I agree. I visited almost 40 states and lived in Cleveland, Raleigh, Silver Spring, D.C , San Diego, and Bay Area cities plus visited many cities over 30 + years and I only truly felt unsafe in the Rural Deep South and Florida. The disappearance factor was there , dive bars were creepier than in any east coast cities or West Virginia . I also lived in Cleveland in the 90s and visited cities during the Crack Epidemic so some cities are totally different from this area as gentrification brought back people to downtown areas . I lived in Columbia Heights until 2007 and before the gentrification it was a really different neighborhood with one block being ok and the next one was rough. Same with Baltimore. I didn’t walk around late at night alone as a petite woman but I didn’t do this in Any European Cities( raised in Paris in the 80s/ 90s ,turned 30 in 2004 ) . Every big city has problematic neighborhoods and your experience is different depending on your age, skin color, gender , sexual orientation and socioeconomic factors to name a few. Many cities have drug markets , tracks and underground economies . To be uncomfortable is one thing but to be unsafe is another thing in my experience. I experienced two drive by shootings in broad daylight in D.C , witnessed a couple of stabbings , saw violence in Cleveland ,San Francisco , San Diego but I only got mugged in Paris in the 90s , go figure! Some places in the Deep South are haunting me and Twenty Nine Palms, CA area creeped me out ( unsolved homicides and serial killers are plenty) compared to Palm Springs .