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Comment by nottaylorswift | Hacker News Reader

Berkeley is almost a village with a uniform liberal population, many young affluent students.

San Francisco is a large city, and at scale is where these policies break down. You can't walk through downtown SF, their system has failed. It's indisputable IMO.

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> Berkeley is almost a village

120k isn't a village, and if it was...

> San Francisco is a large city

800k definitely wouldn't be a large city.

You can in fact walk through downtown SF.

What exactly do you mean by "you can't walk through downtown SF?"

I mean the streets are covered in human shit and there are homeless insane people shooting up waiting to sneak attack you if you drop your guard. If you take shelter in a Walgreens you will find thieves filling up trash bags with goods from the shelves while the security guards watch, helpless.

I’ve spent years working in and walking through the TL and civic center every day. Not once have I worried that someone was gonna “sneak attack” me. There absolutely are violent street crimes in SF, including in downtown, but the idea that downtown is some kind of mugging war zone is a farce. Its bark is worse than its bite.

2PM on a bus by Powell station a crazy homeless guy broke a full 40oz over the back of my head without any warning. He thought I was following him on behalf of the government because I had a bright red Nexus 5 phone.

I've also seen 2 stabbings in the TL, one of which killed my friend. Also a mob shooting in a carpark, again in the TL.

Sounds like you should stop hanging out in the Tenderloin. The rest of us lived there for years without being stabbed or hit with bottles. No doubt there are parts of the city with problems but you’re exaggerating greatly for no reason.

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