I have my opinions about Seattle v. Tacoma, but I'll keep them to myself for now. What I will say is this.

Reading your blog, I see you're from Las Vegas. I've been to Las Vegas three times, and each time I was there I never left the Strip. What I saw was a bunch of drunken frat boys trying to get women to flash their tits and puking in the street. From this extensive personal experience, I can tell everyone I know that the entire near-two-million-population city of Las Vegas is nothing but drunken frat boys, right? Using your Tacoma evaluation method, that's what I would conclude.

You, who have by all accounts only been to Tacoma a handful of times and was "looked at funny" or followed by a "mugger" (whatever that means - and just out of curiosity, did this "mugger" happen to be of a different race than you? Wearing different clothes than you?) a couple times, have no reason or right to call Tacoma anything, much less a "ghetto". Live there a while, get a feel for it, then comment on it - until then, you have no credibility on what Tacoma is like.

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This is the 3rd random, unsigned anonymous comment on the matter.

Again, this was not 'getting looked at funny.' This was people actively trailing and trying to mug me. Whether or not I live in Tacoma in immaterial to the fact that your criminal element is dangerous enough that the moment I set foot there, they zeroed in on me.

Everyone who's argued the point makes the exact same irrelevant argument. Whether or not I live there doesn't matter. People live in Detroit or Miami just fine and get to know its nice parts. That doesn't make those two cities safe.

Pick a better hill to die on, i.e. try a relevant line of reasoning.

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And sign your fucking comments. You're obviously getting sent here from somewhere else and we've established that no one wants to advise me on where. You're willing to make some baseless assumptions and take a shot at me... but you're not willing to put your names on your statements.

I can only conclude you're just a sock puppet (as were the others) for the two people whose similar, irrelevant arguments were soundly refuted, unless you're willing to give enough information to tell me otherwise.

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I'm the guy from the anonymous comment above, and I was not sent here from anywhere. I read your site pretty regularly. I'm pdb (niceguysfinishthird.com), and I started reading your site when I saw your comments on Lookout Landing and USS Mariner. I do not have a livejournal account, nor do I want one, which is why I posted as anonymous.

Anyway, since when does anonymity render a comment invalid? All I'm trying to say is that you are no more an authority on what Tacoma is like than I am on what Las Vegas is like.

It's like that old cliche' about families - I can criticize and mock my brother all I want, but you can't. Since you neither live in or are a frequent visitor to Tacoma, I don't think you're in the best position to assess whether the entire city's a "ghetto" or not. That's all i was trying to say.

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Okay, pdb, fair enough. Putting a name to the commentary is half the battle.

Keep in mind that I grew up in a city with a lot of crime. Gunshots went off in my parents neighborhood nightly, to where we didn't go out at night unless we went directly to the car, took off, got directly out of the car and went back in the house. So it's not like I had my first seedy experience ever with a run down part of Tacoma and blanket dismissed the city.

The problem is not that Tacoma, to a man woman child and to every house, is a terrible decrepit place... but the city has enough of a problem (the radio news regularly recalls crime, shootings, robberies, murders, in Tacoma, almost to the point of a running gag), to where I immediately noticed it the moment I first set foot in Downtown Tacoma. And this is not a problem you see, to this extent, in other cities of this size, or even in larger cities. Seattle has its crime but you're largely safer walking most of its well-lit reasonably-patroled central streets at night than you'd be walking the central streets of Tacoma. San Antonio, a large city in itself, wasn't all that dangerous in itself at night. Now, Downtown L.A., there's a BAD Downtown to land in if you're not careful where you're going. And, of course, Miami, Detroit, parts of NYC.

Is Tacoma the most dangerous city in the world? Certainly not. One example: when Jeff invited us to Cheney for the LL Meetup last spring, I had no problem making the trek... though again, when I got off the bus, I was eyed like a carcass among buzzards by everyone loitering at the bus stop, and then the guy on the way back who would have mugged me had I not been paying attention. If I went again at night, sure, I'd end up okay... the way you'd say, well, if I walk down Crenshaw Avenue, I'll be okay. Nothing may happen, but something certainly could if you're not careful.

One or two rough patches over an extended time is one thing. Running into trouble everytime you go down there is another.

If I drove and lived a couple miles southwest, I'd probably be safe and never have any problems. The area around Cheney was certainly nice and safe. That doesn't make Tacoma a safe, low-crime city anymore than Vegas having nice areas like Summerlin and Green Valley Ranch makes Vegas a safe, low-crime city, and again, that's the point. People are arguing like this crime problem doesn't exist, and that's obtuse. We can agree that Tacoma has its positive qualities, but agreeing that Tacoma's crime problem isn't an issue isn't possible.

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pdb again.

You make good points here. I think where you've set a lot of people off, though, is in your initial comment: "Here we go again, Tacoma. Can we just officially declare that city a ghetto and be done with it?"

Looking briefly through the threads, nobody's arguing that Tacoma, or anywhere else, is some sort of crime-free shining city on a hill where puppies fall out of rainbows onto cotton candy pillows. Where people seem to be having a problem is that you condemn an entire city because of a perception gained from a small number of visits to a limited area of the city.

>If I drove and lived a couple miles southwest, I'd probably be safe and never have any problems.

Which is my point. We don't accept anecdotal evidence in any rigorous baseball analysis (a lot of people seem to think Willie Bloomquist is a good baseball player, a claim which can be easily negated with numbers), so it shouldn't be okay as a basis for the discussion of the validity of a city, either. It's a matter of tone - had you said "Parts of Tacoma are kind of a mess, there seem to be a lot of sleazeballs around", it probably wouldn't have raised as much of a cry as saying "declare the city a ghetto and be done with it".

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Hi - I found your Live Journal link from comments you left on the Stranger SLOG, and I'll admit at first you pissed me off. Your initial comments of dismissing an entire city as a blighted wasteland, completely ignoring the fact that Tacoma's downtown has undergone massive rennovation in the past few years, showed off the petty arrogance that way too many Seattlites have. Downtown Tacoma still has rough spots (unfortunately the worst area is right by the Express way so that's all that people driving through see).

But there's also the world class Museum of Glass, fine restaurants that would fit right into Belltown (Indochine, El Gaucho, Pacific Grill, Sea Grill, Matador), and cool bars/nightclubs/microbrew pubs (Swiss, Blue Olive, the Loft, the soon-to-open Sapphires). While it's still not Seattle there's now there's as much going on in downtown Tacoma as anywhere else in the South Puget Sound, including Olympia.

Pointing out Tacoma's crime rate is not the issue that I and I guess most of the angry posters have with your initial comments. Yes the crime's bad but not really any worse than other non-gentrified areas on the West Coast, and I guarantee you it's a lot safer place to live than many places in California. Your comments about the recent shooting being gang motivated were also way off base - the shooter now appears to be off his meds, another whacko just like several high profile murder cases that have plagued Seattle recently.

In the end, I haven't posted here to bust your balls but to say that I'm glad to see you're willing not to simply dismiss the entire Tacoma community out of hand. You see, before moving down here to actually find a nice starter home that wouldn't cost me half a mill, I used to be a Seattle transplant that thought the earth revolved around Seattle. But then I opened my eyes and realized Seattle is not Nirvina, it's a nice city but not the greatest place on Earth. I also learned that surrounding communities where also pretty decent, including Tacoma.

On a final note, I think the problem is one of perception. I have plenty of Japanese friends who feel Seattle is extremely dangerous because "there's way too much crime for such a small city," way more than even Tokyo. Having visited Tokyo, I have to agree.

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Thanks, I appreciate your comment. The truth sometimes hurts, especially when it's a shot at what you believe. That's why people got pissed off. A lot of people ran with their pissed-offedness, rather than trying to understand why it did so, and that's why I got attacks. They didn't realize I wasn't condemning them, but was simply making a valid point about their town.

Point taken on the shooter, and the issue of epidemic psycho-meds usage among families is a different, much larger issue than a Tacoma crime issue. The shooting, though, certainly did nothing to dispel Tacoma's growing reputation as a city with problematic crime levels. That said, point taken.

But I appreciate you gave my thoughts some time and realized I don't have some irrationally Naziac hatred for anything Tacoma, but simply understand that in many respects, it's not the safest of cities, even given that parts of the city are fairly nice and safe. You can certainly find a great place to live there if you choose your location wisely, and never have a problem. I don't doubt that for a moment.

As a bus commuter who inevitably would have to travel through the troubled areas if I lived there, obviously I have to take the problem areas into account. Many of the loudest naysayers have cars and the option to avoid those areas entirely if they wish. I don't have that luxury and neither do many others.

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And yes, I called it a ghetto. But again, people took that far more seriously than they should have.

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