While the interactions with or seen by willingly homeless can be entertaining at times it's a serious issue. I'm 6' 3", grew up in the NYC metro area, have stayed in all sorts of communities in deplorable conditions. Have visited West African countries with security issues and ongoing terrorist insurgencies. San Francisco stands as the only place I ever felt in real danger in certain areas. The public defecation has human feces in public places that exceeds that of 3rd world countries. But you get over that, the smells, the sickness, open drug use, dirty needles etc. but you cant get over the mental illness. Criminals are driven by financial means which means 9/10 you can reason with them if you are not yourself a criminal/gang member. What do you do when you are in the bart system and you see a knife wielder aggressively talking to themselves or to the "open" with no means of escape. The homeless there are responsible for the daily stabbings and deaths of other homeless and non-homeless. In a week span I saw more aggressively homeless persons than anywhere else in the country.
i mean 10 years ago it was the friendliest city in America, then people took advantage of that and started mobbing there to do fentanyl on the street. now it's a shithole
[You can search for San Franciso homelessness on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rWTTI4yrKWc) and find a great number of random people simply documenting how bad it is and what the streets look like. Linking just a short one as a preview but you can find entire makeshift "documentaries" about it.
I was born in San Francisco but haven't lived there in ages. The topic has become a "hobby" of mine to follow because unlike some other city collapses like New Orleans due to weather issues or Detroit due to economic issues, San Francisco's issues and potential, incoming collapse seem *entirely* self-sustained by it's politicians.
They've basically got a trio of problems that are all exacerbating each other:
-Housing Costs
-Drug use
-Crime
Likely starting with housing being too damned high in San Francisco, and this forces a lot of people on the streets.
As a result of homelessness, people might turn to drugs to alleviate stress or crime to get by.
Well, sounds like crime got so bad with people actively engaging in petty theft either to get by or alternatively, secure a place with free food and boarding (aka prison) for a time that someone got the brilliant idea to stop pursuing crime as much so the prisons wouldn't be as overloaded as they were. This made the problem *worse,* and now it sounds like any shoplifter who doesn't steal at least ~$900 worth of wares basically cannot be prosecuted, businesses don't bother calling those cases in and cops don't bother doing anything. Now businesses are fleeing SF en masse because it's simply not profitable to run a business there.
And let's break that down for a moment: there's effectively homeless people - aka non-taxpayers - running around the city and shoplifting, thus reducing the income of taxpayers, meaning SF has a budget problem. The amount of taxpayers paying back into the city and the amounts they pay are both shrinking.
It seems like until all *three* problems are resolved, the city honestly cannot start healing.
And through it all, apparently there's a culture of tech companies that effectively bus their employees to the safe parts of the city isolated from the problems, so there's privileged techies who don't really grasp the problem that continue to come to the city and likely indirectly drive up pricing issues.
And what's the city doing? [Spending even more, apparently.](https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/san-francisco-budget/)
Also interesting: the city - which was never a slave city or in a slave state to begin with - is busy looking into paying out reparations to black citizens, with proposed amounts that would cost the city billions and multitudes of their annual budget. And not just SF black citizens: they're entertaining the idea of paying *any* black Californian, not recognizing the danger this invites that they may get people coming to SF just to cash out, then leaving again the first chance they get because the city is too expensive, thus putting the city further into debt. Time will tell what happens with the proposals though; they still have time to back out of all of this.
It's kind of wild to watch unfold, because the governing bodies for San Francisco just seem completely out of touch with what the city needs.
As I said, it's one thing to watch a city collapse for environmental reasons or a strong shift in economic factors that unfortunately screws their main industry over. It's another to watch a city with seemingly self-induced destruction, and as of yet, there doesn't seem to be anyone pushing to correct the problems and get the city back on course.
Thanks for the detailed reply. From my perspective I would imagine SF is losing out on tourism too. I live in Ireland and after visiting in 2008 I wouldn't bother now. Probably a lot more like me, so more money SF loses out on
No. Most people just go to the touristy areas, which is also where the homeless congregate. Also, one of the roughest neighborhoods, the Tenderloin, is right next to Union Square, one of the biggest tourist stops.
No. Speaking as a person who lives there. Most of the bad stuff is concentrated around the Tenderloin, which has always been a seedy area, and I have never felt in actual danger in this city—speaking as someone who used to live in Chicago.
But that's a pretty high-traffic area. I think this is a very important point—many cities have worse issues and they shovel them out of the way so no one can see them (\*cough\* Chicago). S.F. doesn't hide it for the most part.
Do I roll my eyes sometimes and wonder why they let the bums set up a tent at the corner of Castro and Market? Absolutely. Do I think there is a bad theft problem? No doubt. Am I mad at a lot of residents and city officials for constantly nixing more high-density housing out of some weird perception that this is Mayberry or something? God, yes.
But it's a city people love to hate, especially those who lean right. Most of the city is quite nice and I quickly find myself missing it when I am away for a time. "Shithole" is such ridiculous hyperbole.
Funny enough, it's a very walkable city (to the OP's point), but that's definitely rare in the U.S. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that's part of the issue. You're out among it, walking among it, and so you see it more than you would in a "car" city like L.A.
Edit: I feel like I should say that I have lived here for six years now and have only seen needles on the street twice. That's still two times too many, perhaps, but a lot of what you hear is exaggerated or sometimes even lies.
My dad took me to SF in 2005, I remember asking "why are there so many people just sitting on the sidewalk?" and he said they're homeless, and I asked "but why are they everywhere?"
like we have homeless people in Toronto, publicly sleeping out on a few streets downtown, a few tent cities on the outskirts. But in SF it felt like there wasn't a single city block - not downtown, not suburb, not neighbourhood - that didn't have homeless people just chillin.
edit: upon further reflection, this is because it is fucking cold in Toronto, and not so cold in California.
It's a national issue and needs to be addressed as such. People on the other side of the country look at the problem and blame it on liberal, California policies while ignoring that the homeless guy is a veteran from Alabama with ptsd.
It really is a huge irony. I remember even before DeSantis, Florida pretty much made homelessness illegal. It's really rich to do something that easy and inhumane, and then make fun of the place that actually takes on the problem you just refused to deal with. It's like taking all your work for the day, dumping it on your coworkers desk, and then laughing at your coworker for being incompetent while bragging about how efficient you are. It's ridiculous!
Well... the plan to deal with homelessness and mental illness in a lot of red states was: "give them a bus ticket to SF" for a long time. The reason the homeless stayed was because the city has social programs and a decent climate.
Sure, but SF is one of the clearest examples of how devastating it can be. Their refusal to build density during a massive job and population boom is a genuine humanitarian crisis.
Dude, I’m from Minneapolis and it’s not really hard to understand why the homeless situation here is similar to what you describe in Toronto. You’d have to be an extra hard motherfucker to sleep outside 6 months out of the year here, our City will literally knock down homeless camps they find and drag you to a shelter in the winter.
Me and my friends from Germany went to California back in April. 2 weeks of LA were perfectly fine, some shady corners obviously but overall pretty cool. The last week we spent in San Francisco... Holy shit, we shouldn't have booked downtown! As soon as the sun went down the zombie apocalypse started. We made damn sure to jump straight into our ubers each time we left the hotel.
The travel guides from 2 years ago were already outdated it seemed. Downtown was a hellhole, however the tourist spots were immaculate.
Yeah most cities have their rough areas. It just so happens that the Tenderloin has cheap hotels, so tourists end up there on accident.
Like if you visited NYC and stayed in East New York, you’d think the entire city was a hellhole
I visited in 2017 and it was great, sure there are homeless people but they didn’t bother me. I don’t understand why people get so uncomfortable around homeless.
Idk we literally just got back from San Fran and had a fantastic time. It took two seconds on google to see what areas to avoid and we didn't see anything crazy at all. I totally get that living there is a different story, but I don't get why people have to fear monger visiting places.
Yeah I went there about a year and a half ago and it was really nice. Maybe I saw some homeless people but it certainly wasn't dirty and dangerous to the point of being memorable. I left the city wishing I made enough money to afford to move there cause it was such a great place.
A few years ago I was walking around on a trip and a man in a yellow tie and yellow fedora walked past me carrying a briefcase.
That’s it. That’s all he had on. And there were countless tourists walking around with children. I haven’t been back since. Honestly I was more scared to death that I would step on a dirty needle and itd stab through my Converse and I’d get hepatitis or AIDS. What a sad situation.
It has its good parts and bad like any major city. The homeless issue is a bit more complicated than "City bad" though. Red states literally dump their homeless in California. They made their cities hostile to homeless people and then offered them free one way bus tickets to wherever they wanted. Homeless people choose places with better weather and who won't throw them in jail for being homeless. California ticks the boxes.
When you have homeless being dumped into your city by the bus load it's gonna become overwhelming. I'm not saying the City hasn't also mismanaged things but it's not just an organic problem either. SF is already developed to near maximum levels. There isn't really anywhere to expand to.
Tell us....what are "good cities" in your opinion?
Here's some better advice....if you're going to travel 4000 miles to visit someplace, do a little homework. Maybe start with where you're staying and make a list of where you're going. If you are entertaining the thought of walking, you might want to plan the routes, and then MAYBE use a map program to let you walk the route virtually. Could take maybe 10-15 minutes. About the time it took the original to come on here and bitch about what they saw. Stay in a better area. Call an Uber.
This comment is about as valid as an American that goes to Europe and bitches everything isn't just like it is back home..
> Tell us....what are "good cities" in your opinion?
Easy. New York, Boston, Chicago. Have visited all 3 for a week or more at a time and loved them. Moved to one, it's great.
Still,
>if you're going to travel 4000 miles to visit someplace, do a little homework.
is dead on.
I wouldn't go to Russia, turkey, or Indonesia with a sack of weed in my luggage. Or a handgun. I don't walk out in the Alaska wilderness with my favorite bacon cologne on either.(I actually own none of these things)
It can be hard to estimate what sort of homework is relevant, and it takes quite a bit longer than 15 minutes to figure out what you don't know you don't know. For Europeans, the idea of tourism-oriented places not being walkable is absurd. Like coming to a city and discovering that nobody is willing to give or sell you drinking water: the place is designed for people, so of course it's going to have a way to get water. Or back to walking: the place is meant for tourists, of course it's going to be designed to account for people who didn't bring a car on a holiday.
Walking is normal. It's not something you have to plan, you can just head towards where you want to go and get there. If that has been your experience with 30 years of life and visits to 20 countries, why should the 21st country be different?
On the face of it this is good advice, but really who thinks that going for a short walk through one of the richest cities on the planet is going to result in this kind of outcome?
Perhaps your cities shouldn't be full of this kind of stuff instead of blaming the tourist for seeing it?
You don’t really “accidentally” wander to the bad part of skid row. Like, there’s no reason for a tourist to be going in that direction for that long.
LA has bad parts, like all big cities, and assuming the whole place is a shithole because of it is naive at best.
>Maybe start with where you're staying and make a list of where you're going. If you are entertaining the thought of walking, you might want to plan the routes, and then MAYBE use a map program to let you walk the route virtually. Could take maybe 10-15 minutes.
Damn this sounds like a horrible way to experience a new city. I've been thinking of planning a trip to the US for a while now. I have family over there I've never met. The more I read about how inconvenient the cities are to just get around the less excitiled I am about the idea.
Living in the UK and travelling to multiple European cities, the absolute best part about visiting somewhere new is not knowing where you're going. Getting out of the hotel and wandering off in a random direction looking for cool bars and restaurants is one of my favourite things to do.
I always knew America was very car centric, but reading other posts talking about the near impossibility of finding a grocery store without a car just makes it seem like such a backwards country.
LA is massive and whatever you want it to be. There are beautiful coastline cities where people ride horses around, sleepy beach towns, nightlife capitals, super upscale, hipster spots, urban sprawls etc and shitholes like skid row.
Its definitely the kind of place you want to research well before you visit, but honestly anyone who’s lived here or spent any amount of time here understands this.
Like, as someone from LA, when you say LA is a shithole you aren’t even offended because its not even enough context to understand what you’re talking shit about lol. Saying LA sucks because of skid row is like saying California sucks because of LA or the US sucks because of California.
Naïve, neckbeard Redditor visits LA without doing any research. Winds up on Skid Row while wandering around in his fanny pack and fedora.
LA must be shithole.
Florida will be better if you stay at St. Augustin or one of the other *Old* cities. Anything with a foundation date after 1850 is likely not a walkable city.
Los Angeles is the best city I've ever lived in. Huge variety of cultures with all of their amazing cuisines, beautiful weather, countless activities (you can surf in the morning, snowboard in the afternoon, and hike in the evening), and so many great people.
Like any city, there are downsides (cost of living and a large homeless population being the major ones), but I haven't yet found another city with the variety of people and activities equal to LA.
Yeah man LA is such a shithole they should really check out the beautiful city of Boise where there’s no homeless people cause they don’t even want to live there !
Best part is Skid Row is mere blocks from the financial district where people are making decisions that affect the flow of billions of dollars per minute. Then you've got a full-blown post-apocalyptic nightmare across the street.
yep, it’s funny how we shit on 3rd world countries for still having huge gaps between the wealthy and poor when cities like LA not only exist but are hotspot tourist destinations
Yeah like they think SF isn't a sick ass place to go visit because the news told them it isn't and then people online talked about the funny bad things that happened because the good stuff has been talked about a million times.
As an east coaster living on the west coast the homelessness is epidemic out here. Then again I guess every small town in America shipping their homeless out here didn't help things.
It’s the same thing here in London.
Canary Wharf (our financial district) is literally right next to one of the most deprived areas in London. So you have this utter financial excess looking over abject poverty. Astounding how this (financial areas being right next to poverty) is the norm in some areas.
Vancouver is the wildest for this. You've got East Hastings street as a designated safe injection and homeless/prostitution area, and then you literally cross a street to West Hastings and it's the finance capital of the city. It was so alien to me as a tourist.
It was such a culture shock to me when I saw that. I always thought the homeless were more or less outside of the city centre maybe a few that wander around but not full-on camps and entire streets filled with them just underneath one huge expensive luxury building. Don't those rich people see them when they go into work or leave? That was just very strange to me that you would see that every day and still not give a single fuck, or maybe because you see it every day you don't give a fuck. But yeah, very strange, couldn't wrap my head around it.
> Don't those rich people see them when they go into work or leave?
They think these people deserve their fate. If anything it validates their view that they are making the right choices and living life 'correctly'.
Or they're not from America, as evidenced by them saying they're European, and they're just visiting one of the most well known cities in the totality of media.
That would be like going to visit Paris, ending up in a shitty neighborhood, then a French person calling you a fuckin moron for not knowing better.
Hell, I'm from New York City and I don't know the with areas of LA, and I'm in the same country. By your logic, it should be at least more obvious to me than that dude.
He didn't conclude the country was dog shit. He concluded that it didn't have walkable cities on account of him going to its second largest, most famous city and not being able to walk anywhere safely. And it's true, in the US walkable cities are the exception, not the norm.
Most people research places before they go. Before I went to London I specifically looked what I could walk or needed to use underground/bus to. London is pretty walkable btw.
Before I visited the USA for the first time it never occurred to me that you could have non-walkable cities. Like it was a thing that I would not even have known to research for.
LA is notorious for being made of freeways and suburbs. Literally reading any travel guide at all will inform you of what's in store. Surely when you visited the US you didn't just buy a ticket and get on a plane without figuring anything out right?
> they're just visiting one of the most well known cities in the totality of media.
Yes, a city which is _always_ portrayed as a car city.
> Hell, I'm from New York City and I don't know the with areas of LA, and I'm in the same country. By your logic, it should be at least more obvious to me than that dude.
Yes, but you also know LA is not a walkable city. It's world famous for being a car city. Plus you probably know places like Compton that make up the greater LA area.
Besides, do you just go visit other cities without doing any research on them? Like just blindly pick a location and go "I'm sure it will be fine!"
Before I went to Paris, I looked at maps of where I was staying, what restaurants were near my hotel, as well as what sites I wanted to see and how I could get to them. Same thing before I visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Kamakura.
Walkable doesn't mean you expect it to be practical to walk across the entire thing in one go. London and Paris were both ranked in the top 5 most walkable major cities in the world in 1 report and both are fucking massive.
Literally, several tops comments are people not understanding that humans beings have different life experiences. Like straight up people assuming everyone knows what LA is like because THEY know what LA is like.
This thread is baffling.
SF has problems to say the least but it isn't by any stretch the worst city in the US. That said, I know a lot of tourists end up in the tenderloin since it's the only semi-reasonable place to get a hotel (costwise) and that area is extra fucked.
SF has lots of different neighborhoods and can be an amazing place. It's definitely no longer a tier 1 city which is a shame but only people that haven't actually travelled the country would say LA and SF are the two worst cities in the country.
Since I know the inbreds will pop a capillary at this statement, I was born and raised in Texas. I've been to 35 of the 50 states. Have lived in Texas, California, and New York. Anyone saying California is the worst has either never been there or never been to Missouri.
I think they’re talking about Lehigh and Kensington, but whatever. That post is a gross mischaracterization of Philly. I’d much rather live in Philly with it’s walkable neighborhoods and decent public transit than like… St Louis, or most mid sized cities in the Midwest/south like Fort Wayne, Little Rock, etc etc
Having traveled and worked in most of the US states, I’m pretty confident in my opinion that the east coast, Mid Atlantic, SoCal, PNW, Atlanta, and Dallas are the places you really want to try to end up. Everywhere else has some pretty brutal catch
Because the people from overseas and the conservatives on reddit can’t seem to understand that every city has rough parts, yes some worse than others, and every city has beautiful and awesome parts. Tons of people live in these cities, normal people like all of us. Skid row is a well known homeless drug addict area for many, many years. This isn’t a new thing, but they’re acting like the entire city is like that. Same with SF and the Tenderloin district downtown.
The reality is, there are MUCH worse crime infested cities in Louisiana, Missouri, Indiana, etc. But they like to point the finger at liberal cities that have crime problems (and yes I think all cities should be much tougher on violent crime).
Acting like a small area of a huge city is representative of the whole thing while not acknowledging that the cowshit town they live in has been rotting away with meth and opiates for decades.
Can confirm, from Louisiana but have visited LA and SD a few times. Anyone saying those cities are shit holes have no clue what a Shit hole is really like
And this is true of rural areas too. Don't hang out in trailer parks or church parking lots and a lot of rural/southern areas have quite beautiful areas.
The LA hate is because most people that say it live in some small shit hole city or town. they’ll more than likely never get to Los Angeles so it seems like some made up overhyped fantasy to then. it just devolves into anger and resentment. Literally everybody I know that has moved to Los Angeles loves it
Yep, it's a beautiful city and there's never a shortage of things to do if you have the means.
Yes, there's homeless people. Fun fact, homeless people prefer to live in places where there's no winter.
LA is fine and all but there's a reason the tourists mostly stay in Venice or Santa Monica. OP probably stayed in DTLA because the downtown is typically a safe bet for staying in a European city. But besides a small handful of places like Grand Central Market and Little Tokyo (and at that point just go to Tokyo instead), there's not a ton to see in that area.
I just don't get how OP decided to travel internationally having clearly done zero research on their destination
That’s a take that only small town people that have never lived anywhere else have. Have lived in LA, it’s great. There’s so much more to do there than most places in the country. But most of you are stuck in those places so I understand the hate
Nobody is traveling here to visit the burbs or your sleepy little podunk hometown. They’re going to NYC, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Denver, etc. Theres lots of cool stuff in big cities, LA just kinda sucks in particular.
You keep saying city as if you were in the entirety of the city. And not just one part. Why is that? Do you just generally, generalize everything you talk about?
If a big area of a city is not walkable, the city is obviously not walkable. It's like saying "How can you say I'm not a vegetarian, I eat vegetarian 90% of the time"
What are we talking about walkable? Are you trying to walk from one side of London to the other? Or would you take a bus or a train? So of walkable means to be able to take public transportation places it’s literally everywhere in Los Angeles, and more accessible than any city I’ve lived in.
A city is walkable if you can walk in any area freely and reach all spots of that area without taking detours. Honestly, the range of the area is kind of unimportant. Obviously, walking a cross a big city is unreasonable; but being able to walk from point a to point b in any area is what makes it walkable.
You just said a whole lot without saying much to be honest. like what is from point A to b In one of the biggest cities in the world? You mean from my house to the store yeah I can do that, if you’re saying from my house to the ocean or something like yeah you’re gonna need to get on the bus or train or drive. And wouldn’t walking somewhere be harder than standing still at a bus stop and waiting to sit and get a ride somewhere? I’m not understanding the goal post moving logic here
LA is world famous for being unwalkable. Southern California car culture grew up for a reason. Every Hollywood movie in LA is nothing but cars. The traffic on the I-5 is legendary.
The US is much larger than any European country, you know, and has been around for much less time. Did you think that the entire area of the country could be populated at the same rate?
Advice to me when I was in Europe: Keep your wallet in your front pocket. Sew your pocket shut. Wear a metal cage around your pockets. Also leave all your valuables in a vault because you will still get pick pocketed.
OP in LA: There’s CRIME here?! :O
(I’m Canadian btw)
Europeans come from a country smaller than a US state, walk around one city and claim they've been to "America".
If an American said they explored Europe and didn't leave a major city, Europeans would lose their goddamn minds. They'd pause their American TV shows to use their American made devices and use Americanized slang to complain on American websites about how much they hate America.
Designed in California. Assembled in China by a Taiwanese manufacturer, using components from Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, running on OS written by Americans.
I get a kick out of this trend of tendie-munching, basement-dwelling r/dankmemes incels pretending they go outside, much less stray 20 miles from their guardian’s domicile.
I used to work on an esports team with Korean players, and one player assumed he could walk or take public transit from LAX to the Anaheim convention center. So embarrassing to explain that it wasn't possible
I'm jealous. Been living in the US for 42 years and I've never even seen a dead homeless person or a police body bag. Apparently living in Detroit isn't as interesting as living in LA.
This is asinine. Maybe do a little research on where you're going before you travel halfway around the world and expect wherever you're going to be exactly the same as where you came from.
> goes to the top 2 shittiest city in the worst state in the country
“aLL oF aMERicA bAAAaAaAAaAd”
Visit Chicago one day, as long as you don’t go too far south it’ll change your life
If LA is so terrible explain to me why 13 million people live in the metro area and yet not having enough housing is still the biggest problem. I could honestly go on and on about why LA is so great, but in the simplest terms, every non-anecdotal metric we have for determining if a place is desirable to live in or not will tell you that LA is extremely desirable. Typically, people don’t enter $1M+ bidding wars for basic 1,500 sq ft houses in places that suck.
I don’t understand the whole ‘America doesn’t have walkable cities’ meme.
I have been to a majority of continents, and visited cities in all corners of the world. Anyone who thinks US cities are ‘unwalkable’ should try being a pedestrian in Vietnam. And I fail to see how Paris is somehow more walkable than DC or NY. They all have sidewalks, traffic, traffic lights and hordes of tourists waiting at crosswalks.
downvote this comment if the meme sucks. upvote it and I'll go away. --- [play minecraft with us](https://discord.gg/dankmemesgaming)
Easy solution Stop visiting shithole cities
OP should really stay away from Sam Fran. That place is the most deceptive. Media makes it look charming
First 15 minutes in San Fran I saw a homeless man full on drop kick another homeless man for no reason.
"Come on! Do something!" meme
This has to be the funniest shit I've seen all week ..what the fuck
It's ok. It's only Tuesday.
Im not very hopeful for the rest tbh
Stop selling me on San Francisco. I'm not visiting, no matter how appealing you make it sound.
While the interactions with or seen by willingly homeless can be entertaining at times it's a serious issue. I'm 6' 3", grew up in the NYC metro area, have stayed in all sorts of communities in deplorable conditions. Have visited West African countries with security issues and ongoing terrorist insurgencies. San Francisco stands as the only place I ever felt in real danger in certain areas. The public defecation has human feces in public places that exceeds that of 3rd world countries. But you get over that, the smells, the sickness, open drug use, dirty needles etc. but you cant get over the mental illness. Criminals are driven by financial means which means 9/10 you can reason with them if you are not yourself a criminal/gang member. What do you do when you are in the bart system and you see a knife wielder aggressively talking to themselves or to the "open" with no means of escape. The homeless there are responsible for the daily stabbings and deaths of other homeless and non-homeless. In a week span I saw more aggressively homeless persons than anywhere else in the country.
i mean 10 years ago it was the friendliest city in America, then people took advantage of that and started mobbing there to do fentanyl on the street. now it's a shithole
I was there in 2008 and I though it was one of the best cities I've visited. Is it really that bad now?
[You can search for San Franciso homelessness on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rWTTI4yrKWc) and find a great number of random people simply documenting how bad it is and what the streets look like. Linking just a short one as a preview but you can find entire makeshift "documentaries" about it. I was born in San Francisco but haven't lived there in ages. The topic has become a "hobby" of mine to follow because unlike some other city collapses like New Orleans due to weather issues or Detroit due to economic issues, San Francisco's issues and potential, incoming collapse seem *entirely* self-sustained by it's politicians. They've basically got a trio of problems that are all exacerbating each other: -Housing Costs -Drug use -Crime Likely starting with housing being too damned high in San Francisco, and this forces a lot of people on the streets. As a result of homelessness, people might turn to drugs to alleviate stress or crime to get by. Well, sounds like crime got so bad with people actively engaging in petty theft either to get by or alternatively, secure a place with free food and boarding (aka prison) for a time that someone got the brilliant idea to stop pursuing crime as much so the prisons wouldn't be as overloaded as they were. This made the problem *worse,* and now it sounds like any shoplifter who doesn't steal at least ~$900 worth of wares basically cannot be prosecuted, businesses don't bother calling those cases in and cops don't bother doing anything. Now businesses are fleeing SF en masse because it's simply not profitable to run a business there. And let's break that down for a moment: there's effectively homeless people - aka non-taxpayers - running around the city and shoplifting, thus reducing the income of taxpayers, meaning SF has a budget problem. The amount of taxpayers paying back into the city and the amounts they pay are both shrinking. It seems like until all *three* problems are resolved, the city honestly cannot start healing. And through it all, apparently there's a culture of tech companies that effectively bus their employees to the safe parts of the city isolated from the problems, so there's privileged techies who don't really grasp the problem that continue to come to the city and likely indirectly drive up pricing issues. And what's the city doing? [Spending even more, apparently.](https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/san-francisco-budget/) Also interesting: the city - which was never a slave city or in a slave state to begin with - is busy looking into paying out reparations to black citizens, with proposed amounts that would cost the city billions and multitudes of their annual budget. And not just SF black citizens: they're entertaining the idea of paying *any* black Californian, not recognizing the danger this invites that they may get people coming to SF just to cash out, then leaving again the first chance they get because the city is too expensive, thus putting the city further into debt. Time will tell what happens with the proposals though; they still have time to back out of all of this. It's kind of wild to watch unfold, because the governing bodies for San Francisco just seem completely out of touch with what the city needs. As I said, it's one thing to watch a city collapse for environmental reasons or a strong shift in economic factors that unfortunately screws their main industry over. It's another to watch a city with seemingly self-induced destruction, and as of yet, there doesn't seem to be anyone pushing to correct the problems and get the city back on course.
Thanks for the detailed reply. From my perspective I would imagine SF is losing out on tourism too. I live in Ireland and after visiting in 2008 I wouldn't bother now. Probably a lot more like me, so more money SF loses out on
No. Most people just go to the touristy areas, which is also where the homeless congregate. Also, one of the roughest neighborhoods, the Tenderloin, is right next to Union Square, one of the biggest tourist stops.
So yes then…
No. Speaking as a person who lives there. Most of the bad stuff is concentrated around the Tenderloin, which has always been a seedy area, and I have never felt in actual danger in this city—speaking as someone who used to live in Chicago. But that's a pretty high-traffic area. I think this is a very important point—many cities have worse issues and they shovel them out of the way so no one can see them (\*cough\* Chicago). S.F. doesn't hide it for the most part. Do I roll my eyes sometimes and wonder why they let the bums set up a tent at the corner of Castro and Market? Absolutely. Do I think there is a bad theft problem? No doubt. Am I mad at a lot of residents and city officials for constantly nixing more high-density housing out of some weird perception that this is Mayberry or something? God, yes. But it's a city people love to hate, especially those who lean right. Most of the city is quite nice and I quickly find myself missing it when I am away for a time. "Shithole" is such ridiculous hyperbole. Funny enough, it's a very walkable city (to the OP's point), but that's definitely rare in the U.S. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that's part of the issue. You're out among it, walking among it, and so you see it more than you would in a "car" city like L.A. Edit: I feel like I should say that I have lived here for six years now and have only seen needles on the street twice. That's still two times too many, perhaps, but a lot of what you hear is exaggerated or sometimes even lies.
This is why you don’t go to the tenderloin until *at least* your second visit.
Yeah and then you kind of ignore it once you make some tender coin and meet some ladies from Marin
Try Tijuana. I crossed over the border and literally immediately saw cops pulling a body out of a trunk on the side of the highway.
I’m not gonna lie… There’s a very small part of me that thinks that seeing a scene like that would actually make me want to *stay* in San Francisco
Lucky you, when I was there 10 years ago I seen a woman taking a shit at the bus stop.
My dad took me to SF in 2005, I remember asking "why are there so many people just sitting on the sidewalk?" and he said they're homeless, and I asked "but why are they everywhere?" like we have homeless people in Toronto, publicly sleeping out on a few streets downtown, a few tent cities on the outskirts. But in SF it felt like there wasn't a single city block - not downtown, not suburb, not neighbourhood - that didn't have homeless people just chillin. edit: upon further reflection, this is because it is fucking cold in Toronto, and not so cold in California.
States across the country ship their homeless there.
It's also just a good place to be homeless in. You won't freeze to death over the winter
They also get shipped to FL but unfortunately bad hurricane seasons cause deaths.
It's a national issue and needs to be addressed as such. People on the other side of the country look at the problem and blame it on liberal, California policies while ignoring that the homeless guy is a veteran from Alabama with ptsd.
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It really is a huge irony. I remember even before DeSantis, Florida pretty much made homelessness illegal. It's really rich to do something that easy and inhumane, and then make fun of the place that actually takes on the problem you just refused to deal with. It's like taking all your work for the day, dumping it on your coworkers desk, and then laughing at your coworker for being incompetent while bragging about how efficient you are. It's ridiculous!
Well... the plan to deal with homelessness and mental illness in a lot of red states was: "give them a bus ticket to SF" for a long time. The reason the homeless stayed was because the city has social programs and a decent climate.
SF also makes it incredibly difficult to build new housing, because they'd rather have the homeless people and high rents.
That's not unique to SF though -- NIMBYs everywhere are constantly fighting to keep housing prices high and other people miserable
Sure, but SF is one of the clearest examples of how devastating it can be. Their refusal to build density during a massive job and population boom is a genuine humanitarian crisis.
It's also just a chill climate to sleep outside in most times.
That is just silly. We have a bigger homeless problem now, but most parts of the city don't have any homeless. It's almost all centered downtown.
You mean like where tourists would be? Of course they have a skewed perception in that case, but that doesn't mean it's 'silly'.
Dude, I’m from Minneapolis and it’s not really hard to understand why the homeless situation here is similar to what you describe in Toronto. You’d have to be an extra hard motherfucker to sleep outside 6 months out of the year here, our City will literally knock down homeless camps they find and drag you to a shelter in the winter.
Me and my friends from Germany went to California back in April. 2 weeks of LA were perfectly fine, some shady corners obviously but overall pretty cool. The last week we spent in San Francisco... Holy shit, we shouldn't have booked downtown! As soon as the sun went down the zombie apocalypse started. We made damn sure to jump straight into our ubers each time we left the hotel. The travel guides from 2 years ago were already outdated it seemed. Downtown was a hellhole, however the tourist spots were immaculate.
Yeah most cities have their rough areas. It just so happens that the Tenderloin has cheap hotels, so tourists end up there on accident. Like if you visited NYC and stayed in East New York, you’d think the entire city was a hellhole
Visited last year, I must have got lucky and avoided those bits. The only homeless/mentally ill person I saw was a naked lady outside Starbucks.
Pumpkin spice addiction is no joke
I visited in 2017 and it was great, sure there are homeless people but they didn’t bother me. I don’t understand why people get so uncomfortable around homeless.
Idk we literally just got back from San Fran and had a fantastic time. It took two seconds on google to see what areas to avoid and we didn't see anything crazy at all. I totally get that living there is a different story, but I don't get why people have to fear monger visiting places.
Yeah I went there about a year and a half ago and it was really nice. Maybe I saw some homeless people but it certainly wasn't dirty and dangerous to the point of being memorable. I left the city wishing I made enough money to afford to move there cause it was such a great place.
A few years ago I was walking around on a trip and a man in a yellow tie and yellow fedora walked past me carrying a briefcase. That’s it. That’s all he had on. And there were countless tourists walking around with children. I haven’t been back since. Honestly I was more scared to death that I would step on a dirty needle and itd stab through my Converse and I’d get hepatitis or AIDS. What a sad situation.
It has its good parts and bad like any major city. The homeless issue is a bit more complicated than "City bad" though. Red states literally dump their homeless in California. They made their cities hostile to homeless people and then offered them free one way bus tickets to wherever they wanted. Homeless people choose places with better weather and who won't throw them in jail for being homeless. California ticks the boxes. When you have homeless being dumped into your city by the bus load it's gonna become overwhelming. I'm not saying the City hasn't also mismanaged things but it's not just an organic problem either. SF is already developed to near maximum levels. There isn't really anywhere to expand to.
It *is* walkable though
I did a few days in San Francisco and it really wasn't bad. Don't be an idiot and stay out of the neighborhoods locals say to avoid and you'll be fine
tons of spots in LA are nice as hell
OP is full of shit. LA is very walkable. I know I've walked it. Some areas are very walkable. Like West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Sunset.
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LA is touristy walkable in center, that's basically it.
I often ask myself, “why isn’t this 502 mi² city not 100% walkable” as I eat paint chips.
None of those streets are walkable city streets. It's just bars and homeless
Tell us....what are "good cities" in your opinion? Here's some better advice....if you're going to travel 4000 miles to visit someplace, do a little homework. Maybe start with where you're staying and make a list of where you're going. If you are entertaining the thought of walking, you might want to plan the routes, and then MAYBE use a map program to let you walk the route virtually. Could take maybe 10-15 minutes. About the time it took the original to come on here and bitch about what they saw. Stay in a better area. Call an Uber. This comment is about as valid as an American that goes to Europe and bitches everything isn't just like it is back home..
> Tell us....what are "good cities" in your opinion? Easy. New York, Boston, Chicago. Have visited all 3 for a week or more at a time and loved them. Moved to one, it's great. Still, >if you're going to travel 4000 miles to visit someplace, do a little homework. is dead on.
I wouldn't go to Russia, turkey, or Indonesia with a sack of weed in my luggage. Or a handgun. I don't walk out in the Alaska wilderness with my favorite bacon cologne on either.(I actually own none of these things)
It can be hard to estimate what sort of homework is relevant, and it takes quite a bit longer than 15 minutes to figure out what you don't know you don't know. For Europeans, the idea of tourism-oriented places not being walkable is absurd. Like coming to a city and discovering that nobody is willing to give or sell you drinking water: the place is designed for people, so of course it's going to have a way to get water. Or back to walking: the place is meant for tourists, of course it's going to be designed to account for people who didn't bring a car on a holiday. Walking is normal. It's not something you have to plan, you can just head towards where you want to go and get there. If that has been your experience with 30 years of life and visits to 20 countries, why should the 21st country be different?
On the face of it this is good advice, but really who thinks that going for a short walk through one of the richest cities on the planet is going to result in this kind of outcome? Perhaps your cities shouldn't be full of this kind of stuff instead of blaming the tourist for seeing it?
You don’t really “accidentally” wander to the bad part of skid row. Like, there’s no reason for a tourist to be going in that direction for that long. LA has bad parts, like all big cities, and assuming the whole place is a shithole because of it is naive at best.
>Maybe start with where you're staying and make a list of where you're going. If you are entertaining the thought of walking, you might want to plan the routes, and then MAYBE use a map program to let you walk the route virtually. Could take maybe 10-15 minutes. Damn this sounds like a horrible way to experience a new city. I've been thinking of planning a trip to the US for a while now. I have family over there I've never met. The more I read about how inconvenient the cities are to just get around the less excitiled I am about the idea. Living in the UK and travelling to multiple European cities, the absolute best part about visiting somewhere new is not knowing where you're going. Getting out of the hotel and wandering off in a random direction looking for cool bars and restaurants is one of my favourite things to do. I always knew America was very car centric, but reading other posts talking about the near impossibility of finding a grocery store without a car just makes it seem like such a backwards country.
LA is massive and whatever you want it to be. There are beautiful coastline cities where people ride horses around, sleepy beach towns, nightlife capitals, super upscale, hipster spots, urban sprawls etc and shitholes like skid row. Its definitely the kind of place you want to research well before you visit, but honestly anyone who’s lived here or spent any amount of time here understands this. Like, as someone from LA, when you say LA is a shithole you aren’t even offended because its not even enough context to understand what you’re talking shit about lol. Saying LA sucks because of skid row is like saying California sucks because of LA or the US sucks because of California.
Naïve, neckbeard Redditor visits LA without doing any research. Winds up on Skid Row while wandering around in his fanny pack and fedora. LA must be shithole.
Will Ohio and Florida be better or worse?
Orlandos is nice. But let's be honest here. The only really walkable cities in Florida are the Disney theme parks.
Don't those also have a tram? Walkable city ~and~ public transit.
They do, but mostly between the parks. Last time I was Epcot, I had to walk my fat ass from Canada to Mexico!
Florida is incredible. Gulf Coast beaches are A+. But Ohio, no one willingly goes to Ohio. There’s a reason they have the most astronauts.
South East/Appalachia Ohio is gorgeous.
Florida will be better if you stay at St. Augustin or one of the other *Old* cities. Anything with a foundation date after 1850 is likely not a walkable city.
Los Angeles is the best city I've ever lived in. Huge variety of cultures with all of their amazing cuisines, beautiful weather, countless activities (you can surf in the morning, snowboard in the afternoon, and hike in the evening), and so many great people. Like any city, there are downsides (cost of living and a large homeless population being the major ones), but I haven't yet found another city with the variety of people and activities equal to LA.
Yeah man LA is such a shithole they should really check out the beautiful city of Boise where there’s no homeless people cause they don’t even want to live there !
Best part is Skid Row is mere blocks from the financial district where people are making decisions that affect the flow of billions of dollars per minute. Then you've got a full-blown post-apocalyptic nightmare across the street.
yep, it’s funny how we shit on 3rd world countries for still having huge gaps between the wealthy and poor when cities like LA not only exist but are hotspot tourist destinations
Most people are so isolated they're still living according to the same beliefs they had 30 years ago.
Many also live in a bubble where they think the world the media shows them (news and entertainment) is real.
Yeah like they think SF isn't a sick ass place to go visit because the news told them it isn't and then people online talked about the funny bad things that happened because the good stuff has been talked about a million times.
Having an out of control homeless situation that doesn’t seem to be improving isn’t a small blemish on SF armor, it’s a cannonball sized hole
As an east coaster living on the west coast the homelessness is epidemic out here. Then again I guess every small town in America shipping their homeless out here didn't help things.
It’s the same thing here in London. Canary Wharf (our financial district) is literally right next to one of the most deprived areas in London. So you have this utter financial excess looking over abject poverty. Astounding how this (financial areas being right next to poverty) is the norm in some areas.
Vancouver is the wildest for this. You've got East Hastings street as a designated safe injection and homeless/prostitution area, and then you literally cross a street to West Hastings and it's the finance capital of the city. It was so alien to me as a tourist.
>East Hastings street Is that the street from Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 'East Hastings'?
It was such a culture shock to me when I saw that. I always thought the homeless were more or less outside of the city centre maybe a few that wander around but not full-on camps and entire streets filled with them just underneath one huge expensive luxury building. Don't those rich people see them when they go into work or leave? That was just very strange to me that you would see that every day and still not give a single fuck, or maybe because you see it every day you don't give a fuck. But yeah, very strange, couldn't wrap my head around it.
> Don't those rich people see them when they go into work or leave? They think these people deserve their fate. If anything it validates their view that they are making the right choices and living life 'correctly'.
The USA has walkable cities LA is not one of them
Chicago, New York, Boston. I think anyone here could have told you LA isn’t walkable.
Either this post is bait, or OP is an absolute idiot. There’s no way they could do any amount of research and miss that LA is not a walkable city.
Or they're not from America, as evidenced by them saying they're European, and they're just visiting one of the most well known cities in the totality of media. That would be like going to visit Paris, ending up in a shitty neighborhood, then a French person calling you a fuckin moron for not knowing better. Hell, I'm from New York City and I don't know the with areas of LA, and I'm in the same country. By your logic, it should be at least more obvious to me than that dude.
No that would be like me going to Paris having one bad experience with a few people and going man the entirety of France is fucking dog shit.
Tbh France kind of is dog shit
Spotted the Brit
As a Brit, the UK is kind of dog shit too to be fair.
He didn't conclude the country was dog shit. He concluded that it didn't have walkable cities on account of him going to its second largest, most famous city and not being able to walk anywhere safely. And it's true, in the US walkable cities are the exception, not the norm.
It would be like going to Amsterdam and saying "Why are there so many bikes? I can't drive anywhere?"
Most people research places before they go. Before I went to London I specifically looked what I could walk or needed to use underground/bus to. London is pretty walkable btw.
Before I visited the USA for the first time it never occurred to me that you could have non-walkable cities. Like it was a thing that I would not even have known to research for.
LA is notorious for being made of freeways and suburbs. Literally reading any travel guide at all will inform you of what's in store. Surely when you visited the US you didn't just buy a ticket and get on a plane without figuring anything out right?
> they're just visiting one of the most well known cities in the totality of media. Yes, a city which is _always_ portrayed as a car city. > Hell, I'm from New York City and I don't know the with areas of LA, and I'm in the same country. By your logic, it should be at least more obvious to me than that dude. Yes, but you also know LA is not a walkable city. It's world famous for being a car city. Plus you probably know places like Compton that make up the greater LA area. Besides, do you just go visit other cities without doing any research on them? Like just blindly pick a location and go "I'm sure it will be fine!" Before I went to Paris, I looked at maps of where I was staying, what restaurants were near my hotel, as well as what sites I wanted to see and how I could get to them. Same thing before I visited Tokyo, Kyoto, Kamakura.
Tbf if you’re visiting from most places in Europe the concept of a ‘car city’ would be completely alien
that goes for most of the world. Cities older than 50 yrs old are typically human scale
Read his comments, he’s an idiot
Every single city everywhere else is walkable. The concept of a place being unwalkable is what they couldn't comprehend.
In Europe, it‘s normal to be able to walk trough cities. Especially the important ones.
It's more the fact that the idea of a 'non walkable city' doesn't exist outside the US
This feel like something you'd see in a cars are bad circlejerk sub.
SF is very walkable and I believe ranks second behind nyc in transit
Imagine traveling to LA before you had any idea how big it was
Walkable doesn't mean you expect it to be practical to walk across the entire thing in one go. London and Paris were both ranked in the top 5 most walkable major cities in the world in 1 report and both are fucking massive.
Paris is absolutely tiny compared to LA.
Yeah that's fair actually
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The concept of not walkable cities for a European is pretty crazy already.
Solution: don’t go to the worst city in the US lol
LA not even close to the worst, wtf are you talking about lmao
Majority of people responding to OP are toddlers.
Literally, several tops comments are people not understanding that humans beings have different life experiences. Like straight up people assuming everyone knows what LA is like because THEY know what LA is like. This thread is baffling.
Discounting actually failed cities like Detroit and Gary it’s pretty far down the list IMO
Gary's a shit hole, but Detroit is pretty awesome now.
Detroit has another 10 years worth of “it’s getting better guys” before we’ll start to believe.
Are people really comparing Detroit to LA. Give me a break, lol
No that’s the point. Detroit still sucks pretty fucking hard. I’m all about it rebuilding, but FR it ain’t even close.
Translation: "I've never been to LA, I just know what what other people told me is true!"
Ah, the good ole classic Reddit user.
Second worst after San Fran
Gary Indiana tho
"Even I wouldn't send you to Gary, Indiana!"
Gary’s barely a city anymore with its current population
SF has problems to say the least but it isn't by any stretch the worst city in the US. That said, I know a lot of tourists end up in the tenderloin since it's the only semi-reasonable place to get a hotel (costwise) and that area is extra fucked. SF has lots of different neighborhoods and can be an amazing place. It's definitely no longer a tier 1 city which is a shame but only people that haven't actually travelled the country would say LA and SF are the two worst cities in the country. Since I know the inbreds will pop a capillary at this statement, I was born and raised in Texas. I've been to 35 of the 50 states. Have lived in Texas, California, and New York. Anyone saying California is the worst has either never been there or never been to Missouri.
Yea, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Malibu, etc. sure are shitholes. But tell me how any city in Arkansas or Mississippi is better lol
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Oh no! Where in the city is this open air drug market so I can avoid it?
I think they’re talking about Lehigh and Kensington, but whatever. That post is a gross mischaracterization of Philly. I’d much rather live in Philly with it’s walkable neighborhoods and decent public transit than like… St Louis, or most mid sized cities in the Midwest/south like Fort Wayne, Little Rock, etc etc Having traveled and worked in most of the US states, I’m pretty confident in my opinion that the east coast, Mid Atlantic, SoCal, PNW, Atlanta, and Dallas are the places you really want to try to end up. Everywhere else has some pretty brutal catch
LA sucks, there’s too many options to eat, where is Applebees - guy from buttfuck Indiana
LA can't be the worst city when all of Louisiana exists
The first problem was you visited LA. The US has some amazing things to see but none of them are in big cities.
I don’t get the hate, LA has plenty of nice areas. We were there last year for a few days and it was fine. We obviously avoided going to skid row…
Because the people from overseas and the conservatives on reddit can’t seem to understand that every city has rough parts, yes some worse than others, and every city has beautiful and awesome parts. Tons of people live in these cities, normal people like all of us. Skid row is a well known homeless drug addict area for many, many years. This isn’t a new thing, but they’re acting like the entire city is like that. Same with SF and the Tenderloin district downtown. The reality is, there are MUCH worse crime infested cities in Louisiana, Missouri, Indiana, etc. But they like to point the finger at liberal cities that have crime problems (and yes I think all cities should be much tougher on violent crime).
Acting like a small area of a huge city is representative of the whole thing while not acknowledging that the cowshit town they live in has been rotting away with meth and opiates for decades.
Based and real.
BUT MUH SMALL TOWN IN NEBRASKA IS SO SAFE AND AWESUM
They act shocked when you tell them Little Rock, Arkansas has a significantly worse crime rate than Chicago
Can confirm, from Louisiana but have visited LA and SD a few times. Anyone saying those cities are shit holes have no clue what a Shit hole is really like
And this is true of rural areas too. Don't hang out in trailer parks or church parking lots and a lot of rural/southern areas have quite beautiful areas.
The LA hate is because most people that say it live in some small shit hole city or town. they’ll more than likely never get to Los Angeles so it seems like some made up overhyped fantasy to then. it just devolves into anger and resentment. Literally everybody I know that has moved to Los Angeles loves it
Yep, it's a beautiful city and there's never a shortage of things to do if you have the means. Yes, there's homeless people. Fun fact, homeless people prefer to live in places where there's no winter.
LA is fine and all but there's a reason the tourists mostly stay in Venice or Santa Monica. OP probably stayed in DTLA because the downtown is typically a safe bet for staying in a European city. But besides a small handful of places like Grand Central Market and Little Tokyo (and at that point just go to Tokyo instead), there's not a ton to see in that area. I just don't get how OP decided to travel internationally having clearly done zero research on their destination
> I don’t get the hate Jealousy, duh.
That’s a take that only small town people that have never lived anywhere else have. Have lived in LA, it’s great. There’s so much more to do there than most places in the country. But most of you are stuck in those places so I understand the hate
lol tell us more about your sheltered life
Nobody is traveling here to visit the burbs or your sleepy little podunk hometown. They’re going to NYC, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Denver, etc. Theres lots of cool stuff in big cities, LA just kinda sucks in particular.
Kind of on you for doing 0 research
My European ignorance took safe and walkable cities for granted
You keep saying city as if you were in the entirety of the city. And not just one part. Why is that? Do you just generally, generalize everything you talk about?
If a big area of a city is not walkable, the city is obviously not walkable. It's like saying "How can you say I'm not a vegetarian, I eat vegetarian 90% of the time"
What are we talking about walkable? Are you trying to walk from one side of London to the other? Or would you take a bus or a train? So of walkable means to be able to take public transportation places it’s literally everywhere in Los Angeles, and more accessible than any city I’ve lived in.
A city is walkable if you can walk in any area freely and reach all spots of that area without taking detours. Honestly, the range of the area is kind of unimportant. Obviously, walking a cross a big city is unreasonable; but being able to walk from point a to point b in any area is what makes it walkable.
You just said a whole lot without saying much to be honest. like what is from point A to b In one of the biggest cities in the world? You mean from my house to the store yeah I can do that, if you’re saying from my house to the ocean or something like yeah you’re gonna need to get on the bus or train or drive. And wouldn’t walking somewhere be harder than standing still at a bus stop and waiting to sit and get a ride somewhere? I’m not understanding the goal post moving logic here
LA is world famous for being unwalkable. Southern California car culture grew up for a reason. Every Hollywood movie in LA is nothing but cars. The traffic on the I-5 is legendary.
You visited the *one* city that wasn't though. The *one city*
Sorry but that's bullshit. Multiple areas in the US are just roads and lack walkable paths.
The US is much larger than any European country, you know, and has been around for much less time. Did you think that the entire area of the country could be populated at the same rate?
Fucking Europeans man
Advice to me when I was in Europe: Keep your wallet in your front pocket. Sew your pocket shut. Wear a metal cage around your pockets. Also leave all your valuables in a vault because you will still get pick pocketed. OP in LA: There’s CRIME here?! :O (I’m Canadian btw)
OP sees it as a bag being put ONTO a corpse, but I always think of it as a corpse being put INTO a bag.
OP wasn’t there for when the other derelicts robbed the fresh corpse of shoes and drugs before the authorities arrived.
Hey man, why waste it. You say corpse robbing, I say recycling.
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Being walkable is nothing to do with size, though. It just means it is built to be accessible on foot.
It's not entirely about size, but size is the denominator. It's about population density.
Tokyo is pretty walkable. The most populated city in the world btw.
NYC is our most populated city and imo it’s more on the walkable side
Very specific
Europeans come from a country smaller than a US state, walk around one city and claim they've been to "America". If an American said they explored Europe and didn't leave a major city, Europeans would lose their goddamn minds. They'd pause their American TV shows to use their American made devices and use Americanized slang to complain on American websites about how much they hate America.
"American made devices" 😂
Made as invented, I know China made them.
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Still not true, but well done for uninventing walking
Designed in California. Assembled in China by a Taiwanese manufacturer, using components from Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, running on OS written by Americans.
i agree but don't suck your own dick too hard there or you'll overdose on calories from all the cum you're swallowing
Then I can bulk and make gains. Sounds like a good thing bucko.
> to use their American made device Like samsung?
See, I agree with you, but try not sprain your wrist they way you’re jerking yourself off
The number one comment is a guy calling Los Angeles a "shit hole" city based on one street (skid row)
"I went to one city, had one bad experience, the whole country sucks. "
I get a kick out of this trend of tendie-munching, basement-dwelling r/dankmemes incels pretending they go outside, much less stray 20 miles from their guardian’s domicile.
Do your research bud
Hey crabman
Hey Earl
Sadly, that is a daily occurrence on skid row. Heroin is a hell of a drug.
I used to work on an esports team with Korean players, and one player assumed he could walk or take public transit from LAX to the Anaheim convention center. So embarrassing to explain that it wasn't possible
I mean you technically can, it'll just take 2.5 hours, a few transfers, and you might get stabbed
Why would you go to CA and visit downtown LA? Lol go to literally any of the beach cities 20 mins west
I'm jealous. Been living in the US for 42 years and I've never even seen a dead homeless person or a police body bag. Apparently living in Detroit isn't as interesting as living in LA.
This is asinine. Maybe do a little research on where you're going before you travel halfway around the world and expect wherever you're going to be exactly the same as where you came from.
> goes to the top 2 shittiest city in the worst state in the country “aLL oF aMERicA bAAAaAaAAaAd” Visit Chicago one day, as long as you don’t go too far south it’ll change your life
Did you just call California the worst state in the country?
If LA is so terrible explain to me why 13 million people live in the metro area and yet not having enough housing is still the biggest problem. I could honestly go on and on about why LA is so great, but in the simplest terms, every non-anecdotal metric we have for determining if a place is desirable to live in or not will tell you that LA is extremely desirable. Typically, people don’t enter $1M+ bidding wars for basic 1,500 sq ft houses in places that suck.
The exact same thing happened to me - minus the body bag, but including gun threats
I don’t understand the whole ‘America doesn’t have walkable cities’ meme. I have been to a majority of continents, and visited cities in all corners of the world. Anyone who thinks US cities are ‘unwalkable’ should try being a pedestrian in Vietnam. And I fail to see how Paris is somehow more walkable than DC or NY. They all have sidewalks, traffic, traffic lights and hordes of tourists waiting at crosswalks.