[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.