts generally don't attract crime, look at Midtown Manhattan, Chicago's loop are some of the safest parts of the city. SF is unique in that its CBD is the most dangerous.
- teucris 5y ago
  > Midtown Manhattan Making midtown safe, especially at night, took a ton of effort.

brocket 5y ago

I know this thread is long already but I can give my personal perspective as someone who has lived and worked in SF for the past 5 years. I completely understand their decision. I've lived in some bad places but SF is a different kind of bad. The average person's exposure to the bad parts is impossible to avoid and feels higher than other cities (despite whatever the stats might say). The longer I stay the more nervous I get walking around the city even in broad daylight and "safe" areas. Family members have visited and had their phones snatched right out of their hands, homeless grab my bags, harassed everywhere, had my (and friends) cars broken into, and gunshots right outside my home. Witnessed all kinds of crazy things on my short walk from muni station to my office including avoiding the infamous poop, throw up, pee, needles, and broken glass. My partner's coworker was robbed at gunpoint then pistol whipped in the head like in a movie, had to stay in the hospital and has a bad scar now (wish I was making this up). One time a lady was spreading poop all over the walls and our office door handle so I couldn't open the door. Another day someone spread, what seemed like, lard all over the sidewalk so people would trip. Homeless blocking traffic throwing and shouting things at cars. Saw so many of my favorite places to eat windows smashed and broken into over and over. I'd pickup something quick from Walgreens and see someone grabbing a bunch of things then walk out, even with a 24/7 security guard. It feels so futile seeing so much crime and nothing being done. I love some of the food and exploring the city but the high costs combined with my growing uneasiness just make it not worth it anymore. I've recently been working from home and been a lot more relaxed (although home breakins are on the rise).

da-x 5y ago

If it this is the situation I am somewhat surprised that real estate prices in the city are still through the roof. What am I missing?

bichiliad 5y ago

I was in SF yesterday for the first time in about eight years. I can't say I witnessed crimes, but I will say that the homelessness problem is much, much worse than I remember. It's hard to see any of these problems changing without it becoming cheaper to live in the city, and without more housing, I don't know how that's a possibility. I see a lot of people talking about how people are homeless because of addiction or mental health problems, and there are certainly people who are homeless because of those reasons. That being said, homelessness seems to track much more closely with housing availability than social policies[0]. SF is such a beautiful city — it's sad to see all this abject poverty throughout it. 0: https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/ https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housi...