[cookiecaper]

This might be a nice way to comfort yourself about living not only in CA but in either SF or Oakland, but it's not real life. I've worked in the downtowns of multiple major metropolitan areas, and have never seen anyone defecate in public, nor have I witnessed a robbery.

I was once pressed to buy crack in the Crossroads District of KCMO, but that's pretty much it. I used to walk from Crossroads to Crown Center for lunch and back again every day. Second most eventful walk: a couple of birds swooped down and tried to take some of my hair.

[parasubvert]

Apparently you've not lived or worked in the Tenderloin or deep SOMA.

In a 2 year period I saw/experienced:

- defecation, urination, and masturbation in broad daylight on the sidewalk

- heroin injection

- a half full 26er of vodka fly out of a window and hit me at my feet

- packs of men with assless chaps and various states of undress and arousal in line at a Subway (it was the Folsom street fair week) , one holding his slave by the collar while ordering a BLT

- half naked people stumbling out of minivans with crackpipes

- two incidents of modest riots / bonfires in the middle of Market street (the Giants won)

- various gunshot murders (one being a sawed off shotgun assassination attempt at the Gas station off Harrison and ...5th?) that I thankfully missed but glimpsed the aftermath of

It's like parallel universe Disneyland. None of this really affected me - more bemusing than anything, but it can be shocking to those unaware.

[dllthomas]

You seem to have misread the parent comment as saying they haven't seen this stuff in SF - they said they haven't seen this stuff where they have worked, in other major cities.

[parasubvert]

I read that. But they said "it's not real life". It is, and not just in SF/Oakland. Plenty of weird experiences to be had in New York or Toronto, for example.

[dllthomas]

Ah, you interpreted cookiecaper as saying "this problem doesn't happen, period". In which case, your response makes sense - "of course it happens in these parts of SF under discussion".

I read that comment as more narrowly disputing "most mid to large size American cities have it". Revisiting, I do think my initial reading was correct. If cookiecaper was denying the problem existed, why would imagining it be "a nice way to comfort yourself about living [...] in either SF or Oakland"? The comment makes substantially more sense as asserting that 1) the problems in SF are not problems elsewhere, and 2) a view that they are problems everywhere (and thus maybe not solvable) is not reality based, so SF and Oakland must be "Doing It Wrong". I don't agree with that comment - as you can see from my direct response to it - but the logic of it is coherent in a way it would not be if it were supporting the other point.

[dllthomas]

I've never witnessed a robbery, in either SF (where I currently work) or Oakland (where I have lived for a while). Obviously that doesn't mean it doesn't occur - but neither does your anecdote mean that Oakland and SF are necessarily worse than where you've been working. They may be, but that's a question of looking at actual numbers.

[nailer]

You're limiting yourself to specific areas of SF then. Every time I've visited there has been human shit everywhere. It smells different from dog shit.