Comment by tetris11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tetris11 | Hacker News Reader

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+1 for weirdest vibe city being SF. The wealth disparity there is enormous, and evident to see in the faces of the people who walk the streets there: people adorned in designer hoodies and expensive sneakers, exuding an air of smugness as they sip their artisanal lattes, pretending the rest of world doesn't exist, as they walk past an alleyway where homeless people stare out at them hungrily. It was surreal. I've never been in a city where your average pedestrian is supremely pleased with themselves for existing in it.

I saw more humanity in an LA bus station, where random strangers traded USB battery packs whilst waiting for the bus, and the bus driver himself breaking his back to haul in and strap down a disabled person to their seat, and waving on the others in who didn't have the right change.

While I was in SF this wealth disparity feeling was present, but it was an order of magnitude less than what I saw in Mumbai. There you have 30+ story building acting as the personal residence for a multi bilionare (complete with 2 helipads) and across the street a family of 3 living on a "tent", cooking food on a makeshift fire made from trash and a baby drinking milk out of a transparent plastic bag - all of this under the nauseating smell of human feces. This wasnt a one off thing, its all over the place.

And yet, our tv stations and metro editions of newspapers go on and on about the spirit of Mumbai.

Still, there’s no city like Mumbai in the whole of India. It’s literally got something for everyone.

On the positive side it's a whole lot better than 20 years ago where there was virtually no middle class in India at all.

It comes down to the part of the city you visit. LA, Sac, Sf all have similar areas to what you saw in SF.

They have other nice areas too, where the residents can ignore the problems that concentrated in certain neighborhoods. And they continue opposing building up single family home areas.

All major west coast cities have massive disparities and homeless problems.

And even other cities like Phoenix have big homeless problems. But building cities super spread out does serve to make the homeless problem go elsewhere, I.e a downtownish area.

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