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 i

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.