There are some very messed up people roaming in San Francisco
 

My wife and I just spent the weekend in the City. We go there a few times a year and used to walk everywhere but now we take Lyft because I don’t think SF is as safe anymore. There have always been dodgy neighborhoods but the homeless situation is out of hand as they are everywhere. There are tents even on the courthouse premises which, I thought, was a tourist attraction. When I do drive there, it’s like an autocross course. People pushing shopping carts in the middle of the street or crossing without regard to traffic signals while arguing with themselves. I still love the City and won’t move out of the Bay Area but SF has really deteriorated in some spots.

Portand=Seattle=L.A. All the left coast cities. Same stuff going on.

Go to Parf. Search "Seattle is Dying"...

It is very difficult for me to reconcile the Bay Area/City I knew as a child/college student/adult with the miasma emanating from my favorite part of the world today.

My parents were the only members of either families to ever leave Northern California, 75% lived withing 40 miles of San Francisco, most in the City. I spent a great deal of time, especially in college, running around and amok in the Bay Area.

I am headed back out for a family gathering after Memorial Day. I may drive and take my kayak and revisit rivers and surf spots from the 70's and 80's. I need a break.

I'll be staying with my cousin in Petaluma. I don't plan on going into SF proper...I have lived the dream.

If you happen to drive by a Jesse lane there in Petaluma, give a tip of your hat. It's named after my maternal Grandmother, Jesse O'Rourke. Grandpa James owned a small acreage there. Both very conservative. It's good they didn't live to see what's going on now.

Portland, Seattle, LA all also have serious homeless problems.

SF has long had a homeless problem. It used to be mentally ill people who were put out on the street when California cut back its state mental hospital capacity.

Portland used to have a seasonal population of "street kids" with backpacks who'd appear in the summer then leave in the winter. About 5 years ago they started being outnumbered by mentally ill, drug addict type homeless. Then we started seeing larger numbers of "down on their luck" homeless who are fairly normal except that they live in cars, RVs, tents. As well as criminal homeless who make their living from theft, drug dealing, etc. The city and county are pretty incompetent at dealing with the problem despite spending $70 million a year plus the private groups who spend many tens of millions as well. The reason for this ineffectiveness seems to be a combination of ideology and self interest. The problem has gotten pretty bad and most people are pretty mad about it.

I live near a beautiful park, one of the largest and most popular in the city. About four years ago, tent cities started appearing in the park, with trash and drinking, drug use and needles littering the playground, violent and deranged people harassing the neighbors who live around the park, big piles of stolen stuff guarded by aggressive "campers". People stopped coming to the park, patents wouldn't let their kids play there any more. It took two years and a huge amount of neighborhood activism to get the city to clear out the camps and keep them out. The official response was "there's nothing we can do" and a lot of outside groups attacked us as elitist, racist, uncaring, etc. Now people come to walk, picnic and play in the park again and my neighbors don't have to clean up feces and needles from their yards.

I will. My mother grew up in Petaluma before they moved to Hayward for her senior year in HS, where she met my dad...who lived in the forth house build in Castro Valley.

A large chunk of the family is still in Petaluma.

The reason for the move from Petaluma was my grandfather became a partner in an auto repair place in Hayward after WWII.

Jyl, Yep. The city leadership sent the problem off to less lucrative neighborhoods. :(
Good for you...bad for them.

Paul, you definitely have roots in Petaluma. I haven't been there since the mid 60's. I'm sure I wouldn't recognize the place.

Well, isn't it great that we have such wonderful local government that focuses on "sanctuary" for illegals, druggies, mentally ill... and massive taxation for everyone productive.

But at least they keep the police from policing anything that doesn't produce revenue.

Frisco is the Calcutta of the Western Hemisphere...

Heading toward PARF but very true.

My brother's girlfriend has a son who is about 40. He has some medical problems and got signed up for insurance that nobody seems to accept. He went to the UC Davis ER and they told him they could not take care of him because he was not homeless. True story

Absolutely true. Which is part of why we got attacked for not "doing our part". Sorry, but no neighborhood's "part" should include having its park turned into a homeless camp, drug dealing zone, storage for stolen goods, and off limits to families and kids. This park was a drug and crime zone in the 1970s, I'm told, and it took a lot of work to take it back. Not going to let that happen again.

Do they still have rent control in the city? my sister in law has been living there since the 70's. I remember she was paying $250/month. Been in the same apartment for 40 years.

I graduated from SF State. would ride the Muni from the Embarcadero to Daly City for a quarter. it was a freak show back in the 80's, especially the Castro and Haight districts. it was colorful back then, but in a good way.

Back in the seventies SF had an identity. Flower children, peace and love etc. SF today has no soul. Unbelievably expensive and human waste everywhere. The City’s reputation is shot. Tourism is definetly tanking.

I'm glad that I have absolutely no reason to go to Portland...

If you do go . . . Remember to download the Poop App
 

Actually the title says it all.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/46325/poop-map-san-francisco-says-all-you-need-know-paul-bois

Anyone else, say 20 years ago, project a completely different future (of now) than this idiocracy of so many street zombies shtitting in the streets as a regular occurrence... and an interactive program to locate/avoid stepping in it?

I'm stupified by the ineptness (or planning) that prohibits cops and prosecutors from addressing these issues.

Gotta keep the street drug sales going, apparently.

As a tour
Isn't in San Francisco in June, I was not enamoured of it.
It was ridiculously expensive, homeless everywhere even in front of what I had expected (by the price1000 dollars for 3 nights) hotel that I stayed in.Very crowded, terrible traffic. It
And rainbow flags everywhere, and even in a museum the theme of equality for all sexual types was rammed down our throats.
Glad to escape to small towns in mid California which were lovely.

Just imagine what it will be like in a few more years!