I saw teo people shot not far from here, the windows of Obama's campaign HQ smashed in with hammers down the street, and a homeless man crap on the steps of city hall in broad daylight. Welcome to Oakland Uber.
The alternatives for similar real estate in SF would be near Twitter/Mid-Market (which is worse than Downtown Oakland IMO; probably on par with the shitty areas of San Pablo near 30th-35th St, but better than particularly bad parts of West Oakland or East Oakland, true), or Bayview/HP (also on par or worse). We're not talking about Pacific Heights or the Oakland Hills here :)
Oakland downtown/uptown has property crime and some violent crime but it's not particularly bad compared to other areas. Most crime in both SF and Oakland (as it is anywhere) is poor people hurting other poor people.
I'm originally from Chicago and have lived in many American cities including NYC in the 1990s. Can confirm, SF is bizarrely filthy especially given how much money is available and its reputation
No difference from just around the corner of the Twitter building.
This isn't a homeless man crapping problem, it's an insufficient bathroom infrastructure problem, and yes most mid to large size American cities have it. Which is exacerbated by laxative type drugs. 'Hello Alcohol, Hello Heroin, I'm talking to you two.'
Heroin, like pretty much all opioids, is actually the exact opposite of a laxative. Imodium (Loperamide), a common anti-diarrheal, is actually an opioid like heroin, and works by binding to and activating your body's opioid receptors. It just only binds to receptors in your large intestine, so it doesn't get you "high" like other opioids.
While this line of thought may make you feel better about living in SF, it's just not true. Having been and lived in a number of mid-to-large sized American cities, I can honestly state that SF is by far the most urine and feces covered.
If you want to see someone defecate in public, SF would be by far the #1 place to visit. You're unlikely to see that behavior tolerated in NY, Chicago, KC, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Phoenix, Denver, or any other city you'd care to mention.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think it's hard for those without these problems to truly understand the weight of getting out from underneath them. For example from the outside it's easy to say how someone who is poor could do something to lift themselves out of that state, but this wouldn't account for all the things working against someone who is poor.
Naive might be a strong word for it, but it's always easy to say someone else's problems are good problems to have, or they have it easier, but as long as we're putting them on a spectrum and assigning value to their experience, we're not accounting for the struggle itself. It's not the value of the struggle that matters, it's that we all have struggles, and being able to find support for when we are struggling makes a HUGE quality of life difference.
So many people in today's world want to deny others this experience, "you don't/didn't have it that hard, what are you complaining about. Man Up. Stop being a pussy... You're rich, what's the problem..." etc
Not all struggles are created equal. Some struggles (like Notch's) are actually problems that people wish they could have.
He doesn't have it hard, he's just not creative enough to enjoy his new life. I guess it's unfortunate he feels so awful, but if he can't find something fun and fulfilling to do while sitting on a pile of money, he has absolutely no right to complain-- an entire world is sitting out there, waiting for him to engage with.
