It all started with the hippies of the 60s and never recovered.
Yep. I hate hippies. Whenever I see some old fart with shoulder length greasy gray hair I wanna punch him in da mouf.
Then there were the gays of the 70s and 80s, at least until AIDS decimated them.
I lived in SF in the ‘70s and ‘80s and it was delightful and safe then. Of course a neighborhood or two I wouldn’t walk through, but every city has those. Come to think of it, a female friend of mine did get an apartment in one of those awful ‘hoods and felt and was perfectly safe there. That was decades ago, before drugs and crime took over.