zlacker

I’m 24 (which I think is younger than most people in here) and I live in San Francisco. I’m pretty ashamed to live here and hope to move soon.

The “on the ground” feeling is bad. Every issue we had 5 years ago is worse (except the drought).

Daily life involves walking calculated circles around drug addicts to avoid agroing them (like Dead Island).

I’m seeing more trash on the streets, more graffiti covering highway signs.

People have given up trying to change anything and just tolerate it now. I thought I’d meet high agency tech people when I moved here. The tech scene is way better than Boston but the sprit of SF is really dead. All the money in the world and they can’t run a city half a well as was done before cars…

>>IceHeg+(OP)
lol San Franciscans never tried to change anything for the last 50 years, they never gave up since they never tried to begin with - they actually prefer it this way.

>>IceHeg+(OP)
Where in SF do you live? I'm guessing Soma, or near downtown? Get out of your neighborhood now and then. Most of the city does not have a drug addict or three on every block, and trash everywhere.

>>IceHeg+(OP)
You need to get out of SoMa. The rest of SF is pretty nice, there are definite hot zones like near Bayview but generally what you describe is just SF. I left to raise a family and one of the reasons was the homelessness BUT SF has always been like this and if it was not the homeless it was the gangs or other issues in different parts of the city. Try living in a different part of the city, it might change things up a bit.

>>infect+Fw
My experience suggests the opposite; the city was an upwards trajectory until 2018 or so but it's taken a turn for the worse since.

I lived in SF from 2009 to 2024. Every part of the city has gotten worse. When I moved, parts of Mission were definitely rough and they've cleaned up quite a bit. Even SoMa became somewhat interesting, as much as area like that could have before Covid.

>>IceHeg+(OP)
Weird. I’ve lived here for 12 years. Things seem slightly better if not the same.

>>IceHeg+(OP)
Overpaid tech workers like yourself have done much more to destroy the "spirit" of San Fransisco than some homeless people sleeping in a park. You can look all the way back to the 1960s and see the same complaints about "lawlessness" in San Fransisco, there's always a marginalized scapegoat to blame - first the beatniks, then the hippies, then the gays, now the homeless. The homeless are not an aberration or a new phenomenon in San Fransisco. It's the entitled, overpaid tech transplants rampaging through the city that are destroying it.

>>robotb+e21
Same with NYC. People just moving here are unaware of the history and think OMG so much homelessness, so much crime! Meanwhile I grew up remembering seeing crack vials all over the street, the mob was ever present actively extorting and murdering people, numerous abandoned buildings creating ghost towns of squatters, and the homeless camps were quite elaborate - I remember a big encampment around the foot of the Manhattan Bridge complete with burning trash barrels and a large teepee. Today's NYC is sterile compared to the 80's I grew up in.

>>IceHeg+(OP)
It can take time to get to know any city, but SF has the advantage of being relatively dense and walkable.

I moved here in 2015, and I was about the same age when I arrived. It was an adjustment for me back then too. The problems don’t really seem worse to me overall, but I will say that market street and SoMa in general feel worse than I remember but not really because of homeless people or drug use (that was already a highly visible problem); I think it’s important to point out how much commercial real estate has gone fallow since tons of stuff was shuttered during the pandemic. That’s the most noticeable change to me, and it just makes the whole area that much more depressing.

So before writing off the city entirely as has-been or whatever, maybe try a day of walking around the northeast corner when the weather is nicer. Nob Hill into Chinatown, then North Beach. From there you can enjoy a view from Coit Tower before taking one of the semi-famous stairways down to the Embarcadero. Levi plaza is a nice spot to rest your feet. If you need a place to stop and work, and you don’t mind tethering, find your way up into the Embarcadero center. The upper portion is an open air walkway over the streets with really well-kept gardens/trees along the way (at least once winter passes). Below you’ll find shelter from cold or wet weather, with lots of places to sit. It’s kind of the best kept secret of the city if you work remotely.

> All the money in the world and they can’t run a city half a well as was done before cars…

This is hardly unique to SF. Hell, the city is a diamond in the rough among other post-industrial cities anywhere in the world.

If not the northeastern corner, maybe try the mission near 24th and Valencia, or Fillmore near Japan Town. There are other spots too of course but these are all places I walk or take the train to regularly and I will miss them dearly if I leave.

>>IceHeg+(OP)
You’re ashamed? I have to be honest with you - I just moved into the city last year after living in the suburbs since 2018. SF is the most beautiful city I’ve ever been in. Do you not have a strong attachment to the communities here? I’m finding the city surprisingly good at cultivating niches.

>>ycsf99+Kl1
Lol… yea, definitely the people who’ve moved here to make a better life for themselves and not the native population doing whatever they can to try an preserve a 1970’s nostalgic lifestyle without thinking about how their own children would need a place to live.

The xenophobia of the late-comer San Franciscan is one of the most cliched examples of why the utopian fantasies many leftist have are doomed to fail.

The transplants didn’t cause the housing crisis. That was built piece by piece by San Francisco over the last 50 years all in an effort to grant people with seniority special privileges.

>>scoofy+i22
This was the reason I gave up trying to change SF and left. It was clear that the locals like it dysfunctional and hate newcomers like me who want to change things. Then suddenly you’re the bad guy.