Is San Francisco really that bad?

madNbad said:

Big tech is being pushed by investors to become more profitable and much of that is tied to layoffs and remote work. Department stores and malls are being chipped away at by online shopping. The next big boom will be repurposing these empty spaces into residential housing. By changing office space to residential, it will help in the revitalization of core areas of cities like San Francisco. Nothing is going to change anytime soon but it will start happening.

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Don't they have to clean it up first?

Alan Edward Klein said:

Don't they have to clean it up first?

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Up until the early 1990's there was an area just north of downtown Portland that was mostly rail yards. It was full of SROs, dive bars and artist because the rents were really cheap. Within a decade the area was transformed to the Pearl District full of high rises and multimillion dollar condos displacing all of the folks that had lived there. So now instead of a cheap room, the view from the condos are lines of tents. There are was to improve areas and stratify affordability, it just takes the politicians living up to their campaign claims and the developers realizing they are still going to make money. All cities need the little shops and grocery stores to make a community plus the employees. Retrofitting empty office buildings and not making them all expensive condos, is the key to keeping core areas viable. When a city like San Fransisco has workers making two or three hundred thousand dollars a year commuting two hours a day to live in an affordable place, what about the service workers? There are many places in the world where people of all economic status live in close proximity and have thriving communities. As we emerge from the pandemic and the shifting ways people work, is this something that will begin to emerge in the United States?

Arrived in San Fransisco this afternoon and the Embarcado, Pier 39 and Fisherman's Warf look as safe as ever and many people are around.

...Not so safe if you happen have a retail business around the wharf or Pier, and the mob shakes you down for a "protection" fee. It used to be 20%. Don't know about now. ... just another kind of business tax if you want to set up in a prime tourist location. More than one gallery has gone bust because they didn't plan for all the "overhead".

DREW WILEY said:

...Not so safe if you happen have a retail business around the wharf or Pier, and the mob shakes you down for a "protection" fee. It used to be 20%. Don't know about now. ... just another kind of business tax if you want to set up in a prime tourist location. More than one gallery has gone bust because they didn't plan for all the "overhead".

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Good thing that the OP ymc and Sirius are just visiting and taking in the sites. And not planning on opening a gallery on the Wharf.

Didn't a woman tourist get shot and killed on the wharf a few years back?

good grief.

Sirius Glass said:

Arrived in San Fransisco this afternoon and the Embarcado, Pier 39 and Fisherman's Warf look as safe as ever and many people are around.

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Can’t wait to see the pictures!

ymc226 said:

Wife wants to plan a road trip to San Fran and of course I want to take a film camera. Not searching for bad news specifically, but just watching normal news and visiting various photo blogs/forums, San Fran keeps popping up when reports of robberies of "expensive" photo equipment happen in broad daylight, in public areas which would be considered normal neighborhoods. There was even a forum post I think at Rangefinder forum of a city native ending up in a mildly dangerous situation just taking pictures around town.

My initial desire to take a silver MP or M4, both in as new condition, is tempered by the fact, they look "expensive" and do not obviously look like non-digital cameras. There was also the recent large scale robbery of the San Francisco Leica store so Leicas do not fly completely under the radar. I know I shouldn't live in fear but going to a unfamiliar place makes me more cautious. I am used to a large population of homeless, some with obvious mental disease, when taking pictures around my home town; on the beach, pier, Venice boardwalk etc. I've also lived in NYC, walk the streets there with awareness and love all the photo opportunities that exist there so am not totally paranoid in urban environments. San Francisco just seems special. What do the people who actually live there think?

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Unfortunately, SF has become a dump. I would not take expensive camera equipment into the city. Never leave bags of any sort in your vehicle. Criminals know there are limited consequence to their crimes so theft has become rampant. LA is even worse.

Leaving anything of value behind in a vehicle anywhere is not wise these days. It's always been contractors, and not tourists, who have
borne the brunt of this. For example, a single panel van being emptied out in the parking lot while a contractor is shopping in a Home Depot generally amounts to far more dollar loss than any Hassie or Leica, and it happens every single day in the Bay Area somewhere, actually, multiple places every day. I can hardly count how many insurance replacement estimates the Construction supplies & equipment company I worked for printed out for Contractors every year, year after year after year.

The one fellow who never got hit even once during his career didn't bother with a fancy truck steel lockbox at all, but simply drove a battered old pickup with all his tools unprotected in the back, but covered a filthy huge blanket, plus some shredded lengths of roofing paper, with a bunch of sticks and crud atop that, as if a trash hauler. He'd walk out of the favorite neighborhood lunch place and see a nice new truck next to him with its new steel lock box pried open and emptied out, and the padlocks shattered (easy to do if one knows how), but his own drear looking rig untouched. It really does help to operate low-key, and not call attention to yourself.

Many thieves and robbers seem to have Robin Hood ethics. At least the most ethical ones do…

There were so many contractor truck break-ins at my local Home Depot the police re-located its precinct station next door.

All of our big hardware stores have very obvious security camera trailers, generally several, in the parking lot. Theives, I’m sure, have long ago mapped the blind spots.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Didn't a woman tourist get shot and killed on the wharf a few years back?

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Not in the Fisherman's Wharf area (odd number piers) , but near the even number piers on the opposite side of the Ferry Building, located further south along the Embarcadero, in the direction of Bay Bridge. Wikipedia account:

Manny A said:

Unfortunately, SF has become a dump. I would not take expensive camera equipment into the city. Never leave bags of any sort in your vehicle. Criminals know there are limited consequence to their crimes so theft has become rampant. LA is even worse.

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I highly recommend visiting SF and LA.

One upside - you know for sure you won't run into Manny.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Didn't a woman tourist get shot and killed on the wharf a few years back?

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You have to go a few years back for a crime incident? I am sure you can find one far more recently, which would be way more useful to prove a point that no-one in their right mind should set foot in San Fransisco.

wiltw said:

Not in the Fisherman's Wharf area (odd number piers) , but near the even number piers on the opposite side of the Ferry Building, located further south along the Embarcadero, in the direction of Bay Bridge. Wikipedia account:

"Kathryn "Kate" Steinle was shot and killed while walking with her father and a friend along Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco. She was hit in the back by a single bullet. The man who fired the gun, José Inez García Zárate, said he had found it moments before, wrapped in cloth beneath a bench on which he was sitting, and that when he picked it up the weapon went off. The shot ricocheted off the concrete deck of the pier and struck the victim, who was about 90 feet (27m) away."​

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That happens every day there. It's amazing that there are still people left alive.

We have a Home Depot next door to a Costco in east Albuquerque. Home Depot would not pay for security, while Costco has security patrols all day long. We always park in the Costco lot and walk over to HD. Local cops now get overtime by hanging out in the HD parking lot. It doesn't help that both are located in the Junkie District.

What I have learnt from this thread is every town, big or small, is a potential crime scene. And if you decide to avoid all that and wander off into the wilderness you may get eaten by a grizzly bear.

It is really tough being a photographer in today's world.

Wrong. The wilderness is far safer. Out of my many many wilderness trips, which did involve things like swollen streams and avalanche hazard, maybe a few rattlesnakes lower down - the most dangerous portion of the trip by far always involved the first hour, just getting away from the insane craziness of the freeway, or else above the dense tule fog further inland during the winter. And commuting that every day for forty years, with at least two near-collisions every week, was far more statistically dangerous than walking around in any downtown. Right up until I retired, there were actual cars lane-splitting on the freeway each morning (not just motorcycles), teenagers deliberately running red lights just to impress their buddies, drivers entering the freeway the wrong direction, from the wrong onramp, due to either unlicensed illiteracy or inebriation.

Then it only got worse during the pandemic, with teenagers routinely speeding over 100mph on our freeways, frequently outright racing each other. So I'd be far more afraid of a bear behind a steering wheel than a hungry one out in the woods; but even the bear would probably drive more responsibly than many people around here!

And far as that woman shot near the SF Pier, which got a mountain of rush to judgment publicity, it was proven to be a ricochet accident by someone carelessly picking up a gun in a bag found under a public bench. How it got left there, nobody knows. There are way too many real shootings, now including gang-style restaurant holdups near the beach, which deserve more scrutiny. But I gotta leave soon with my own camera, before the wind picks up at our local beaches.

The biggest risk of fatality at even SF beaches is turning your back on sneaker waves, and getting sucked out into the ocean. Second to that is people getting too close to a cliff edge and slipping off, or else walking around some point in low tide, and getting caught out there by a high tide. That kind of thing is actually commonplace; and the necessity for rescues frequent. But shootings are quite rare indeed. Go somewhere else in SF if you are seeking that kind of experience.

Huss said:

That happens every day there. It's amazing that there are still people left alive.

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No need for melodrama, in either direction. I had posted already about the fact that SF has high amounts of 'property crime' and relatively low (compared to many other cities) in crime with the use of force or violence. And then we have stories (in 2021, 2022) about pro photographers having gear stolen, which peaks the interest on this forum. SF is relatively low in murder, rape, kidnapping, etc. 'Safe' depends upon where one's fears lie.. It is apparent that robbery of photographers is happening all over the country, not just in SF...Google hits on 'professional photographer robbed'...Boston, Baltimore, Seattle, Miami, Rio, Mumbai, a city in UK, a city in Namibia

The property crime used to mostly be for tourist cars with stuff visible inside, while the tourists were occupied visiting the sights, but property crime is increasingly against cars parked in residential neighborhoos that have no tourist hotspots, and garages and the connected homes are being broken into. And the increasing number of homeless who live on the streets or even now are moving more often into the entryways of private homes in the residential areas or using them as toilets. And there was a recent story about thieves using a heat gun to gain entry to a garage and its connected home area upstairs. And thefts of catalytic convertors, for their precious metals abound all over, not just in SF.

Wilt, SF is quite high in human trafficking, just like Oakland and Berkeley, and thus the weirdos who patronize that kind of sick thing, which often does not get reported because the victims are essentially non-entities afterwards, unless an amber alert is in effect. But more often, they're imported. So I'd hardly call that a "property offense", though that is the manner the perpetrators treat their victims.

And going back to the beaches, which are mainly NP and State Park operated, or else Regional Parks - yeah, they're pretty safe, but stuff left in cars in major parking lots, including across the Bridge at popular Rodeo Beach, evidently is not. I've never personally had a problem; but just like I already stated, I don't look like a tourist, and thieves aren't particularly interested in trying to run away fast with a big heavy pack or view camera gear anyway. A purse or laptop bag, yes.

One the bright side, if thieves are stealing cameras, they must be a valuable item to fence, and for the fences to resell. So someone is buying cameras. Who knew? I thought everybody just used their phone.

I've often said that we could solve 90% of the world's problems if we just started a contest to overserve each other. How many problems would there be if we all concentrated on giving instead of taking? What if we changed our way of thinking from "What can you do for me?" to "What can I do for you"? Wouldn't that be transformative?

Several years ago, a mission outreach in Austin called Mobile Loaves & Fishes bought 51 acres of land and created Community First! Village for chronically homeless people and it is phenomenal. There is also a major under the bridge ministry in Austin that serves thousands of suffering people. I'm sure there are a lot of good people like this in SF making a difference and in need of financial support.

Would any one of you talented photographers out there in the SF area be willing to photograph people helping other people to show us the "good side" of the city?

6 people have died in the last 4 months hiking Mt Baldy. That makes the Mt Baldy wilderness (just outside Los Angeles) more dangerous than Fishermans Wharf.

I took these pics up there a couple of months ago. Incredibly, like my visits to SF I survived.