Big cities are dying. This should shock you.

[ultrarunner]

In the video the Bay Area is the only place in the country with higher crime than Seattle. Seattle is booming as well, but the tide is turning for a lot of people. Many regret moving into the city, paying big money for where they live and having to deal with the drug addicts and their filth and trash on the street, in the parks, cemeteries, everywhere. As the video says... how did we get like this?

There is plenty of crime only segments have been decreasing... it was much worse back when I was in school... assignation of Dr. Foster, Earth First pipe bombs, Weather Underground, King Assassination, Panthers, Hells Angels... etc... every block had abandoned homes and burnt out hulks... abandoned cars etc... My van still bears the scars from Rodney King fiasco... a mob rushed me at an intersection and I punched it to get through... call the police and was told to get somewhere safe as the police were too busy to respond...

I doubt you can find abandoned homes for taxes anywhere here... it was so bad the city was selling these abandoned homes for $1... now they are worth 400k...

The other point is very true... I spent time each week cleaning the doorways or excrement and condoms... go to work at 4:30 am to clear the doorways so the Nurses feel safe to get out of their cars... it was NEVER like this.

The nuisance crimes like trash, smash and grab, broken windows, unstable people increases... but the murder rate drops...

There was a time when Detroit and Oakland/Richmond tied for most dangerous...

 

[ultrarunner]

When I returned to Berkeley with my wife a few years ago, to show her my college stomping grounds when Reagan got elected, I didn't recognize the place. Kind of sad for me but a good thing that the place has rejuvenated. I did find my old boss (Eid's TV) still selling video equipment... just relocated from Shattuck to Telegraph after all these years! Just googled him and he is still kicking. Better visit him again soon!

There are still a few but many long time businesses are fading away... staples of the area.

Berkeley has always been strange to me... remember the Hippie and Flower Power and seeing grown ups dancing in the parks as if they didn't have a care in the world... plus tons of hitchhikers everywhere... seldom see anyone hitching today...

Berkeley will always be Berkeley... Olympia WA with Evergreen his given me flashbacks of Berkeley when the troops were coming home and met with mobs of protesters a few years back and spit on and pelted with bottles, etc... until that day I thought it was a Bay Area only thing and then my friends in Portland said similar in Portland.

 

[goeduck]

Bottom line, in Seattle anyway, this is a drug problem disguised as a homeless problem. The do gooders want to help the homeless when in fact they are enabling and supporting the drug addicts.

We should all be do gooders but a huge percentage of these people in the video and on the street are working the system. The true homeless we should help. The true mentally ill we should help. Most of these people are neither, they are drug addicts. Society should not be enabling them.

 

[goeduck]

^^^^
Another consideration; if we weren't meant to eat meat, why do we have a gall bladder?

Pretty hard to argue with that ^^^^

 

[Professor Marvel]

This IS sad. A good friend lives in the suburbs of Seattle. They stopped to visit two years ago. They both agreed - they would really like to live in the country. BUT - not as remote as I am here. Neither could see the pleased look on my face. The last thing we need around here are city folks.

YES !!

 

[Steppenwolfe]

The Vegans are the ones that get me; they say mankind was not intended to eat meat, when in fact, the combination of eating meat, preparing and cooking it (and veggies too) is responsibility for man developing his large brain, and for certain evolutionary changes in the teeth, jaw, tongue and throat and maybe even for a boost in developing speech.

Sorry Vegans: Here'''s How Meat-Eating Made Us Human | Time

Maybe... just maybe, this has something to do with the new "gender" assignment plaque of recent ...

 

[aczlan]

Remember, this thread is in Rural Living, NOT Friendly Politics. Please keep the politics out of it.

Aaron Z

 

[/pine]

The whole thread is political in nature...it's ludicrous to just remove posts with recognizable (political) names and not other posts that have actual partisan political connotations like the NGD etc...!

 

[goeduck]

Remember, this thread is in Rural Living, NOT Friendly Politics. Please keep the politics out of it.

Aaron Z

Right. It is about how we as a country have enabled and supported drug use and what it is doing to our society. Much of this has concentrated in the big cities, but far from all of it.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Small towns started dying long before big cities woke up to there being a problem. The small town where my mom grew up in Nebraska doesn't even have a high school any more. When you erode the foundations of a society, it's not surprising that those glittering pinnacles get kind of shaky.