The idea that residents of NYC thought that 70s NYC was safe is laughable. There were areas that were really dangerous, areas that were OK but gross, and some places that were nice. But, NYC was reeling from crime, drugs, and a brush with default at the time, causing a reduction in services.
Back to the OP, if you wouldn’t how unsafe Cleveland or Milwaukee are, it makes no sense to ask about the safer city of SF.
It’s been many years, but talking BART to the coliseum was very straightforward. Do a search, but, I think it should be safe and convenient to do.
I’ll be going to the coliseum next week for the last spring training game there. It’ll be my first time going in many years.
I posted earlier about Battery Spencer. Ideal spots for sunrise and sunset photos. Also for time-lapse night photos of headlights on the bridge.
Enjoy your long SF weekend! Let us know how it goes.
I remember being humiliated (I was in a group of high school kids) when I asked some visitors from NYC if it was dangerous. They laughed at me in front of my friends, and said pretty much what so many posters in this thread have said about San Francisco: “no problem!!! It’s a great city!..and it’s safe…just be careful of a few bad locations”
I grew up Upstate and from what I remember, NYC in the 1970s was dirty, trashy, graffiti everywhere especially in the subways, and unsafe. Dirty air. I remember my mom asking a childhood friend who lived there, what’s the color of the sky? When he said brown my mom laughed. Childhood memory. But thankfully the air in many cities has improved greatly since way back then.
I’m sorry you had a bad experience. That doesn’t change the fact that San Francisco today is much, much safer than 1970s NYC, and is safer than many other large cities that no one is concerned about.
I lived in SF in the 90s and have returned for visits on a fairly regular basis since. My impression is that the prevalence of people openly shooting drugs and shitting on the sidewalks goes up and down; I don’t think it’s been a consistent downward slide since Willie Brown left office. A few years ago I was there and Market Street looked like a war zone; this year it was fine again.
What sucks is that they’ve radically reduced the frequency of cable car runs, while jacking up the price. Now it’s IIRC eight bucks a ride, and you’ll have to stand in line at least half an hour. It’s strictly a tourist attraction now, rather than an actual public transit system. It’s a very fun ride, but I’m not sure I would say it’s worth the hassle at this point.
I probably would have been inclined to argue it was close to being strictly a tourist attraction in the 1990’s 
. It was certainly still functional public transit when I rode it as a little kid in the 1970’s. But they were shut down for years in the early 1980’s for a major overhaul and I think that was kind of the turning point from every-day-transit-with-some-tourists to tourists-with-a-few-leisurely-commuters.
Well, that was before my time, but I used to ride them all the time back when you could use your regular monthly MUNI pass. Granted, they were only more practical than the bus for everyday use if you happened to live within a few blocks of a line, but I was in that lucky half-percent of the City or so.
The one case where I find the cable car actually useful for transportation is to get from BART to the top of Nob Hill. And the only time I need to do that is when I’m attending a concert at the Masonic Auditorium.