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Comment by ggambetta | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, how does one avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway?

I once was walking in downtown with a lady I was dating and a guy who looked homeless and was obviously very high snuck up on me and wrapped his arm around mine and started talking to me. I did not get scared, I just talked to him like he was my best friend. He said, your girlfriend is really pretty, and I said, "Yes, she is is!" and I asked whether he was having a nice day and wasn't the weather great and made small talk about various things. He released his grip on me eventually and walked away and my date didn't even realize, until I told her what happened later that there was any sort of danger. Street people are so used to people being utterly horrified of them that if you treat them like they are a normal human being, they'll be less likely to want to act violent toward you.

This is the street-smart way of handling this type of danger. Growing up in a dangerous neighborhood in Jakarta, I've used similar tactics many times.

I don't want to be contrarian for the sake of it, but the fact that by luck the guy physically stalking you and immobilizing you happened to back down isn't really convincing me of the safety of SF or alleys. If being street smart means "try to stay calm when possibly about to be stabbed and killed", I think I'll skip that lecture. I'd prefer if street smarts included how not to let a drugged up guy not get behind you and near you. And how to get out of a bear hug by a drugged up guy. Because "hoping he is nice" doesn't sound like a plan to me.

Being calm and always treating people as humans give you a super power of being able to defuse situations and achieve tactical supremacy. Anger meets anger. True in actually scary east coast cities and true in the noble if slightly flawed gem of San Francisco.

But the article here is how this was some conflict between friends, so the city doesn’t really matter. All the fearful people should be reassured by this outcome. Manage your domestic life well for good safety outcomes.

If you've already got a drugged up person with their arms around you, I don't think "kind words" will help you unless you got lucky and met a kind stranger of ecstacy. By pure luck this worked. Most times, when you have a druggy grabbing you from the back, it won't go so nicely IMO.

The way things work in "ghetto logic" is a guy from the ghetto will kill you for "disrespecting." So instead you act friendly, unafraid, and respectful and that's good enough for them to want to go mug someone else.

If you want to get a good feel for San Francisco ghetto logic, or ghetto logic in general, I recommend the excellent, but hard to get a hold of documentary, "Straight Outta Hunter's Point" (2003).

Jesus Christ, why would I want to have to do this to stay safe. Consider my approach: moving to a suburb where people like that don't come, and if they do, are harassed by police until they leave.

Then you live in the suburbs, warts and all.

Give me the risk any day.

Your approach may have been more cautious but out of principle, I probably would have asked him to release his grip, followed by shoving him away if necessary. Normalizing those kinds of intimidation tactics is not in the interest of anyone. If more individuals were to stand up for themselves, it's likely that the person in question would reconsider employing such tactics.

I've never felt unsafe in an alleyway in sf. but probably the same as any other city - don't be a dumbass, avoid the alleyways in shady parts of the city, esp at night.

Don't know the junkie.

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