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If you write, “In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities”, I wonder if you
by OfSanguineFire 3y ago
If you write, “In fact the only cities I’ve been to where I felt like I needed to really have my guard up and head on a swivel were US cities”, I wonder if you have ever been to, say, Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario), South Africa (Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town), Peru (Lima), or Kenya (Nairobi). There it is one’s local contacts who encourage one to be vigilant and plan routes across the city carefully. The US has wacky urban safety issues, but it is just one member of a whole set of countries with urban safety issues.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoIt’s likely that none of these other countries suffer from American exceptionalism.
- nearting 3y agoI assume it was intentional, but the irony of this comment is fantastic.
- simonbarker87 3y agoYou're correct, I don't have any experience in those cities. I would expect those places to be sketchy (maybe not Lima but today I learned I guess) - I think what made my SF experience worse is that its a well known city in the richest country in the world and it's awful.
- zo1 3y agoI've been to and grown up in a bunch of those African cities. As long as you don't go to dodgy areas you're perfectly fine, even dirt-poor areas are fine. Sure your houses are little mini fortifications and security is everywhere in "rich" neighborhoods. .. but it's a nothing burger for the most part.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoI have cycled Africa extensively and I would agree for most cities on the continent. Africa is very safe in spite of dumb stereotypes, even when one is entering cities through the sprawling impoverished neighborhoods, and locals don't warn a visitor against anything. But Nairobi and South African cities have a mugging problem that all local people showed great concern about, and sometimes "dodgy area" is a central district of the city.
- tim333 3y agoI guess it depends a bit on what you compare it to but the murder rate in Cape Town is about 10x that in SF and both seem quite bad to me as a Brit.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- acuozzo 3y agoHow's Monrovia?
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoIt has been a few years, but I don’t remember it as any different from the previous West African capitals (Dakar, Bissau, Conakry, Freetown) that I had cycled into.