Dangerous downtowns?

I suspect what your friends described isn’t true of Portland as a whole.
I also suspect it is true of select parts of all cities.

I don’t live in Portland though, so I don’t know for certain.

 

We’re in a “nice” neighborhood, still seeing needles and what-have-you, and yesterday a woman neighbour we chat with let us know she was violently attacked about a week back, homeless guy came outa the woods by stream. They did catch the guy, but a lot of revolving door thing going on.

 

i can only speak for boston, new york and orlando. there are bad neighborhoods, but there have always been. overall, i would say not too bad but those areas could always be improved.
i've never seen needles or any other drug paraphernalia lying around.

i have read a lot about san francisco, and i find it shocking. we were there just 10 years ago, and walked the entire city. it was very clean, and we didn't notice any problems.

 

Downtown Seattle has moved in the same direction.

Some parts of the city have always had serious problems, some others have cycled between various stages of safety or danger for generations. But things have clearly worsened in the past half dozen years, and the downtown portion is at its worst since I moved to this region about four decades ago. Saddled with a habitually dysfunction city council, I'm glad to have lived within the actual city only a few years before buying a house outside. I would not currently move back in.

The homicide rate is still considerably lower than during the social unrest of the late '60s and the crack epidemic of the mid-80s to early-90s, though is rapidly rising. But soaring fentanyl deaths far more than make up for it, homelessness is far worse, and many other problems are cycling in the wrong direction. Though those problems are centered on the city, they don't stay there, and keep spreading into the surrounding areas.

 

I've been to quite a few big cities, but the only places in big cities that I've ever felt unsafe were parts of LA and parts of Manila. I suppose that (with the exception of the Philippines), we just don't have that "dangerous downtown" thing in East Asia, Europe and Australasia. Oh, actually, there's an area near Barcelona Airport where I once ended up after taking a wrong turn, and that was pretty dodgy.

I've been to San Francisco - I had a girlfriend in the late 90s who lived around Haight-Ashbury. It was fine then, but I understand it's gone badly downhill since then.

In Australia, the closest we'd have wouldn't be big cities at all, but some small rural towns. The closest I've been to feeling unsafe here was Wellington (the Australian one, not the capital of NZ), a town of 4000 people about four hours' drive from Sydney. Its only real business is a prison, and that's meant that prisoners' families congregate around there. Actually, prison isn't the only real business - crystal meth is the biggest industry. There are a few small towns in Australia and NZ with similar issues: crystal meth really can kill a town.

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What's generally viewed as the roughest part of Sydney isn't downtown at all, but about 30km to the west of the centre of the city - an area called Mount Druitt. But while it's poor by Australian standards, it's not dangerous: I've been there after dark to buy second-hand furniture and stuff from Gumtree (like Craigslist) and have never felt unsafe.

I had an Afghan taxi driver taking me home in Sydney one night, and we were chatting about different neighbourhoods - he said mine was a particularly nice one. I asked where he lived, and he said "Mount Druitt. People say, 'Oh, Mount Druitt is very rough'. These people have not been to Kabul." He had a point.

 

i had bad experiences in dc and baltimore, but both because we were in the wrong part of town

 

We took a subway away from the Barcelona Airport, despite reading travel advice against it due to bag theft. And we're pretty sure that a pair of guys were casing us and about to strike when I moved to bump and block it. The leader was very apologetic, as if he had a very well rehearsed cover line, and both immediately moved on to the next car and vanished.

While looking around to get our bearings after emerging from the destination station, an ex-pat warned us to never use the subway, stay on surface transportation.

 

I think a lot of this is because Barcelona is a tourist destination, and the touristy areas - with bewildered, newly-arrived, distracted and naive tourists - are always a good target. Shanghai is extremely safe, but there are pickpockets around The Bund and Nanjing East Road - the areas where you get loads of domestic and international tourists. Rome seemed fine when I was there, but I know a friend who had his money stolen outside the Colosseum. Oxford Street is the biggest problem area in London for that sort of thing.

When we rented a car in Barcelona, we were told that, close to the airport, there'd be people on the motorway telling us we had a flat tyre. We were told to ignore them, as they just wanted us to stop so they could steal everything from the car.

 

There were parts of Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg that made me feel less than completely safe. Maybe a dodgy moment in Moscow.

Never had a problem in NYC, Los Angeles or Boston, the three US cities I've spent the most time in. (22 years combined)

I have had problems with property theft in small town Pennsylvania.

 

In the early 00s, a Hong Kong friend went to Johannesburg for work. She's a big foodie - she and I once went to Penang for a week just to eat (@Leadfoot J. McCoalroller , you'd really like her) - so she was keen to try local foods. She asked the concierge where she should go for dinner. The concierge said, "I'll give you recommendations for where to go for lunch. Do not leave the hotel for dinner. You don't want to be out there after dark."

 

Sacramento prosecutor sues California’s capital city over failure to clean up homeless encampments (msn.com)
9/19/23
"The lawsuit includes accounts from dozens of city residents living around 14 encampments. Some homeowners recounted being threatened with firearms at their front door and having their properties broken into and vandalized — which has driven some from their homes. Local business owners said they have spent thousands of dollars to upgrade their security systems after their workers were assaulted by homeless people, while calls to city officials seeking help have gone unanswered, the lawsuit said."

 

I'm going to go ahead and add Las Vegas to my list.

I don't know what I drove through this morning, but it involved about 6 police trucks sort of shutting down an intersection and then another one (they weren't very effective vs. traffic) and lots of worried-looking cops running around with long guns out.

 

someone ripped off a casino, probably looking for joe pesci

 

No property is worth a human life, and I (nearly) NEVER advocate for a 2A solution for property crime.
BUT(!!)
There are important exceptions where the thin veneer of civilization is threatened, which is when things start to get 'dangerous' for the citizenry.
MY solution is to live in a town that does not tolerate small crimes....

ACTUAL mileage WILL vary.

 

An unstable feedback loop: (1) afraid of <something>; (2) buy a gun; (3) some bad guy buys a gun; (4) buy another gun; (5) more <something> fear; (6) buy another gun, and; (7) repeat steps (5) -> (6) until money is gone or gun handling. Meanwhile, the popular culture of solving problems by firearms accelerates the whole.

I don't have a solution but up until WW-II, we were able to break some of the earlier gun marketing and fear feedback loop. So machine guns and sawed off shotguns could be taxed to small numbers. But thanks to inflation, the threshold of their ownership has become insignificant. So we see growing revulsion of today's gun practice side-effects.

I would go on but at 5:30 AM, time to watch the local news and see who got shot this time or charged shooter or convicted killer.

Bob Wilson

 

Big city news, close to home:

'He was truly exceptional': Mountie killed in Coquitlam was decorated officer, a father of six | Vancouver Sun

Strange story though, no explanation of the purpose of the confrontation; they’re still very tight-lipped.

 

As usual, the guns are just the shiny bauble that draws the eye away from the real argument.
The unsustainable feedback loop is the 'lather-rinse-repeat' cycle of not punishing crime - INCLUDING vagrancy, INCLUDING open drug use, INCLUDING shoplifting under $1000.
There's a common misconception that shop owners are indemnified by insurance companies against loss during a flash mob, but generally speaking inventory loss is not covered.
THAT is a property thing, but the hollowing out of a city by the loss of retail isn't.
To use a phrase that the kids are saying these days, it's a 'death loop' that will ultimately end with MORE violent crime, not less.

The take-away from the NFA (regulation of 'sawed-off shotguns' and machine guns) is relatable to certain city problems in one important way.
People do not use sawed-off shotguns and machine guns in crime these days NOT because they are unobtainable or because of the paperwork, or the taxes.
They do not use them because they're about as portable, inexpensive and effective as an IBM Selectric typewriter.
We simply have better ways of doing stuff and things since Ma Barker and her gang were around.
Also?
Anyone with an above room temp IQ KNOWS that federal gun crimes (usually!) result in AT LEAST a suspended sentence, a hefty fine, AND a felony record.
First Time.
Every Time.
(almost! )
It's been true since they chiseled laws into rocks back in the 'cradle of civilization' 3,000 years before Christ that unpunished crime begets more crime - NOT less.

“....men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.”