Quote:
Originally Posted by Labtec
I haven't been to Detroit in many years but I was in San Francisco earlier in the year and was a bit surprised. I thought the city would have a lot more people walking out and about, but it was mostly empty (besides the numerous homeless) almost everywhere I went except for Chinatown and Pier39. It changed a lot since the 80s when I first visited as a kid, it felt unsafe. Hopefully, it will get better because the natural scenic beauty is wonderful.
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I'm going to give my perspective as someone who lived in Sacramento for 28 years and have been to San Francisco many times as an adult. I was just there in May for a couple days...and we walked and took public transportation EVERYWHERE). It wasn't scary except for one block near the Mission (which we survived just fine). The city seemed to be doing great! Shops and restaurants were bustling, the parks were more beautiful than ever, and, while we saw people who were homeless, it was actually only in certain areas. Other areas had no homeless people at all.
The biggest problem I had was in the Castro where there were too many straight people. We saw multiple people with strollers and it was just not what I wanted to see in a place that has been such a safe haven for so many queer people for sooo long! I guess things change; but, that was a little disheartening. Straight people colonizing gay spaces...
Speaking of strollers, I think that is where we have a big problem with the perception of San Francisco. There has been a lot of turnover of the type of people living in the city in recent decades...and I think that has really changed the perception of the city as a whole. Where you may have had most of the city population used to living in a somewhat gritty environment with urban issues (homelessness, drug use, crime, etc), now you have young families trying to come in and think it's a place to walk your kids around or take them for a ride in a stroller...and they walk by a couple men in thongs or a homeless person passed out on the street and think they live in hell. It's annoying.
Anyway, this is a counterpoint to the "unsafe, dirty, and crime-ridden" reputation that San Francisco has gotten as of late. I found the city to be as wonderful as ever; albeit, in a different way than before.