I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an infant. The main 'problem' people have is that there are poor people living there in SROs, and a good number of homeless people loitering all the time. But they mostly keep to themselves. Some folks certainly have substance abuse or mental health problems and will be talking to themselves, and if you walk through you might get shouted at, and sometimes there is a shouting match out in public, and statistically there is some amount of crime between residents, but it's generally not a physical threat to people walking through. It is by no means a 'no-go area'.
> I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an infant.
Are you joking? Or just insane?
I'm a 160 lbs male and would not walk through the tenderloin at night. It's really fucking scary. Almost everyone there is homeless and on drugs. The bad kind of drugs.
I would go so far as to say that someone carrying an infant through that area might be endangering the child.
Kid or no kid, the Tenderloin is fine as long as you "fit in"... but if it looks like you can be scared out of some cash, you will get the predatory stare.
My wife got attacked in San Francisco in Tenderloin around 11am, a few blocks away from Clift Hotel on the second day of the trip. I guess her carrying a Starbucks cup made her a target.
The fact that SF tolerates shit like this under the banner of "acceptance", "it is mental health" or whatever the hell it may be is mind blowing.
People living in a snooty wealthy bubble get 'really fucking scared' pretty easily. It's not like drug addicts sitting on the sidewalk go out of their way to attack strangers walking by in the middle of a busy public street. I'm not recommending you find a big angry looking person and insult his mother.
There are lots of people with kids who live in the Tenderloin and presumably pass through their own neighborhood at all hours.
Walking around near poor homeless people now counts as 'child endangerment' I guess...
Not to be mean but 160 lbs isn't heavy at all. If you're pushing 200 lbs and go to the gym regularly you'll have a lot less people bothering you on the street. I still wouldn't recommend walking through the Tenderloin alone though.
Do people in Bolivia shit on the side of the street or in other public areas? Because that's what they do in SF. So many homeless people shit on the BART escalator that it once took a station's escalations out of service.
