I’ve lived in a big city for years now. Never seen anybody get mugged, or shot, or carjacked, despite doing activist work that often has me visiting poor minority neighborhoods.
The only time I ever really felt uneasy was when I had to walk alone at night through a neighborhood where all the businesses had bars on the windows. Worst thing that happened was a couple of people asking me for money, and they didn’t give me any shit when I said I didn’t carry cash.
But any time I visit the small town where I grew up there’s always someone or another acting like I came back from a fucking warzone lmao
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It always comes down to
One time we were explaining to a relative how a storm had downed some tree branches and they implied that our urban trees were just weaker compared to their country trees lmao
Smh at the rootless cosmopolitanism of these city trees
I used to live in an area where trees were planted too close to the curb and street, so 50ish years later the trees got huge and had a very lopsided root system that would knock them straight into the road. Every year a few go down and wreck the overhead powerlines.
This was firmly a suburb though.
When my grandma was still around, the family would all go to her gouse for holidays, and she lived in a tiny little town in a redwood forest. Since redwoods are protected here, some of them grow straight up through the road, so it feels like you’re walking into this mossy post-apocalyptic land of colossal pavement-breaking trees and banana-sized slugs.
Man, redwood trees rule
That sounds really amazing. I love forested areas. I don’t know how people look at a bare sky with no trees and go “ah nature”.
There has to be some kind of car brain explanation. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, a tiny town an hour and a half’s drive north of a mid-sized city. I remember people thinking it’s perfectly reasonable to drive 90 minutes to work or to revolve your life around your car. But back home they love it. Driving around is pleasant for them for some reason. They love driving 100mph with no one doing anything about it, since there’s no traffic and the cops don’t give a shit unless you’re black. Back home you can drive in a straight line without stopping for at least an hour. The road just keeps going. I think some rural folk interpret this as the greatest personal freedom, the ability to get on any road you want and drive in a direction far too fast and end up wherever you please.
In cities things are more congested, and driving around is more of a chore. Parking is more difficult, there’s traffic, and navigation is more complicated. Back home there were just two roads. You go north to be in more rural swamp forest nowhere, you go south to be in civilization. Navigation rarely got more complicated than that.
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Yeah that’s actually how they see it. Half of my family drives recreationally to unwind and calm down. They genuinely enjoy it. They even have fun fixing and maintaining the car, or tinkering with it and modifying it. And yeah, their perspective is: I can just get into my car and start it and go wherever I want whenever I want. But a bus or train I have to rely on someone else for, and adhere to limitations of schedule and lines. So to them it’s more freedom.
Yeah, they can’t interpret a car being a burden or driving as a waste of time. Living somewhere rural means you’re a car hobbyist by default.
I do have fun modifying, operating, and maintaining my primary vehicle, but it’s a bicycle. So I can almost see where they’re coming from. But my bike didn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars and I’m not gonna explode if it crashes.
I mean you should be able to understand it. Its a hobby, and a fun mechanical one, as you do with your bike, except it gets absurdly powerful. And let me tell you, absurdly powerful cars are very fun and kick ass. Its expensive, yes, but some hobbies are.
Cars as a hobby fuckin rule. Cars as a necessity is fucked up.
Yeah I can understand having fun with cars. They go fast and some people enjoy tinkering. I was never able to get into it because being in a car makes me sick. I can handle about 30 minutes at a time before I get too dizzy to keep going.
Yeah it’s also way too expensive. My car is by far the biggest money sink I have and I barely use it and it’s paid off. Constantly breaking down and demanding gasoline. If it was just a toy I used to ride around on weekends, that’s fine.
I’ll never 4 get the time my boomer boss told us he was going to bring his gun with him the next time he rode his Harley through the city because he was scared. Same city we routinely drunkenly stumble through, and dude you’re a 300lb man on a motorcycle who is going to fuck with you? (He was an instigator in every situation that ever befouled him)
I live in a city, work in a suburb. I talk up every scary think I see (litter, unmowed lawns, tents with people in them, just EXISTING without paying a landlord or anything) to my conservative coworkers. Whatever I can do to keep them out of the one cool city in this state is worth it in my eyes
It especially sucks when the urban fear mongering finally lets way to the shittiest politicians screwing over the city.
This is so true but corporate media has such a grip on this topic. Sure conservatives are scared shitless, sure. I live in a small town and want to move to a small city or a big city if I can. I’m scared too! The messaging that cities are more dangerous started when I was a kid and has never stopped. It’s hard to find positive takes and resources about why cities are safer / not dangerous.
Lots of good comments in here, but another big factor is that people suck at dealing with large numbers. They’ll hear there were 300 murders somewhere in some year and think that place is a shooting gallery because they don’t know the population of the city, and if they did they aren’t going to intuitively grasp how rare crimes actually are.
And of course media has been banging the drum on crime for the past ~40 years despite crime lowering significantly over that time frame.
Living in DC is wild because the way people in the VA and MD suburbs post about it, you’d think our situation is indistinguishable from Port Au Prince.
Chicago’s alright. The hot dogs could be described as a warzone, but I like them for it.
I live in a city. Today a dude tried to smash my window in and called me a f[slur].
In 2022, a homeless dude stole my bag from my on Burnside.
In 2020, multiple comrades got fucked up by the PPB.
In 2016(?) a comrade of mine was stabbed on the lightrail.
In 2015, a comrade was run over by a fascist (rip Lewis)
In 2014 a comrade had their house ransacked by the pigs during a “wellness check.”
Cities can be violent places. That said, I live in thr suburbs now and desperately miss Portland. Lake Oswego can suck my fucking asshole. I’ll take rest of it any day.
And you know what? It’s more dangerous here. Everyone’s sedentary because they can’t walk anywhere. Everyone’s an alcoholic because they’re alone and miserable. Everyone’s broke because they have to pay for a car. This shit kills people.
In 2020, multiple comrades got fucked up by the PPB.
Even this instance isn’t immune.
Keep Hexbear weird!
In 2020, multiple comrades got fucked up by the PPB.
What is the PPB? This is the one time I’ve seen that acronym refer to something other than pig poop balls.
Portland Police Bureau
Also I hate when people’s stories of why a place is so dangerous are actually a story where everyone was fine?
“I don’t feel safe walking in the park at night, one time there was this homeless guy walking behind me”
And did he… do anything? Or have true crime podcasts just rotted your brain and now you just see other human beings and think they’re going to murder you? Because what you just told is a story of walking through the park and being completely unharmed.
Also, if cities are so bad, then why are property values in cities SO GODDAMN HIGH!?
I live in a rural shithole because I’m too poor to afford anything else, and trust me, I feel plenty unsafe around so-called “good 'ol boys” who can [redacted] someone and then get it away with it. If you don’t like it, you’re seen as the weirdo.
The fear of the cities actually traces its roots back to the establishment of the (overwhelmingly) white suburban “middle class”, which was a product of Jim Crow era legislation and laws along with redlining and white flight.
I have a whole bit about how this happened, if anyone is interested in hearing more about it.
“Try that in a small town” oh you mean the suburbs where everyone is alienated and afraid and paranoid of their neighbor so they shoot a kid who’s basketball lands on their front yard? Yum, community spirit!
