Originally Posted by
antonius66
The one post that tries to argue crime in SF really isn't bad at all notwithstanding, I used to stay in SF at one of the Hyatt options several times a year. I can say definitively that I used to go 2-3 times a year for weekend trips, 3 other couples who are all close friends and my parents all used to do the exact same type of travel (so effectively 5 separate family units) and every single one of them have stopped going to SF completely and have not gone in years. Every one of them reports the exact same reasons. Honest truth is that we all got tired of the increasing filth, crime and degeneracy. Last trip there I almost got into a fight with a vagrant who got aggressive when I didn't give him money, got offered drugs by a dealer at Golden Gate Park who was so unafraid of punishment that he literally shouted out the offer from 20 feet away, I watched a guy defecate on the sidewalk in the financial district, and none of that includes the base level of vagrancy, unchecked mental illness, drug use, etc that is present. This hotel is nice enough but overall the city itself is a non starter for me for visitation. The Economist highlighted how the city spends over half it's 50+million annual sanitation budget on cleaning up human feces. I wonder how much Tokyo spends? Sadly I would argue none of the Hyatt options including this one are markedly better for safe, comfortable environment to enjoy.
But you know, crime is so low that you should just fold down your rear seats so criminals can see your trunk is empty... you know how normal people act in every other city.
I live in Los Angeles and travel to the Bay Area every month on business, and my wife and I also travel there frequently for weekend trips to visit friends. I have also lived through the terrible 90's where crime was about 2x - 3x worse in every American city than it is now, even with the recent uptick in crime related to the pandemic. In fact, we last stayed in this exact hotel, and we've stayed in the Embarcadero Regency a few times, and others. I've stayed many times at the Kissell in Uptown Oakland, as well as the Hyatt Place in Emeryville and many Silicon Valley Hyatts closer to my company's offices.
Yes, there are a lot more homeless wandering around SF, particularly the Tenderloin area, and SF has not done a great job, to say the least, dealing with it. However, again: the objective fact is, the murder rate is 2.75x lower than Houston, Texas and 5x lower than Atlanta, Georgia. In fact, SF's murder rate is one of the lowest of any major city in the country. So yeah, the feces on the street sucks, and it's annoying to be confronted by "aggressive" homeless people - but it's a hell of a lot safer in real terms than most other major cities. So, if you want Disneyland, then no, it's not Disneyland, and downtown in particular is kind of a ghost town mostly because SF used to be the epicenter of tech office workers and if you are looking for nightlife or other downtown amenities, downtown SF definitely is pretty depressing since so many tech workers moved out or are only coming downtown a few times/week, so lots of businesses folded. But - dangerous? It's the US of A and that means it's a LOT more dangerous than, say, Tokyo or Seoul - but it's not particularly dangerous as US cities go.
So yeah, I fold my back seats down when I park in the Bay Area. It's annoying. But crime is down in 2023 (as it is in most American cities this year) and it's not even remotely close to the bad old days of the 90's.
So, is it worth visiting SF? That's a personal choice. It's still a beautiful city, lots of nature all around, areas like the Marina are still very nice to visit, the East Bay and Marin have a lot of great places to visit as well. I travel there constantly, and I don't find it particularly worrisome, even if it's more annoying than it used to be several years ago.