I travel all around the United States, moving every three to six weeks, and I completely agree with your assessment of San Francisco, having just spent a month living there.
San Francisco is actually kind of disgusting. It is one of the dirtiest cities in the United States and there are literally-crazy homeless people on every corner. In many ways, it is dirtier than Manhattan; it makes Boston look sterile. There is human excrement everywhere, and serious crime issues. I passed a fountain that was effectively aerosolizing human shit (the homeless were pooping in it), which smelled about how you may imagine. It is not uncommon to walk through a cloud of pot smoke then to be hit in the face with the foul stench of waste; the mixture is revolting.
The locals are also out of touch with reality. They compare Market St. to the Champs-Élysées in Paris which only seems to demonstrate that they've never been to Paris. There are idiotic cancer warnings on everything; hotels, gas stations, parking garages, Starbucks, shopping centers, health clubs, and french fry boxes. There are Idiocracy warning alarms at the exit to every parking garage, presumably to prevent the deaths of the vast number of people that are killed every year by cars exiting parking garages. There is a tax on toasted subs. Idiotic protesters were allowed to block Market St., halting street cars, rerouting buses, disrupting commutes, and closing the MUNI station while blathering about how it was there first amendment right to do so (it's not). In short, the place is backward. There seems to be such a political desire to tackle huge societal issues and minor non-issues that the city has failed to master the very basics, and is unable to even manage human waste.
It's refreshing to hear others who share the same views of SF. I was beginning to think that I was just missing something.
> There are idiotic cancer warnings on everything; hotels, gas stations, parking garages, Starbucks, shopping centers, health clubs, and french fry boxes.
I think this is a State of CA thing, not a City of SF thing.
San Francisco is actually kind of disgusting. It is one of the dirtiest cities in the United States and there are literally-crazy homeless people on every corner. In many ways, it is dirtier than Manhattan; it makes Boston look sterile. There is human excrement everywhere, and serious crime issues. I passed a fountain that was effectively aerosolizing human shit (the homeless were pooping in it), which smelled about how you may imagine. It is not uncommon to walk through a cloud of pot smoke then to be hit in the face with the foul stench of waste; the mixture is revolting.
The locals are also out of touch with reality. They compare Market St. to the Champs-Élysées in Paris which only seems to demonstrate that they've never been to Paris. There are idiotic cancer warnings on everything; hotels, gas stations, parking garages, Starbucks, shopping centers, health clubs, and french fry boxes. There are Idiocracy warning alarms at the exit to every parking garage, presumably to prevent the deaths of the vast number of people that are killed every year by cars exiting parking garages. There is a tax on toasted subs. Idiotic protesters were allowed to block Market St., halting street cars, rerouting buses, disrupting commutes, and closing the MUNI station while blathering about how it was there first amendment right to do so (it's not). In short, the place is backward. There seems to be such a political desire to tackle huge societal issues and minor non-issues that the city has failed to master the very basics, and is unable to even manage human waste.