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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

by 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.
- ipnon 5y ago
  This is exactly what I'm talking about: In my city we reserve good manners for those who aren't commiting crimes upon us!
tbranyen 5y ago
Maybe you didn't venture out much, but you should realize that is _mostly_ exclusive to market street. One street of a thousand. Yes it occasionally happens elsewhere like any city, but Market and especially the tenderloin are infamous for the drug use and depravity. Why people keep staying there instead of the hundreds of other and safer hotel locations? Maybe hotels need better regulated ratings to take into account the surrounding area.
- sorenn111 5y ago
  Problem: most iconic and central street in SF has rampant problems. Solution: go elsewhere and add regulations to hotel rating about the surrounding area?? I'm sorry, but that is one of the most defeatist options I've ever heard
  - tbranyen 5y ago
    Open to how you'd solve it. Fill up the overfilled jails and hospitals? Can't force people unless it's a 5150. You literally cannot stop what is happening without going full militarized police and how is that better? Best thing you can do as a tourist is know where you are. It's no different than unsafe areas of Mexico and LA? You gonna stay near skid row? SF weather and wealth is going to attract homeless and drugs, and unless you want to break the law to stop it, adapting is the next best thing. Actually NVM it's just easier to shit on SF and act like everyone there is an idiot and the solution is simple.
- School-Cotton 5y ago
  There is nothing like Market Street anywhere near the city center of NYC, as far as I know.
  - ipnon 5y ago
    The Bowery can be even worse then Market Street at times. There have been a couple of serial killers targeting rough sleepers over the last few years. The day to day experience of the Bowery is much safer than Market Street though because NYPD aggressively targets the area.
hijinks 5y ago
in SFs dry season, my friend just leaves his windows open because his car got broken into so many times. Since hes left the window open he doesn't think his car got touched.
- smaryjerry 5y ago
  Same with Seattle. It’s better to just leave your car unlocked if you don’t want your windows broken. Sadly even if you leave a sign that nothing is inside and car is unlocked they still break the windows.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Sadly even if you leave a sign that nothing is inside and car is unlocked they still break the windows. Leaving the sign leads people who might be considering theft to believe that (1) there is something inside that you are trying to protect, and (2) the car is locked and wasting time trying to open the locked door will set off an alarm and reduce the chance of them getting the thing you are trying to protect before being noticed. So, yes, of course it has that effect.
    - smaryjerry 5y ago
      These guys aren’t afraid of alarms one bit or getting caught. They want the change sitting in your cars cup holder but would gladly take a night in jail instead.
zozbot234 5y ago
> My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome There do seem to be a whole lot of people around CA with outright delusional ideas about Scandinavian cultures and policy choices. For all their much vaunted "socialism" (with Scandinavian characteristics) Stockholm is a lot less dysfunctional than San Francisco.
- throwaheyy 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  I don’t think the parent is referring to Stockholm (the city), but rather Stockholm Syndrome, the psychological phenomenon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
- mmastrac 5y ago
  I'm not sure if I missed a joke, but Stockholm syndrome is about hostages rather than governmental policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome TIL there's a Helsinki syndrome: https://www.scandinaviastandard.com/what-is-helsinki-syndrome/ https://www.scandinaviastandard.com/what-is-helsinki-syndrom...
  - mandliya 5y ago
    TIL the London and Lima syndrome from the second link.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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Swizec 5y ago
Yes it got really bad during the pandemic. It’s as if the upper classes clearing out of downtown back to the burbs, avenues, and condos created a vacuum that all the other elements of the city filled. They were always there but more hidden. Now they’re in the open because nothing’s pushing back. With all the shuttered businesses, downtown is basically dead right now. Whole blocks of nothing. But the tide is shifting. Traffic is back, farmers market is packed, morning sidewalks are full of commuters. A few mor months and it will only be as bad as it was a few years ago.
- justinator 5y ago
  Farmers markets and lively cafes don’t solve homelessness or drug addiction. Like you say, they just become easier to ignore.
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
Similar experience in Seattle. I lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood for 11 years and left in 2012. I went back to visit a few years ago and it looked like the homeless population had doubled or tripled in the time since. And it was already bad when I lived there. These cities seem to have a lot of fundamental societal problems and they have no idea whatsoever how to solve them.
- gotoeleven 5y ago
  Surprisingly it turns out that if you subsidize homelessness you get more homelessness.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - malandrew 5y ago
    This. When you feed bears, you get problem bears. The National Parks system knows this, but cities like SF and Seattle do not.
    - gmfawcett 5y ago
      So your suggestion is to return the homeless people to their natural habitat in the woods, so they can forage for berries as nature intended?
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > This. When you feed bears, you get problem bears. > The National Parks system knows this, but cities like SF and Seattle do not. It should be noted that homeless people are people, not animals. Also, don't park systems kill "problem bears" (e.g. https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/waterton-lakes-national-park-staff-kill-black-bear-that-had-become-a-problem-1.5036261?cache=agylcuxajqn%3FclipId%3D375756 https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/waterton-lakes-national-park-staf...)?
      - giardini 5y ago
memish 5y ago
A mix of stockholm syndrome, aggressive gaslighting, denial. It's not just SoMa or the Tenderloin either. These are some of the recent local reports on Chinatown: Shop Owners Forced to Take Extra Precautions as Thieves Hit SF Chinatown Businesses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSwlSQf0LkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSwlSQf0LkA San Francisco Chinatown Camera Shop Owners Fight Back Against Smash-and-Grab Robbery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idy30hxat7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idy30hxat7M Community Group Hands Out Pepper Spray To San Francisco Chinatown Businesses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNsc3j1-d1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNsc3j1-d1I Volunteer Foot Patrols In SF's Chinatown After Shop Owners Fight Off Robbers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTPYhey3ea4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTPYhey3ea4 Yet we keep hearing that this isn't happening. Things are fine. It's exaggerated. Even in this very thread. I can't help but think of this quote, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
- jpcfl 5y ago
  I am constantly gaslit about this on r/sanfrancisco. People say “the data” show that crime is actually decreasing! It’s bizarre because the data I’m collecting with my very own eyes is staggeringly contradictory. The amount of crime I witness daily is heartbreaking and sometimes frightening. I understand the knee jerk response, which is to defend your home, but the moment I propose the data are being manipulated/spun, I’m called a conspiracy theorist. There’s a concerning lack of curiosity, critical thinking, and skepticism when it comes to this topic. The only explanation I have for the discrepancy is the normalization of crime. We have gotten so accustomed to theft, assault, drug use, public camping, illegal immigration, and property damage that we no longer count these as crimes. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy. I’m saying our standard of living has shifted down dramatically and we have adjusted our metrics down, too.
  - Hammershaft 5y ago
    It seems like a categorical error to compare illegal immigration to theft, assault, and property damage.
silicon2401 5y ago
> My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome This is true of everybody who takes a position first and finds arguments for it second. Their position is irrational to begin with. It's the same thing with baltimore: people defend it up and down as an amazing city, when in my opinion it's a nightmare of a place to live. SF sounds similar in that regard. The worst part is when people eventually get fed up and leave, their stockholm syndrome will cause them to repeat the mistakes that made their previous place so bad to begin with.
lambdasquirrel 5y ago
It seems funny that there's many downvotes to responses in these threads. It's like people don't want to acknowledge how messed up SF has been, and how unsafe it has become, so they're just downvoting folks. It used to be that I'd even gotten my roof rack stolen off the top of my car. Then without much to steal during the pandemic, and with drug use off the charts, things just became unsafe. People I knew started carry mace. There was a firearm homicide in the Civic Center station (yes, really, in the station). You have to be absolutely crazy to go back to the office right now.
- thefourthchime 5y ago
  I lived there 10 years ago. Back then it was bad but manageable. I used to park my motorcycle on the street and once a month it would barely start. It was because someone busted off the top of my spark plug to use as a crack pipe. My wife and I just visited, the parts that were bad parts are worse, and the nice parts still seemed fine.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  Although it's sorta not in line with the HN rules to introduce downvotes as a conversation topic, I'll just say that mere observation of the problems in SF used to face way more downvoting. I was not a popular guy years ago when I was honest about why I promptly left SF after finishing school there. Now I get upvoted when I talk about SF because it's all out in the open so much that mainstream news articles discuss the crime, the urban decay, the feces, the drug use in broad daylight, the homelessness, etc. Those left who are still apologizing for SF have either never experienced anything else or are in denial. Trust me, it breaks my heart the extent to which SF has let itself go. As bad as it was a decade ago, there was still a lot to like about it and it was a fun place to be as a young guy. I criticize SF because I want to love it, not because I hate it. As much as there's also a lot to criticize about places like New York and Los Angeles (my hometown), they really have nothing on San Francisco in terms of social issues. Yeah, LA probably has the largest homeless encampments, but in my whole life I've rarely or never have seen what can be seen in SF. SF is the only city in America I've been to so far that's featured drug use in public parks during broad daylight, huge packs of rats running around, fentanyl zombies that actually resemble fictional zombies, elevators covered in urine, poop smeared on walkways and walls, gutters overflowing with rotten restaurant food, gangs spraying graffiti with bystanders around and no fear of being caught, and of course public displays of nudity (and occasionally other distasteful displays). It's really amazing what the human mind can be conditioned to accept. We can become accustomed to anything.
femiagbabiaka 5y ago
Basing your experience in SF on what happens on Market Street is like going to LA and basing your experience on visiting Skid Row. The vast majority of the city is just not like that. If you run into resistance from people who live here when recounting experiences like this, it’s probably because your statement is one that doesn’t pass the smell test, it seems plainly like you’re being willfully misleading. Next time you come to SF, I recommend reading a travel guide and staying somewhere that isn’t Market Street. Public transit is good enough that you can do that, your experience will be much more enjoyable.
- tlogan 5y ago
  Where in San Franscisco is not like that? Just on Monday we had a carjacking (with gun) on 8th Ave and Lincoln. In fucking sunset…
  - femiagbabiaka 5y ago
    That’s awful. I hope they find the perpetrators and they are punished. The Sunset District is not an unsafe place by any metric. I’ve walked every inch of it, it’s quiet and pretty much a suburb within the city. The crime rates are low as well. I think crime could always be lower, but painting one of the safest neighborhoods in SF as being unsafe because crime happens at all is not a fair characterization.
MikeTheRocker 5y ago
Every American city has rough parts (some more than others, including SF). There are definitely some very miserable and dangerous parts of San Francisco: Tenderloin, SOMA, Civic Center. But as someone who has lived here a while, I think this narrative that it's nothing but homelessness and crime is misguided. If you go West of Van Ness, there are so many beautiful and lively neighborhoods. Haight Ashbury, Hayes Valley, North of Panhandle, Pacific Heights, Japantown, Castro, Golden Gate Park, Inner/Outer Sunset, Inner/Outer Richmond, etc. The problem is that tourists mostly see the bad parts, probably because they're most accessible by public transit. The northern-most Caltrain stop is not in a nice area for example. There's a reason it's so enormously expensive to live here: demand.
- femiagbabiaka 5y ago
  Yes. It’s honestly a shame that the most trafficked parts of SF are the most dangerous, I’ve always thought that the narratives about crime were overwhelmingly because of this.
- bertjk 5y ago
  Golden Gate Park? Only if you have something against intact car windows.
- Damogran6 5y ago
  But isn't it the parts that the tourists go to that set the tone for outside perceptions? It's got a chilling effect (I don't take mass transit to Downtown Denver, and I pay for my son to park on-campus at Metro, specifically due to similar crime happening on the light rail systems.)
- scoofy 5y ago
  Ehh... i live by the panhandle, and many of the common concerns are present here as well. People are just used to the idea of never leaving anything in their car, ever, and that smashed windows are just part of the costs of owning a car. I call 311 to report used needles laying on the sidewalk multiple times a year. My gf lives near Castro, and she got her rear window smashed (nothing stolen because nothing in the car), and had to clean up a pile of human shit on her lower stoop, both this year alone. I love SF, but I'm not one of those people who pretends this is normal. This biggest misconception is danger. It's a very safe city, that said, the anti-social behavior is really, really totally unbelievable to me. Only comparable to other west coast cities really.
diob 5y ago
Meh, my own anecdote is I visit all the time and it's lovely. I feel like these sorts of things are just right wing never actually lived their rage bait.
- rvz 5y ago
  Translation: Everyone else's anecdotes don't match mine so they've never 'actually' lived there and whoever disagrees with my anecdote is 'just right wing'. I mean, you would have to refute the sources in some of the comments about the increasing crime in San Francisco then. [0] [1] [2] [3] If you think they are 'wrong' that is. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958359 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958414 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958418 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958554
  - diob 5y ago
    So the only link with actual data and not clickbait youtube or anecdotes was the link with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities... and rather than look at that link they still just said it "felt bad". It's crime rate is no worse than a place like Arizona, where I live. If you think about it critically, it's similar to the manufactured panic around bail reform in New York. The data shows it is working, but the police / entrenched folks are putting a lot of propaganda / money into reversing it. There are always going to be loud folks proclaiming the end of times, especially when things change. And especially when there's money involved (policing has boatloads of cash involved, they don't want to see things change).
jeremymcanally 5y ago
Anecdotal, of course, but my wife used to wander around downtown and SOMA when she would accompany me on business trips circa 2011-12 to SF. When I went back in 2019-20 after not having been there for 5+ years, I was shocked. I did my best to avoid being outside my hotel, and had my wife come with me on those trips, I would have stayed outside the city and commuted in. On a single trip from my hotel about 4 blocks away to our offices, I saw a guy tweaked out unconscious against a parking meter with the needle still in his leg, was accosted by a mentally ill dude trying to get me to take dope to a guy on the next block, saw a pretty obvious pimp give a stack of money to a young girl who should have been in school to run it somewhere, and two open drug deals happening literally right on Market by the Westfield Mall. I also saw a couple of tent encampments, folks starving on the street, and an incredibly long line for food at a soup kitchen. I was so...perturbed? Upset? by the whole experience that I kind of lost it in the bathroom when I got to work. The amount of human suffering one can witness in a 15 minute timespan there is just...galling. I don't think folks who live in SF have Stockholm Syndrome as much as it just becomes part of the scenery in some weird disconnected way. When I brought all that up to folks at work, they were like, "Oh yeah that's just how it is here" and dismissed it. I remember seeing two of my co-workers sipping coffee looking out the window of our expensive, air-conditioned office surrounded by pricey furniture and motivational posters, pointing out the various tweakers and drug dealers who were harassing folks trying to get food from the shelter nearby. It was just a snapshot of a mindset of disconnection about it that I still don't really understand. I guess at some point you just have to shut your brain off to the horror you're witnessing in real time or you will eventually snap, but I just couldn't do it. I asked on my next trip to stay at a much closer hotel, and when I left that company, if I'm honest, that was a not-inconsequential part of why.
- nazka 5y ago
  I had more or less the same experience when it was Covid. The streets were empty nobody outside, with everything of what you said happening. Plus all the stores closed and tagged on their wood protection things. It was surreal. The 4-5 « normal » guys I saw weren’t even looking normal with this scene. They were in perfect suits talking at the top of some perfect white marble stairs at the entrance of some federal building. It’s was really looking black and white. Or maybe just black.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a fake condition invented on the spot, with no supporting scientific evidence or other basis, by the person most responsible for a particular incident of excessive police violence unnecessarily endangering hostages to leverage misogyny to discredit criticism of that event. It being cited by advocates of increased violent policing as an explanation as to why the people who would be subject of that policy don’t support it is…perfectly on-brand.
- ipnon 5y ago
  This is a good point. I tried to use it in the more popular sense of "becoming over-accommodating to forces that are inherently against your interests," but there is an interesting psychological lens to view that argument from. My one point of contention is that I didn't advocate for more violence, or even policing. I didn't advocate for anything at all! The comment was meant to frame the underlying topic without proposing a solution.
joeman1000 5y ago
hintymad 5y ago
Sad as it is, I'm not optimistic that this problem will be solved any time soon, as long as people in SF (and in CA in general) believe that every social issue is purely a moral problem. You point out that SF is not safe? You're an oppressor, or worse in some people's mind: you're the Right. You are saying looting is bad? Oh, that's the worst offense, for you're now a white supremacist. You link increasing crime rate to lenient law enforcement? You're a racist. Note I'm not saying leniency is necessarily the cause of the higher crime right. Instead, I'm saying the discussion gets shut down so we don't make progress.
- ipnon 5y ago
  Everything seems to get framed morally instead of economically. By economically I don't mean with classism or monetarily, but game theoretic cause and effect. All proposals must be found to be overwhelmingly righteous before they can be analyzed for being effective.
- zionic 5y ago
  >Sad as it is, I'm not optimistic that this problem will be solved any time soon That should scare people more than anything. Right/left/center/up/down doesn't matter, I don't know anyone from any "side" that genuinely believes things are improving or will improve.
rsync 5y ago
Whatever. I was in the city all last weekend, in a hotel right on market street, and we walked everywhere (ferry building, chase center, SFDC) and it was safe, pleasant and delightful. I live just outside the city and have for 12 years and while there is plenty of room for improvement, it’s always a joy to be there. I love cities and I love SF in particular.
laurencerowe 5y ago
This is a little like saying LA is terrible because you stayed on Skid Row… The in your face human suffering is awful but things are a lot less bad in other parts of the city. SF has a similar proportion of homeless people as other big cities but with no right to shelter (as in NY) far too few shelter beds are provided. SF is fairly safe by American standards with a homicide rate half that of the country as a whole.
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  To the down voters, yeah the SF homicide rate is high for a developed country, but thank goodness it’s only half as bad as the US as a whole. If you plan to stay in the US where do you plan to move to that’s actually safer?
  - kcplate 5y ago
    Well, where I live in the US, the homicide rate is way less than half of SF, I have never been accosted by a tweaker, never seen a carjacking, never seen or heard of a mugging, closest homeless/panhandling person I have ever seen was about 5 miles away (friendly and polite dude), and perhaps most importantly the only crap I see on the sidewalks tends to be avian in nature.
    - laurencerowe 5y ago
      Where do you live? There is of course a lot of crime nearby me in SF but it's pretty dense so its spread across a large number of people so my personal risk is low. (There's maybe a million people in a 5 mile radius.) Sadly most of the country has even weaker gun control so doesn't enjoy the relative safety of living somewhere like San Francisco where there are only four times the number of homicides compared to the UK/France/Germany. (4.5 homicides per 100k in SF vs 6.3 homicides in the US and 0.8-1.2 homicides per 100k in UK/France/Germany.) Edit: Fixed SF crime rate to use full year figures since Wikipedia incorrectly links to half year figures. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-6 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

by ipnon 5y ago

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.

ipnon 5y ago
This is exactly what I'm talking about: In my city we reserve good manners for those who aren't commiting crimes upon us!

tbranyen 5y ago

Maybe you didn't venture out much, but you should realize that is _mostly_ exclusive to market street. One street of a thousand. Yes it occasionally happens elsewhere like any city, but Market and especially the tenderloin are infamous for the drug use and depravity. Why people keep staying there instead of the hundreds of other and safer hotel locations? Maybe hotels need better regulated ratings to take into account the surrounding area.

sorenn111 5y ago
Problem: most iconic and central street in SF has rampant problems. Solution: go elsewhere and add regulations to hotel rating about the surrounding area?? I'm sorry, but that is one of the most defeatist options I've ever heard
- tbranyen 5y ago
  Open to how you'd solve it. Fill up the overfilled jails and hospitals? Can't force people unless it's a 5150. You literally cannot stop what is happening without going full militarized police and how is that better? Best thing you can do as a tourist is know where you are. It's no different than unsafe areas of Mexico and LA? You gonna stay near skid row? SF weather and wealth is going to attract homeless and drugs, and unless you want to break the law to stop it, adapting is the next best thing. Actually NVM it's just easier to shit on SF and act like everyone there is an idiot and the solution is simple.
School-Cotton 5y ago
There is nothing like Market Street anywhere near the city center of NYC, as far as I know.
- ipnon 5y ago
  The Bowery can be even worse then Market Street at times. There have been a couple of serial killers targeting rough sleepers over the last few years. The day to day experience of the Bowery is much safer than Market Street though because NYPD aggressively targets the area.

hijinks 5y ago

in SFs dry season, my friend just leaves his windows open because his car got broken into so many times. Since hes left the window open he doesn't think his car got touched.

smaryjerry 5y ago
Same with Seattle. It’s better to just leave your car unlocked if you don’t want your windows broken. Sadly even if you leave a sign that nothing is inside and car is unlocked they still break the windows.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Sadly even if you leave a sign that nothing is inside and car is unlocked they still break the windows. Leaving the sign leads people who might be considering theft to believe that (1) there is something inside that you are trying to protect, and (2) the car is locked and wasting time trying to open the locked door will set off an alarm and reduce the chance of them getting the thing you are trying to protect before being noticed. So, yes, of course it has that effect.
  - smaryjerry 5y ago
    These guys aren’t afraid of alarms one bit or getting caught. They want the change sitting in your cars cup holder but would gladly take a night in jail instead.

zozbot234 5y ago

> My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome There do seem to be a whole lot of people around CA with outright delusional ideas about Scandinavian cultures and policy choices. For all their much vaunted "socialism" (with Scandinavian characteristics) Stockholm is a lot less dysfunctional than San Francisco.

throwaheyy 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
stingraycharles 5y ago
I don’t think the parent is referring to Stockholm (the city), but rather Stockholm Syndrome, the psychological phenomenon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
mmastrac 5y ago
I'm not sure if I missed a joke, but Stockholm syndrome is about hostages rather than governmental policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome TIL there's a Helsinki syndrome: https://www.scandinaviastandard.com/what-is-helsinki-syndrome/ https://www.scandinaviastandard.com/what-is-helsinki-syndrom...
- mandliya 5y ago
  TIL the London and Lima syndrome from the second link.
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Swizec 5y ago

Yes it got really bad during the pandemic. It’s as if the upper classes clearing out of downtown back to the burbs, avenues, and condos created a vacuum that all the other elements of the city filled. They were always there but more hidden. Now they’re in the open because nothing’s pushing back. With all the shuttered businesses, downtown is basically dead right now. Whole blocks of nothing. But the tide is shifting. Traffic is back, farmers market is packed, morning sidewalks are full of commuters. A few mor months and it will only be as bad as it was a few years ago.

justinator 5y ago
Farmers markets and lively cafes don’t solve homelessness or drug addiction. Like you say, they just become easier to ignore.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

Similar experience in Seattle. I lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood for 11 years and left in 2012. I went back to visit a few years ago and it looked like the homeless population had doubled or tripled in the time since. And it was already bad when I lived there. These cities seem to have a lot of fundamental societal problems and they have no idea whatsoever how to solve them.

gotoeleven 5y ago
Surprisingly it turns out that if you subsidize homelessness you get more homelessness.
- deleted 5y ago
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- malandrew 5y ago
  This. When you feed bears, you get problem bears. The National Parks system knows this, but cities like SF and Seattle do not.
  - gmfawcett 5y ago
    So your suggestion is to return the homeless people to their natural habitat in the woods, so they can forage for berries as nature intended?
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > This. When you feed bears, you get problem bears. > The National Parks system knows this, but cities like SF and Seattle do not. It should be noted that homeless people are people, not animals. Also, don't park systems kill "problem bears" (e.g. https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/waterton-lakes-national-park-staff-kill-black-bear-that-had-become-a-problem-1.5036261?cache=agylcuxajqn%3FclipId%3D375756 https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/waterton-lakes-national-park-staf...)?
    - giardini 5y ago

memish 5y ago

A mix of stockholm syndrome, aggressive gaslighting, denial. It's not just SoMa or the Tenderloin either. These are some of the recent local reports on Chinatown: Shop Owners Forced to Take Extra Precautions as Thieves Hit SF Chinatown Businesses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSwlSQf0LkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSwlSQf0LkA San Francisco Chinatown Camera Shop Owners Fight Back Against Smash-and-Grab Robbery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idy30hxat7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idy30hxat7M Community Group Hands Out Pepper Spray To San Francisco Chinatown Businesses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNsc3j1-d1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNsc3j1-d1I Volunteer Foot Patrols In SF's Chinatown After Shop Owners Fight Off Robbers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTPYhey3ea4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTPYhey3ea4 Yet we keep hearing that this isn't happening. Things are fine. It's exaggerated. Even in this very thread. I can't help but think of this quote, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

jpcfl 5y ago
I am constantly gaslit about this on r/sanfrancisco. People say “the data” show that crime is actually decreasing! It’s bizarre because the data I’m collecting with my very own eyes is staggeringly contradictory. The amount of crime I witness daily is heartbreaking and sometimes frightening. I understand the knee jerk response, which is to defend your home, but the moment I propose the data are being manipulated/spun, I’m called a conspiracy theorist. There’s a concerning lack of curiosity, critical thinking, and skepticism when it comes to this topic. The only explanation I have for the discrepancy is the normalization of crime. We have gotten so accustomed to theft, assault, drug use, public camping, illegal immigration, and property damage that we no longer count these as crimes. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy. I’m saying our standard of living has shifted down dramatically and we have adjusted our metrics down, too.
- Hammershaft 5y ago
  It seems like a categorical error to compare illegal immigration to theft, assault, and property damage.

silicon2401 5y ago

> My theory is San Francisco evangelists have Stockholm syndrome This is true of everybody who takes a position first and finds arguments for it second. Their position is irrational to begin with. It's the same thing with baltimore: people defend it up and down as an amazing city, when in my opinion it's a nightmare of a place to live. SF sounds similar in that regard. The worst part is when people eventually get fed up and leave, their stockholm syndrome will cause them to repeat the mistakes that made their previous place so bad to begin with.

lambdasquirrel 5y ago

It seems funny that there's many downvotes to responses in these threads. It's like people don't want to acknowledge how messed up SF has been, and how unsafe it has become, so they're just downvoting folks. It used to be that I'd even gotten my roof rack stolen off the top of my car. Then without much to steal during the pandemic, and with drug use off the charts, things just became unsafe. People I knew started carry mace. There was a firearm homicide in the Civic Center station (yes, really, in the station). You have to be absolutely crazy to go back to the office right now.

thefourthchime 5y ago
I lived there 10 years ago. Back then it was bad but manageable. I used to park my motorcycle on the street and once a month it would barely start. It was because someone busted off the top of my spark plug to use as a crack pipe. My wife and I just visited, the parts that were bad parts are worse, and the nice parts still seemed fine.
ravenstine 5y ago
Although it's sorta not in line with the HN rules to introduce downvotes as a conversation topic, I'll just say that mere observation of the problems in SF used to face way more downvoting. I was not a popular guy years ago when I was honest about why I promptly left SF after finishing school there. Now I get upvoted when I talk about SF because it's all out in the open so much that mainstream news articles discuss the crime, the urban decay, the feces, the drug use in broad daylight, the homelessness, etc. Those left who are still apologizing for SF have either never experienced anything else or are in denial. Trust me, it breaks my heart the extent to which SF has let itself go. As bad as it was a decade ago, there was still a lot to like about it and it was a fun place to be as a young guy. I criticize SF because I want to love it, not because I hate it. As much as there's also a lot to criticize about places like New York and Los Angeles (my hometown), they really have nothing on San Francisco in terms of social issues. Yeah, LA probably has the largest homeless encampments, but in my whole life I've rarely or never have seen what can be seen in SF. SF is the only city in America I've been to so far that's featured drug use in public parks during broad daylight, huge packs of rats running around, fentanyl zombies that actually resemble fictional zombies, elevators covered in urine, poop smeared on walkways and walls, gutters overflowing with rotten restaurant food, gangs spraying graffiti with bystanders around and no fear of being caught, and of course public displays of nudity (and occasionally other distasteful displays). It's really amazing what the human mind can be conditioned to accept. We can become accustomed to anything.

femiagbabiaka 5y ago

Basing your experience in SF on what happens on Market Street is like going to LA and basing your experience on visiting Skid Row. The vast majority of the city is just not like that. If you run into resistance from people who live here when recounting experiences like this, it’s probably because your statement is one that doesn’t pass the smell test, it seems plainly like you’re being willfully misleading. Next time you come to SF, I recommend reading a travel guide and staying somewhere that isn’t Market Street. Public transit is good enough that you can do that, your experience will be much more enjoyable.

tlogan 5y ago
Where in San Franscisco is not like that? Just on Monday we had a carjacking (with gun) on 8th Ave and Lincoln. In fucking sunset…
- femiagbabiaka 5y ago
  That’s awful. I hope they find the perpetrators and they are punished. The Sunset District is not an unsafe place by any metric. I’ve walked every inch of it, it’s quiet and pretty much a suburb within the city. The crime rates are low as well. I think crime could always be lower, but painting one of the safest neighborhoods in SF as being unsafe because crime happens at all is not a fair characterization.

MikeTheRocker 5y ago

Every American city has rough parts (some more than others, including SF). There are definitely some very miserable and dangerous parts of San Francisco: Tenderloin, SOMA, Civic Center. But as someone who has lived here a while, I think this narrative that it's nothing but homelessness and crime is misguided. If you go West of Van Ness, there are so many beautiful and lively neighborhoods. Haight Ashbury, Hayes Valley, North of Panhandle, Pacific Heights, Japantown, Castro, Golden Gate Park, Inner/Outer Sunset, Inner/Outer Richmond, etc. The problem is that tourists mostly see the bad parts, probably because they're most accessible by public transit. The northern-most Caltrain stop is not in a nice area for example. There's a reason it's so enormously expensive to live here: demand.

femiagbabiaka 5y ago
Yes. It’s honestly a shame that the most trafficked parts of SF are the most dangerous, I’ve always thought that the narratives about crime were overwhelmingly because of this.
bertjk 5y ago
Golden Gate Park? Only if you have something against intact car windows.
Damogran6 5y ago
But isn't it the parts that the tourists go to that set the tone for outside perceptions? It's got a chilling effect (I don't take mass transit to Downtown Denver, and I pay for my son to park on-campus at Metro, specifically due to similar crime happening on the light rail systems.)
scoofy 5y ago
Ehh... i live by the panhandle, and many of the common concerns are present here as well. People are just used to the idea of never leaving anything in their car, ever, and that smashed windows are just part of the costs of owning a car. I call 311 to report used needles laying on the sidewalk multiple times a year. My gf lives near Castro, and she got her rear window smashed (nothing stolen because nothing in the car), and had to clean up a pile of human shit on her lower stoop, both this year alone. I love SF, but I'm not one of those people who pretends this is normal. This biggest misconception is danger. It's a very safe city, that said, the anti-social behavior is really, really totally unbelievable to me. Only comparable to other west coast cities really.

diob 5y ago

Meh, my own anecdote is I visit all the time and it's lovely. I feel like these sorts of things are just right wing never actually lived their rage bait.

rvz 5y ago
Translation: Everyone else's anecdotes don't match mine so they've never 'actually' lived there and whoever disagrees with my anecdote is 'just right wing'. I mean, you would have to refute the sources in some of the comments about the increasing crime in San Francisco then. [0] [1] [2] [3] If you think they are 'wrong' that is. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958359 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958414 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958418 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958554
- diob 5y ago
  So the only link with actual data and not clickbait youtube or anecdotes was the link with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities... and rather than look at that link they still just said it "felt bad". It's crime rate is no worse than a place like Arizona, where I live. If you think about it critically, it's similar to the manufactured panic around bail reform in New York. The data shows it is working, but the police / entrenched folks are putting a lot of propaganda / money into reversing it. There are always going to be loud folks proclaiming the end of times, especially when things change. And especially when there's money involved (policing has boatloads of cash involved, they don't want to see things change).

jeremymcanally 5y ago

Anecdotal, of course, but my wife used to wander around downtown and SOMA when she would accompany me on business trips circa 2011-12 to SF. When I went back in 2019-20 after not having been there for 5+ years, I was shocked. I did my best to avoid being outside my hotel, and had my wife come with me on those trips, I would have stayed outside the city and commuted in. On a single trip from my hotel about 4 blocks away to our offices, I saw a guy tweaked out unconscious against a parking meter with the needle still in his leg, was accosted by a mentally ill dude trying to get me to take dope to a guy on the next block, saw a pretty obvious pimp give a stack of money to a young girl who should have been in school to run it somewhere, and two open drug deals happening literally right on Market by the Westfield Mall. I also saw a couple of tent encampments, folks starving on the street, and an incredibly long line for food at a soup kitchen. I was so...perturbed? Upset? by the whole experience that I kind of lost it in the bathroom when I got to work. The amount of human suffering one can witness in a 15 minute timespan there is just...galling. I don't think folks who live in SF have Stockholm Syndrome as much as it just becomes part of the scenery in some weird disconnected way. When I brought all that up to folks at work, they were like, "Oh yeah that's just how it is here" and dismissed it. I remember seeing two of my co-workers sipping coffee looking out the window of our expensive, air-conditioned office surrounded by pricey furniture and motivational posters, pointing out the various tweakers and drug dealers who were harassing folks trying to get food from the shelter nearby. It was just a snapshot of a mindset of disconnection about it that I still don't really understand. I guess at some point you just have to shut your brain off to the horror you're witnessing in real time or you will eventually snap, but I just couldn't do it. I asked on my next trip to stay at a much closer hotel, and when I left that company, if I'm honest, that was a not-inconsequential part of why.

nazka 5y ago
I had more or less the same experience when it was Covid. The streets were empty nobody outside, with everything of what you said happening. Plus all the stores closed and tagged on their wood protection things. It was surreal. The 4-5 « normal » guys I saw weren’t even looking normal with this scene. They were in perfect suits talking at the top of some perfect white marble stairs at the entrance of some federal building. It’s was really looking black and white. Or maybe just black.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a fake condition invented on the spot, with no supporting scientific evidence or other basis, by the person most responsible for a particular incident of excessive police violence unnecessarily endangering hostages to leverage misogyny to discredit criticism of that event. It being cited by advocates of increased violent policing as an explanation as to why the people who would be subject of that policy don’t support it is…perfectly on-brand.

ipnon 5y ago
This is a good point. I tried to use it in the more popular sense of "becoming over-accommodating to forces that are inherently against your interests," but there is an interesting psychological lens to view that argument from. My one point of contention is that I didn't advocate for more violence, or even policing. I didn't advocate for anything at all! The comment was meant to frame the underlying topic without proposing a solution.

joeman1000 5y ago

hintymad 5y ago

Sad as it is, I'm not optimistic that this problem will be solved any time soon, as long as people in SF (and in CA in general) believe that every social issue is purely a moral problem. You point out that SF is not safe? You're an oppressor, or worse in some people's mind: you're the Right. You are saying looting is bad? Oh, that's the worst offense, for you're now a white supremacist. You link increasing crime rate to lenient law enforcement? You're a racist. Note I'm not saying leniency is necessarily the cause of the higher crime right. Instead, I'm saying the discussion gets shut down so we don't make progress.

ipnon 5y ago
Everything seems to get framed morally instead of economically. By economically I don't mean with classism or monetarily, but game theoretic cause and effect. All proposals must be found to be overwhelmingly righteous before they can be analyzed for being effective.
zionic 5y ago
>Sad as it is, I'm not optimistic that this problem will be solved any time soon That should scare people more than anything. Right/left/center/up/down doesn't matter, I don't know anyone from any "side" that genuinely believes things are improving or will improve.

rsync 5y ago

Whatever. I was in the city all last weekend, in a hotel right on market street, and we walked everywhere (ferry building, chase center, SFDC) and it was safe, pleasant and delightful. I live just outside the city and have for 12 years and while there is plenty of room for improvement, it’s always a joy to be there. I love cities and I love SF in particular.

laurencerowe 5y ago

This is a little like saying LA is terrible because you stayed on Skid Row… The in your face human suffering is awful but things are a lot less bad in other parts of the city. SF has a similar proportion of homeless people as other big cities but with no right to shelter (as in NY) far too few shelter beds are provided. SF is fairly safe by American standards with a homicide rate half that of the country as a whole.

laurencerowe 5y ago
To the down voters, yeah the SF homicide rate is high for a developed country, but thank goodness it’s only half as bad as the US as a whole. If you plan to stay in the US where do you plan to move to that’s actually safer?
- kcplate 5y ago
  Well, where I live in the US, the homicide rate is way less than half of SF, I have never been accosted by a tweaker, never seen a carjacking, never seen or heard of a mugging, closest homeless/panhandling person I have ever seen was about 5 miles away (friendly and polite dude), and perhaps most importantly the only crap I see on the sidewalks tends to be avian in nature.
  - laurencerowe 5y ago
    Where do you live? There is of course a lot of crime nearby me in SF but it's pretty dense so its spread across a large number of people so my personal risk is low. (There's maybe a million people in a 5 mile radius.) Sadly most of the country has even weaker gun control so doesn't enjoy the relative safety of living somewhere like San Francisco where there are only four times the number of homicides compared to the UK/France/Germany. (4.5 homicides per 100k in SF vs 6.3 homicides in the US and 0.8-1.2 homicides per 100k in UK/France/Germany.) Edit: Fixed SF crime rate to use full year figures since Wikipedia incorrectly links to half year figures. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-6 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...