this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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When I lived in Southern California (which is very different from other parts of the state) in the early 90s it was exactly like that. And when I have visited. I always tell people to watch it because a lot of people are really quick up take offense and anger in public and they never believe me until they see it, which they have on each trip back.
I love other areas of California, it's beautiful, but Southern California always felt like a pressure cooker to me.
San Diego used to be a lot worse in a lot of ways. Honestly people have short memories. Admittedly, downtown is starting to look like 80s-90s downtown again, in a lot of ways though.
I can honestly say that there are a lot of terrible people out there, but in my experience San Diego always manages to come together when it matters. And honestly, in most day to day interactions, the vast majority of people I interact with are pretty nice overall.
I mean I lived in Anaheim in a terrible part of town on the early 90s with no car and a 40 minute bike ride to work, it was inevitable that I was going to have some bad experiences (robbed at gunpoint, crazy lady with rabid dog living in front of my building, getting screamed at and having stuff thrown at my by passing cars because I was on a bike, etc).
My coworkers (kitchen work in a big hotel) were great, it was just when I was going to and from work I'd see a lot of crazy stuff.
In later years, going back, I just found people were on a hair trigger. Like I was with two co-workers (was there for something like a work conference) in a store buying beer and these two guys were in costume so my buddy (from the Maritimes) said "those are awesome costumes" and these two guys went nuts on us.
Profanity, threats, it was wild. We just apologized and they were telling us to go f ourselves as they left.
Or I went to sf with my wife about ten years ago and she wanted to stop at a gas station in the city to use the washroom. I was like "just keep your focus on the cashier to get the key and I'll wait outside the bathroom". She told me I was being paranoid. Before we even got out of the car two dudes got into a fistfight and a cop saw it and tore in return the lights and siren going.
Just stuff like that going on all the time. Meanwhile, a few hours away you have paradise on earth.
Totally. It’s definitely area dependent. I was speaking to San Diego as a whole, more than downtown specifically. I personally wouldn’t go to downtown SD by myself, to like walk around. But, I never would have since I remember it back in the day.
Just like you didn’t go to certain neighborhood here unless you had a reason. My husband doesn’t remember SD like that, so whenever someone invites us to one of those neighborhoods (which most have been heavily gentrified now) my first reaction is always like uh….fuck no.
Shit even parts PT Loma/sports arena are are getting pretty awful again. Sports area was okish for a while, but there are SO many encampments in there now.
I think every downtown in every city in North America is pretty bad right now. I'm not anti-city but poverty, drug poisoning (like cutting drugs with crazy stuff that makes taking them very unpredictable), and general disorder are really stacking up in every downtown. I live in a large city in Western Canada, the downtown is really not ok to hang out in even during the day.
For various reasons, I am familiar with the situation in many other cities and they all seem to have similar issues. The city here put out water dispensers for people to use and then criminals started to gate keep them, charging money to access. I just don't know how to stop that besides putting a cop or two by each one but police here continue to use their inability to stop this crisis as a way to get additional funding each year... Sigh. Not really sure why I'm ranting like this, it's just really frustrating.
I don’t doubt that at all. It’s hard for everyone. SD and CA big cities as a whole are the destination for a lot of homeless/unwanted either willingly or “forcefully”. Largely because of our temperate climate and “liberal” policies, so we see a lot of it that we wouldn’t, if people didn’t explicitly come here for that reason.
I was mostly trying to comment on how SD was vs how it is now. It’s definitely MUCH safer here than it was in the 80s/90s. Early 90s was bad here, but people don’t remember, or more likely, are transplants and weren’t here for it.
Right on, I get you. Thanks for clarifying and have a good one. :)