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When I moved to SF in 1996, the murder count that year was 86. Last year it was 56. I haven't been back in a very long time, but I guarantee you it's a far safe

When I moved to SF in 1996, the murder count that year was 86. Last year it was 56. I haven't been back in a very long time, but I guarantee you it's a far safer city than it was back then. I lived on Market between 6th and 7th and had knives pulled on me, and watched a car get blown up across the street underneath Hollywood Billiards, which is long gone now - according to Google Maps, they're building new apartments there. I loved the Tenderloin back then, even though it was terrifying. It was full of weirdos and loonies and junkies and poverty stricken artsy types like me, who had no power or desire in gentrification - we were just poor too. But we embraced where we were and didn't try to change it. The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway. Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are. I hope all that authenticity and exposed brick in your offices and apartments are worth it.

bobobob420 4y ago
“ Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are.” Nope. One of the wealthiest cities in the world fails to look after its inhabitants. A failure of government
- JieJie 4y ago
  Y'all could both be a little bit right on this, you know.
- criddell 4y ago
  I think you're saying the same thing with different words. The government isn't some distant third party. It's people from the community who are elected by their neighbors to run things in a certain way.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Especially local government. It’s literally downtown.
  - platinumrad 4y ago
    People who moved to SF in 96 like GP are much more politically influential than the "colonizers" who arrived more recently. And yes, someone who arrived in the late 90s calling other people "colonizers" is hilarious.
- jjulius 4y ago
  >Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go... >One of the wealthiest cities in the world fails to look after its inhabitants... These are the same thing.
- geebee 4y ago
  I think you're using the term "inhabitants" loosely here. The US doesn't have much of a social safety net, which means that any city that attempts to build one may suddenly find that "its inhabitants" include the 330 million people living in other parts of the country who need help. Or who would just like some money and an opportunity to do meth and fentanyl and shoplift and commit property crime in a place with very little law enforcement. I personally would include that in the definition of "needing help." Any version of "help" that will help in SF will have to be coercive, which is another thing SF's political culture is having tremendous difficulty accepting. But really, if you took Stockholm out of Sweden and plunked it down into the middle of the US, how long do you think the social safety net would last before it went bankrupt? And this is assuming you retain the european willingness to be coercive about mandatory rehab and confinement (something US based progressives are reluctant to note is a feature of the european social safety programs they otherwise praise).
ggambetta 4y ago
Out of curiosity, how does one avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway?
- btheshoe 4y ago
  I've never felt unsafe in an alleyway in sf. but probably the same as any other city - don't be a dumbass, avoid the alleyways in shady parts of the city, esp at night.
- tedunangst 4y ago
  Don't know the junkie.
- narrator 4y ago
  I once was walking in downtown with a lady I was dating and a guy who looked homeless and was obviously very high snuck up on me and wrapped his arm around mine and started talking to me. I did not get scared, I just talked to him like he was my best friend. He said, your girlfriend is really pretty, and I said, "Yes, she is is!" and I asked whether he was having a nice day and wasn't the weather great and made small talk about various things. He released his grip on me eventually and walked away and my date didn't even realize, until I told her what happened later that there was any sort of danger. Street people are so used to people being utterly horrified of them that if you treat them like they are a normal human being, they'll be less likely to want to act violent toward you.
  - didip 4y ago
    This is the street-smart way of handling this type of danger. Growing up in a dangerous neighborhood in Jakarta, I've used similar tactics many times.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - nicenewtemp84 4y ago
    I don't want to be contrarian for the sake of it, but the fact that by luck the guy physically stalking you and immobilizing you happened to back down isn't really convincing me of the safety of SF or alleys. If being street smart means "try to stay calm when possibly about to be stabbed and killed", I think I'll skip that lecture. I'd prefer if street smarts included how not to let a drugged up guy not get behind you and near you. And how to get out of a bear hug by a drugged up guy. Because "hoping he is nice" doesn't sound like a plan to me.
bradlys 4y ago
> Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go I think part of this is not realizing that a lot of the locals (the previous colonizers) are part of the problem. I can guarantee that the colonizers would love for more housing to be built in SF because they don't want to pay $2m for a 2bd townhouse either. A huge portion of the SF "colonizer" demographic can't even fucking vote. They're all on visas.
- dmix 4y ago
  People love to invent boogiemen where they dehumaize groups of people as uncaring caricatures. It's much easier than confronting the hard problems and feels good.
boringuser2 4y ago
>Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are. I hope all that authenticity and exposed brick in your offices and apartments are worth it. I'm curious who you think you're referring to when you make a statement like this. (Hint: You're probably wrong).
dehrmann 4y ago
> The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy I worked in the Warfield building from 2014 to 2017. It wasn't deep in the TL, but it still numbed me to things. Crossing police tape to get into the office? NBD. Coworkers getting assaulted? Happens every few months. > Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go If you said something like this about The Mission, I'd agree, but the TL wasn't even close to gentrifying. People tried to make it happen, but it never got to a point where people wanted to be there, and that was only at its periphery.
nostromo 4y ago
Your comment borders on defending violent crime and murder. As if stabbings are part of San Francisco's quirky, artsy past, and the people that live here should think of violent crime as character-building.
- zamnos 4y ago
  I mean, if you want to go that route, the SFist has you covered, with this article on "The 10 Most Infamous San Francisco Murders Of The 20th Century" https://sfist.com/2017/02/28/the_10_most_infamous_san_francisco_1/ https://sfist.com/2017/02/28/the_10_most_infamous_san_franci...
marco_yolo 4y ago
pretty sure the mentally ill and "poorest folks",as you say, have "colonized" every part of the city. this logic is a two way street.
- mort96 4y ago
  You're saying mentally ill and poor people have been moving from somewhere else in to SF in large numbers? Where do you get that idea from?
JPKab 4y ago
"Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go" 1.) I grew up in the rural South, and was literally harassed for most of my career for saying "y'all" and "folks" but glad to see it's trendy to speak that way amongst the exact kind of people who used to assume I was ignorant for speaking that way. 2.) Your statement could just as easily be, on a different day: "Y'all abandoned the city for the suburbs and deprived the city of a tax base to help the poor." Between "white flight" and "colonizer/gentrifier", you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Same applies to livability: If you demand quality of life crimes be dealt with to make a city cleaner, you are guilty of not "embracing where we were and not trying to change it". Your entire statement to me seems driven by emotion and nostalgia without thinking about the fact that there are low income children who have to grow up in these places. Maybe parents aren't thrilled with having their 10 year olds learn the valuable life lessons of "how to not get knifed by a junkie in an alleyway". Sorry, but the whole comment reeks of luxury beliefs. I've personally (in DC) been mugged at gunpoint (they threw me onto the pavement in the process) and had a random guy jump out of his car to assault me because I walked in front of his car in heavy traffic (all cars stopped) to cross a street, and he viewed it as "disrespecting him". Real, actual victims of violent crime don't think it's cute or have this nostalgia for squalor. Beliefs like that are luxuries for certain kinds of people who are insulated from the worst of it, one way or another. It's easy for a childless bohemian to have no problem with needles in parks, but for those of us raising future citizens, it's not fun.
- wpietri 4y ago
  > Between "white flight" and "colonizer/gentrifier", you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. So you think that "flee the black people" and "drive the black people out" are the only two options here? There are more things, Horatio.
  - ToDougie 4y ago
    Such as...?
- pnathan 4y ago
  One major aspect I want to touch on that bother me in the perspective you criticize. Poverty and crime are not married. My wife and I both grew up poor and working class. Living in trailers are in our life stories. You can be dog poor and still not be a junkie, still not mug others, still not assault people. This was understood widely in our upbringing and those we dealt with. People _did_ misbehave, but it was not "just what happens". Presumption that poor areas must mean getting to deal with junkies, means dealing with violence, well, that is a morally bankrupt view. People don't have to do that. That is their choice. Improvement is possible.
firmnoodle 4y ago
"The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway." I 100% agree. I lived 5 blocks uphill from the Tenderloin and would walk though the loin to go to Bourbon & Branch or while coming back from the theater late at night. I learned all three of those lessons as well. It was rare that I was scared but I was always hyper alert.
- yadaeno 4y ago
  How safe you are mostly depends on your gender, size and frankly race. If you are a tall male your experience is simply not comparable to someone that is less able to fend off a physical confrontation. Its great nothing traumatic happened to you, but I’ve seen how much more of a target for harassment some of my friends are and I don’t blame them for being afraid.
vasilipupkin 4y ago
I don't understand this mentality. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Switzerland&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Zurich&tracking=getDispatchComparison https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Uni... there is no reason that SF has to be a lot less safe than Zurich. Zurich is not populated by aliens, people live in both places It's political choices that make it the way it is.
- wpietri 4y ago
  It is political choices, but it's not primarily on a city level, or a year-to-year level. The problems in San Francisco are generations in the making and often national in cause. You might read Loewen's "Sundown Towns" for a good look at a key factor to understanding American cities. The "mentality" here is one appropriate for the person and the circumstance. As you say, his neighbors weren't aliens, they were people. Compassion and understanding were worthwhile efforts. And they remain so.
  - vasilipupkin 4y ago
    I did not say this mentality is not appropriate for one person. And I didn't say that compassion is not a worthwhile effort, so I am not sure what you are responding to.
- xwkd 4y ago
  I agreed with the parent's sentiments initially. But then I saw your comment before the edit, where you had called this "uneducated loser mentality." I'm sad that you edited it, because you're also right. >I loved the Tenderloin back then, even though it was terrifying. It was full of weirdos and loonies and junkies and poverty stricken artsy types like me, who had no power or desire in gentrification - we were just poor too. But we embraced where we were and didn't try to change it. The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway. >But we embraced where we were and didn't try to change it. Poor is fine. It's a hard life, but it's a state of being. Even being artsy and a little crazy; that's great. The rest of it though...? Why romanticize this? It's bad. We shouldn't romanticize bad. Learn your lessons, but let's want something better.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nicenewtemp84 4y ago
There is a difference in who is getting attacked these days vs past. In the past, the crime was more amongst the people taking part in obviously dangerous things. Now it feels more like it can happen to anyone. I spent a few years in SF as a child 89-92. Have visited several times a year, every year, since 1992. It's definitely the most run down, dirty, and unpleasant it has ever been IMO. I have luckily never had anything stolen, but I for sure see more broken glass and more broken car windows too.
simplotek 4y ago
> Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are. What leads you to conflate poverty with criminal activity, and proceed to victim-blame those who dare complain about criminal activity?
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Equating poor people with criminals is indeed quite discriminatory. It’s ironic to see that used in a statement from someone who believes themselves to be taking the moral high ground.
  - TheKarateKid 4y ago
    The equation he made isn't wrong, but it contradicts the fact that OP is criticizing people who agree with what they said themselves. Data clearly shows a correlation between crime levels and average income in an area. Are we not mostly engineers used to working with data here? In fact, needing to "survive" is a common excuse used to justify the crimes committed in impoverished areas. Note that I said correlation, not causation. If someone has data that says otherwise, please provide it because I would be genuinely intrigued.
    - simplotek 4y ago
      > Data clearly shows a correlation between crime levels and average income in an area. Isn't "correlation does not imply causality" already a household expression? If we are engineers why are we insisting in specious reasoning?
- trollerator23 4y ago
  Oh please. I'm sure they are totally unrelated.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
kragen 4y ago
so how do you avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway? this is important information to me
- carapace 4y ago
  I lived in the Tenderloin for a bit after high school. First and foremost, avoid alleyways, avoid junkies. It seems like simple advice and it is. What I learned as a nerdy white kid living in TL was that there is a largely non-verbal communication system, a kind of thieves' cant (although, as I mentioned, it's largely non-verbal, almost like a sign language but with subtle facial expressions and body postures rather than specific signs. (Actual gangs do use specific hand signs to recognize each other.)) If you "know the score" you can just tell someone, e.g. "Hey, don't mug me." using this communication system and they will leave you alone. This happened to me. I was walking through the 'loin when a dude comes up off the wall and starts to fall in behind me. I caught the motion out of the corner of my eye, and I gave him the slightest shake of my head, "nah", and that was it. He fell back and posted up on the wall again, and it was over. Just being aware of what's going on differentiates you from the clueless "mark". That's the main thing: you're part of the "in-group". You have heard of "woke"? This level of awareness of the nature of life on the street is part of what one is woke to, or not, eh? This cant would seem like telepathy to an unaware outsider. So, I was able to tell my would-be mugger that, although I look and walk like a clueless tech nerd, I'm actually a resident who knows what's up, so please mug someone else? And, as neighbors do, he kindly preferred to look for someone wandering in from the nicer parts of downtown. A tech worker or tourist, eh? (I saw those interactions too: Three "gentlemen" corner a fellow up against a wall, one of them displays an empty 40oz bottle, and an agreement of sorts quickly emerges to the effect that it would be much preferable for the victim to give up his wallet rather than receive the bottle to the head. They even gave him his wallet back afterwards. The whole thing took thirty seconds.) There's also an element of stotting involved in what I'm saying, "an honest signal to predators that the stotting animal would be difficult to catch" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting ) Since I "know the score" I'm not going to panic or freeze up if this guy tries to rob me. There's a way to say with your body language, "I'm not going to be easy to rob." If you don't have that naturally, for whatever reason, there is something called "adrenaline re-imprinting" self-defense courses. Without going into a long tangent about it, the essence is to re-program your adrenaline response to be coherent and defensive. If you haven't seen it, it's hard to imagine the intensity of a controlled adrenaline response. Even small, weak people can be extremely dangerous under the influence of adrenaline. Adrenaline is a hellofa drug. (I mean, in the course I took the instructor at one point has on one of those bear-proof suits, and it still seems like he's gonna get hurt. And the other people in my class were small women! They were destroying this guy.) Basically, the attacker would have to be literally psychotic to continue trying to attack someone in the throes of a controlled adrenaline response. Trying to approach someone in that state... it's like a force-field. There's something deep within you that is like "nope" when confronted with such a fury, and the effect gets stronger as you try to approach. It literally feels like a force-field. I have only had to use the training once, Thank God, and it stopped three guys in their tracks, literally. They were running up behind me, and I stopped and the adrenaline triggered and I spun around and did the thing (there's a posture and you shout "back off!") and they stopped in their tracks. I started a conversation with them and they were scared of me. As in I made a gesture and one of them jumped back a little. Anyway, the thing to search for is "adrenaline re-imprinting". I like you Kragen, I hope it's not too weird to say that, so I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. Cheers!
dang 4y ago
Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar hell. Your comment was great until the last paragraph, which swerved dramatically for the worse and basically drove the subthread off a cliff. Comments demonizing other people and/or other groups of people are the scourge of internet forums. If you make it "y'all", that's worse yet, as now the demonized group gets to select itself and feel personally attacked. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tga_d 4y ago
  I can't help but wonder why it's prudent to sweep in for a comment like that, but not any of the comments that have been associating homelessness with murder rates on an article apparently about a dispute between two tech workers. It's almost like the guidelines are catered not towards high-quality discussion so much as an aesthetic of high-quality discussion by protecting the emotions of a specific class of people who would get offended by that comment. Or should I be flagging comments that euphemistically mention the "homeless problem"?
  - dang 4y ago
    We're not protecting any "specific class of people". Anyone with an insight to offer about homelessness, or any other question under discussion, is welcome to do it. We just ask people not to rage at and/or demonize each other, because that's the way that internet forums destroy themselves. Scorched earth isn't interesting to anybody: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... People often think that if we moderate comment X, we must care less about or even be endorsing comment Y, but that's not the case. We just see a more-or-less random sample of the comments. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
raldi 4y ago
For decades, San Francisco hasn't been building enough new units to house even just the children of natives[1], to say nothing of those like you and I who were born elsewhere and dreamed of moving here. The people who "gave the poorest folks nowhere to go" were the ones who voted to prohibit the construction of anything but single-family houses[2] in 76% of the city[3]. [1] https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/MCHdocs/Epi/Birth-Data-Summary-SF.pdf https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/MCHdocs/Epi/Birth-Data-Summa... [2] https://sbuss.substack.com/p/when-did-things-go-wrong-in-san-francisco#:~:text=So%2C%20while%20central,downzone%20San%20Francisco https://sbuss.substack.com/p/when-did-things-go-wrong-in-san.... [3] https://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/ https://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/
ipaddr 4y ago
Sounds like someone is trying to put themselves in a category and everyone else in another. You were part of a wave of colonizers, taking spaces from poorer people. You can't hide behind being artsy.. those tend to be the biggest colonizers

bobobob420 4y ago

“ Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are.” Nope. One of the wealthiest cities in the world fails to look after its inhabitants. A failure of government

JieJie 4y ago
Y'all could both be a little bit right on this, you know.
criddell 4y ago
I think you're saying the same thing with different words. The government isn't some distant third party. It's people from the community who are elected by their neighbors to run things in a certain way.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Especially local government. It’s literally downtown.
- platinumrad 4y ago
  People who moved to SF in 96 like GP are much more politically influential than the "colonizers" who arrived more recently. And yes, someone who arrived in the late 90s calling other people "colonizers" is hilarious.
jjulius 4y ago
>Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go... >One of the wealthiest cities in the world fails to look after its inhabitants... These are the same thing.
geebee 4y ago
I think you're using the term "inhabitants" loosely here. The US doesn't have much of a social safety net, which means that any city that attempts to build one may suddenly find that "its inhabitants" include the 330 million people living in other parts of the country who need help. Or who would just like some money and an opportunity to do meth and fentanyl and shoplift and commit property crime in a place with very little law enforcement. I personally would include that in the definition of "needing help." Any version of "help" that will help in SF will have to be coercive, which is another thing SF's political culture is having tremendous difficulty accepting. But really, if you took Stockholm out of Sweden and plunked it down into the middle of the US, how long do you think the social safety net would last before it went bankrupt? And this is assuming you retain the european willingness to be coercive about mandatory rehab and confinement (something US based progressives are reluctant to note is a feature of the european social safety programs they otherwise praise).

ggambetta 4y ago

Out of curiosity, how does one avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway?

btheshoe 4y ago
I've never felt unsafe in an alleyway in sf. but probably the same as any other city - don't be a dumbass, avoid the alleyways in shady parts of the city, esp at night.
tedunangst 4y ago
Don't know the junkie.
narrator 4y ago
I once was walking in downtown with a lady I was dating and a guy who looked homeless and was obviously very high snuck up on me and wrapped his arm around mine and started talking to me. I did not get scared, I just talked to him like he was my best friend. He said, your girlfriend is really pretty, and I said, "Yes, she is is!" and I asked whether he was having a nice day and wasn't the weather great and made small talk about various things. He released his grip on me eventually and walked away and my date didn't even realize, until I told her what happened later that there was any sort of danger. Street people are so used to people being utterly horrified of them that if you treat them like they are a normal human being, they'll be less likely to want to act violent toward you.
- didip 4y ago
  This is the street-smart way of handling this type of danger. Growing up in a dangerous neighborhood in Jakarta, I've used similar tactics many times.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- nicenewtemp84 4y ago
  I don't want to be contrarian for the sake of it, but the fact that by luck the guy physically stalking you and immobilizing you happened to back down isn't really convincing me of the safety of SF or alleys. If being street smart means "try to stay calm when possibly about to be stabbed and killed", I think I'll skip that lecture. I'd prefer if street smarts included how not to let a drugged up guy not get behind you and near you. And how to get out of a bear hug by a drugged up guy. Because "hoping he is nice" doesn't sound like a plan to me.

bradlys 4y ago

> Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go I think part of this is not realizing that a lot of the locals (the previous colonizers) are part of the problem. I can guarantee that the colonizers would love for more housing to be built in SF because they don't want to pay $2m for a 2bd townhouse either. A huge portion of the SF "colonizer" demographic can't even fucking vote. They're all on visas.

dmix 4y ago
People love to invent boogiemen where they dehumaize groups of people as uncaring caricatures. It's much easier than confronting the hard problems and feels good.

boringuser2 4y ago

>Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are. I hope all that authenticity and exposed brick in your offices and apartments are worth it. I'm curious who you think you're referring to when you make a statement like this. (Hint: You're probably wrong).

dehrmann 4y ago

> The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy I worked in the Warfield building from 2014 to 2017. It wasn't deep in the TL, but it still numbed me to things. Crossing police tape to get into the office? NBD. Coworkers getting assaulted? Happens every few months. > Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go If you said something like this about The Mission, I'd agree, but the TL wasn't even close to gentrifying. People tried to make it happen, but it never got to a point where people wanted to be there, and that was only at its periphery.

nostromo 4y ago

Your comment borders on defending violent crime and murder. As if stabbings are part of San Francisco's quirky, artsy past, and the people that live here should think of violent crime as character-building.

zamnos 4y ago
I mean, if you want to go that route, the SFist has you covered, with this article on "The 10 Most Infamous San Francisco Murders Of The 20th Century" https://sfist.com/2017/02/28/the_10_most_infamous_san_francisco_1/ https://sfist.com/2017/02/28/the_10_most_infamous_san_franci...

marco_yolo 4y ago

pretty sure the mentally ill and "poorest folks",as you say, have "colonized" every part of the city. this logic is a two way street.

mort96 4y ago
You're saying mentally ill and poor people have been moving from somewhere else in to SF in large numbers? Where do you get that idea from?

JPKab 4y ago

"Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go" 1.) I grew up in the rural South, and was literally harassed for most of my career for saying "y'all" and "folks" but glad to see it's trendy to speak that way amongst the exact kind of people who used to assume I was ignorant for speaking that way. 2.) Your statement could just as easily be, on a different day: "Y'all abandoned the city for the suburbs and deprived the city of a tax base to help the poor." Between "white flight" and "colonizer/gentrifier", you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Same applies to livability: If you demand quality of life crimes be dealt with to make a city cleaner, you are guilty of not "embracing where we were and not trying to change it". Your entire statement to me seems driven by emotion and nostalgia without thinking about the fact that there are low income children who have to grow up in these places. Maybe parents aren't thrilled with having their 10 year olds learn the valuable life lessons of "how to not get knifed by a junkie in an alleyway". Sorry, but the whole comment reeks of luxury beliefs. I've personally (in DC) been mugged at gunpoint (they threw me onto the pavement in the process) and had a random guy jump out of his car to assault me because I walked in front of his car in heavy traffic (all cars stopped) to cross a street, and he viewed it as "disrespecting him". Real, actual victims of violent crime don't think it's cute or have this nostalgia for squalor. Beliefs like that are luxuries for certain kinds of people who are insulated from the worst of it, one way or another. It's easy for a childless bohemian to have no problem with needles in parks, but for those of us raising future citizens, it's not fun.

wpietri 4y ago
> Between "white flight" and "colonizer/gentrifier", you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. So you think that "flee the black people" and "drive the black people out" are the only two options here? There are more things, Horatio.
- ToDougie 4y ago
  Such as...?
pnathan 4y ago
One major aspect I want to touch on that bother me in the perspective you criticize. Poverty and crime are not married. My wife and I both grew up poor and working class. Living in trailers are in our life stories. You can be dog poor and still not be a junkie, still not mug others, still not assault people. This was understood widely in our upbringing and those we dealt with. People _did_ misbehave, but it was not "just what happens". Presumption that poor areas must mean getting to deal with junkies, means dealing with violence, well, that is a morally bankrupt view. People don't have to do that. That is their choice. Improvement is possible.

firmnoodle 4y ago

"The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway." I 100% agree. I lived 5 blocks uphill from the Tenderloin and would walk though the loin to go to Bourbon & Branch or while coming back from the theater late at night. I learned all three of those lessons as well. It was rare that I was scared but I was always hyper alert.

yadaeno 4y ago
How safe you are mostly depends on your gender, size and frankly race. If you are a tall male your experience is simply not comparable to someone that is less able to fend off a physical confrontation. Its great nothing traumatic happened to you, but I’ve seen how much more of a target for harassment some of my friends are and I don’t blame them for being afraid.

vasilipupkin 4y ago

I don't understand this mentality. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Switzerland&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Zurich&tracking=getDispatchComparison https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Uni... there is no reason that SF has to be a lot less safe than Zurich. Zurich is not populated by aliens, people live in both places It's political choices that make it the way it is.

wpietri 4y ago
It is political choices, but it's not primarily on a city level, or a year-to-year level. The problems in San Francisco are generations in the making and often national in cause. You might read Loewen's "Sundown Towns" for a good look at a key factor to understanding American cities. The "mentality" here is one appropriate for the person and the circumstance. As you say, his neighbors weren't aliens, they were people. Compassion and understanding were worthwhile efforts. And they remain so.
- vasilipupkin 4y ago
  I did not say this mentality is not appropriate for one person. And I didn't say that compassion is not a worthwhile effort, so I am not sure what you are responding to.
xwkd 4y ago
I agreed with the parent's sentiments initially. But then I saw your comment before the edit, where you had called this "uneducated loser mentality." I'm sad that you edited it, because you're also right. >I loved the Tenderloin back then, even though it was terrifying. It was full of weirdos and loonies and junkies and poverty stricken artsy types like me, who had no power or desire in gentrification - we were just poor too. But we embraced where we were and didn't try to change it. The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway. >But we embraced where we were and didn't try to change it. Poor is fine. It's a hard life, but it's a state of being. Even being artsy and a little crazy; that's great. The rest of it though...? Why romanticize this? It's bad. We shouldn't romanticize bad. Learn your lessons, but let's want something better.

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nicenewtemp84 4y ago

There is a difference in who is getting attacked these days vs past. In the past, the crime was more amongst the people taking part in obviously dangerous things. Now it feels more like it can happen to anyone. I spent a few years in SF as a child 89-92. Have visited several times a year, every year, since 1992. It's definitely the most run down, dirty, and unpleasant it has ever been IMO. I have luckily never had anything stolen, but I for sure see more broken glass and more broken car windows too.

simplotek 4y ago

> Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are. What leads you to conflate poverty with criminal activity, and proceed to victim-blame those who dare complain about criminal activity?

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Equating poor people with criminals is indeed quite discriminatory. It’s ironic to see that used in a statement from someone who believes themselves to be taking the moral high ground.
- TheKarateKid 4y ago
  The equation he made isn't wrong, but it contradicts the fact that OP is criticizing people who agree with what they said themselves. Data clearly shows a correlation between crime levels and average income in an area. Are we not mostly engineers used to working with data here? In fact, needing to "survive" is a common excuse used to justify the crimes committed in impoverished areas. Note that I said correlation, not causation. If someone has data that says otherwise, please provide it because I would be genuinely intrigued.
  - simplotek 4y ago
    > Data clearly shows a correlation between crime levels and average income in an area. Isn't "correlation does not imply causality" already a household expression? If we are engineers why are we insisting in specious reasoning?
trollerator23 4y ago
Oh please. I'm sure they are totally unrelated.
- deleted 4y ago
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kragen 4y ago

so how do you avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway? this is important information to me

carapace 4y ago
I lived in the Tenderloin for a bit after high school. First and foremost, avoid alleyways, avoid junkies. It seems like simple advice and it is. What I learned as a nerdy white kid living in TL was that there is a largely non-verbal communication system, a kind of thieves' cant (although, as I mentioned, it's largely non-verbal, almost like a sign language but with subtle facial expressions and body postures rather than specific signs. (Actual gangs do use specific hand signs to recognize each other.)) If you "know the score" you can just tell someone, e.g. "Hey, don't mug me." using this communication system and they will leave you alone. This happened to me. I was walking through the 'loin when a dude comes up off the wall and starts to fall in behind me. I caught the motion out of the corner of my eye, and I gave him the slightest shake of my head, "nah", and that was it. He fell back and posted up on the wall again, and it was over. Just being aware of what's going on differentiates you from the clueless "mark". That's the main thing: you're part of the "in-group". You have heard of "woke"? This level of awareness of the nature of life on the street is part of what one is woke to, or not, eh? This cant would seem like telepathy to an unaware outsider. So, I was able to tell my would-be mugger that, although I look and walk like a clueless tech nerd, I'm actually a resident who knows what's up, so please mug someone else? And, as neighbors do, he kindly preferred to look for someone wandering in from the nicer parts of downtown. A tech worker or tourist, eh? (I saw those interactions too: Three "gentlemen" corner a fellow up against a wall, one of them displays an empty 40oz bottle, and an agreement of sorts quickly emerges to the effect that it would be much preferable for the victim to give up his wallet rather than receive the bottle to the head. They even gave him his wallet back afterwards. The whole thing took thirty seconds.) There's also an element of stotting involved in what I'm saying, "an honest signal to predators that the stotting animal would be difficult to catch" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting ) Since I "know the score" I'm not going to panic or freeze up if this guy tries to rob me. There's a way to say with your body language, "I'm not going to be easy to rob." If you don't have that naturally, for whatever reason, there is something called "adrenaline re-imprinting" self-defense courses. Without going into a long tangent about it, the essence is to re-program your adrenaline response to be coherent and defensive. If you haven't seen it, it's hard to imagine the intensity of a controlled adrenaline response. Even small, weak people can be extremely dangerous under the influence of adrenaline. Adrenaline is a hellofa drug. (I mean, in the course I took the instructor at one point has on one of those bear-proof suits, and it still seems like he's gonna get hurt. And the other people in my class were small women! They were destroying this guy.) Basically, the attacker would have to be literally psychotic to continue trying to attack someone in the throes of a controlled adrenaline response. Trying to approach someone in that state... it's like a force-field. There's something deep within you that is like "nope" when confronted with such a fury, and the effect gets stronger as you try to approach. It literally feels like a force-field. I have only had to use the training once, Thank God, and it stopped three guys in their tracks, literally. They were running up behind me, and I stopped and the adrenaline triggered and I spun around and did the thing (there's a posture and you shout "back off!") and they stopped in their tracks. I started a conversation with them and they were scared of me. As in I made a gesture and one of them jumped back a little. Anyway, the thing to search for is "adrenaline re-imprinting". I like you Kragen, I hope it's not too weird to say that, so I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. Cheers!

dang 4y ago

Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar hell. Your comment was great until the last paragraph, which swerved dramatically for the worse and basically drove the subthread off a cliff. Comments demonizing other people and/or other groups of people are the scourge of internet forums. If you make it "y'all", that's worse yet, as now the demonized group gets to select itself and feel personally attacked. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tga_d 4y ago
I can't help but wonder why it's prudent to sweep in for a comment like that, but not any of the comments that have been associating homelessness with murder rates on an article apparently about a dispute between two tech workers. It's almost like the guidelines are catered not towards high-quality discussion so much as an aesthetic of high-quality discussion by protecting the emotions of a specific class of people who would get offended by that comment. Or should I be flagging comments that euphemistically mention the "homeless problem"?
- dang 4y ago
  We're not protecting any "specific class of people". Anyone with an insight to offer about homelessness, or any other question under discussion, is welcome to do it. We just ask people not to rage at and/or demonize each other, because that's the way that internet forums destroy themselves. Scorched earth isn't interesting to anybody: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... People often think that if we moderate comment X, we must care less about or even be endorsing comment Y, but that's not the case. We just see a more-or-less random sample of the comments. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

raldi 4y ago

For decades, San Francisco hasn't been building enough new units to house even just the children of natives[1], to say nothing of those like you and I who were born elsewhere and dreamed of moving here. The people who "gave the poorest folks nowhere to go" were the ones who voted to prohibit the construction of anything but single-family houses[2] in 76% of the city[3]. [1] https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/MCHdocs/Epi/Birth-Data-Summary-SF.pdf https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/MCHdocs/Epi/Birth-Data-Summa... [2] https://sbuss.substack.com/p/when-did-things-go-wrong-in-san-francisco#:~:text=So%2C%20while%20central,downzone%20San%20Francisco https://sbuss.substack.com/p/when-did-things-go-wrong-in-san.... [3] https://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/ https://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/

ipaddr 4y ago

Sounds like someone is trying to put themselves in a category and everyone else in another. You were part of a wave of colonizers, taking spaces from poorer people. You can't hide behind being artsy.. those tend to be the biggest colonizers