Orange wrote:
Kickstand wrote:
There are some people who know how to handle themselves in an unsafe urban environment at night. The great majority of tourists in the Gulch do not.
The next time you are in a slow moving taxi at night in San Jose, observe the locals in their environment. Can you tell which ones are the predators? Can you tell which ones are the regular Joe's (or regular Jose's) on their way home or to their jobs or to the local bar? Do you look like these people or even dress similar to them? If not, then stick with taxis. $2 is relatively cheap insurance.
Looking or dressing like a local means nothing, for the most part they don't walk the streets at night either. My mother-in-law (Tica) got punched in the face for 2,000 colones a couple of months back. Gringos aren't the only ones being targeted.
Well, obviously it depends on what time of night we are talking about. Sunset in San Jose is around 6pm every day, plus or minus. San Jose is not like the movie Pitch Black where as soon as night falls, millions of winged predators emerge to kill everything living on the planet. To suggest that the regular people of San Jose use taxis to go home from work or take taxis to/from their bus stops after dark for the most part is wrong. They can't afford taxis. And they often need to do some shopping before going home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_Black_(film)As the night goes on, there are fewer and fewer pedestrians, but there are still a good number who can't afford taxis even if their job (security guard, cashier, worker at tienda etc) doesn't let out until 9pm or 10pm. Unlike the people who get out of work earlier, these folks will usually go straight home by as safe a method as they can manage or afford.
In addition, I didn't mean to suggest that dressing like a local (predator or prey) was a viable survival strategy on the streets late at night. I agree that people should just take a cab at night and pay the $2. However I was commenting on the inability of most outsiders to even recognize the difference between the predators and potential prey. And handling oneself correctly in an unsafe urban environment at night can be as simple as going straight to their destination as quickly and directly as they can best afford. Often walking part (or all) of the way is the only affordable option. That doesn't mean these local people (prey) are invulnerable to the bad guys. It just means that they can raise their odds of a successful trip.
Of course, gringos dressing in Hawaiian shirt and shorts while walking around during the day will attract more predators than guys dressed normally (even in bad urban areas in the US), but that's a different debate.
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