> Only a small portion of SF is matches the dystopian vision you claim. Even those portions are not any worse than other urban areas.

If you believe that you either live an extremely sheltered existence in SF or you've not visited recently.

San Francisco is pretty bad no matter where you go (except, perhaps, for the affluent areas like Sea Cliff and St Francis Woods). Out in the Outer Sunset I saw what looked like someone shat out a tapeworm over the course of three blocks the other day (if you'd like pictures, I'd be happy to oblige).

I went down to Rainbow Grocery last week and sat outside munching on some popcorn. It only took a few minutes before I was approached by a guy asking for some. Sharing food is something I've done before and will do again, but finger foods? No thanks. So the guy walks away, picks up his walking stick, gives me the crazy eyes, and then starts swinging the stick at me while muttering incoherently. This is also a part of town where you never know which side of the street you'll have to avoid due to the massive encampments (side effect of the super bowl bullshit really). Meanwhile I walked away as quickly as I could only to get hit with the stench of human shit. Turns out someone had dropped a steaming five inch mound of fresh shit nearby. The 311 ticket got closed out because they couldn't be bothered to figure out which corner if the intersection the smell was coming from (despite there being GPS coordinates in the damn picture).

I took BART last weekend to the Oakland Museum of California (the Eames exhibit was fun). I managed to get stuck on the periphery of no less than two fights on the damn trains. Last time I took BART late at night I hadn't quite realized what an open air drug market it had become. And, of course, Civic Center station has never been great but I've been seeing folks shooting up on the steps during the day. Something I never saw when I was working in that neighborhood years ago.

Backing up to earlier last week I sat next to a well traveled woman a few years younger than myself on my flight to SFO. She's from Harlem and visits SF annually. The thing that struck her most about SF vs NY was that drug use is far more open than in New York and so is homelessness. That jives with my experiences as well — San Francisco is demonstrably worse than other urban areas I've visited.

For fun search youtube for videos on sideshows. How many other urban areas get their major roads (e.g. the bay bridge, I-880) shutdown to make way for people hooning their cars? Let's not spend too much time talking about the condition of the roads out here either. They put Newark to shame. And we don't even have the excuse of extreme weather like they do in Jersey.

> There is a reason why housing here is extremely expensive. People want to live here.

That is a large part of the reason, but San Francisco is also seeing the Vancouver-like thing of rich folks parking their money in housing.

Don't forget that people often have entirely irrational reasons for wanting to live in San Francisco. Some of them have been deported from other states (thanks Las Vegas!), some of them still have a very romanticized view of San Francisco (it's not the summer of love anymore but there are plenty of kids that migrate out here in pursuit of that dream).