Map of gang territories in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley (opens in new tab)

About a year ago, I got hit on the head (hard) with a metal pole at 9:30 AM, on my way to BART to get to work. The guy asked for my phone. I was too disoriented to take it out of my pocket. He grabbed my earbuds (but didn't get my phone) and walked away.

I lost a lot of blood and had a bad concussion. In the ambulance on my way to the hospital, I couldn't recall my zipcode. I needed seven large staples in the back of my head. After that, the mental fog persisted for about two weeks and I wasn't productive at work.

Up until that point, nothing bad had happened to me. Thankfully, I'm ok now, but I'll never live in Oakland again.

At least in my neighborhood the entire idea of turf is questionable. The sets are small & the alliances so quickly rotated through that you just don't see large scale, long term turf holding.

Anecdotally this seemed to happen in the summer/fall of 2007. So it's not new.

Yeah, and they post Facebook posts, and release rap tracks about each other. Nothing's secret.

Chicago gang maps are total nonsense. The Capital G Gangs are gone. It's one block against another, those blocks against the next neighborhood, etc.

Police smash any really organized crime very quickly now, and have since early on in the war on drugs. This doesn't mean anyone is any safer. A perpetual power vacuum is worth than The Mob running things. There's enough money involved in drugs that it will happen no matter what the law is, it will not be stopped. It's just chaos forever.

I once dated a girl who said her ex was a cocaine dealer in the Mission. Born and raised in the neighborhood, him and his crew would have constant scuffles with other small 'gangs' over drug territory. Once he was stabbed multiple times during an altercation over which crew had rights to sell coke at Beauty Bar. She told me this while we were sitting in Dolores and she saw him and his crew smoking weed and drinking in the sun.

Edit: Looking at the map it's kind of interesting that Beauty Bar is on 19th street, which according to this map is on the boundary of three gang territories. I've always felt that the mission is a still sketchy place.

maybe being their drug dealer is.

Probably not that much (even if you accept the notion that this is really an accurate description of SFBA gangs). This isn't West Side Story. There aren't "rumbles". Even in this SFBA map, these gangs have minimal territory. Violence tends to occur when people drive through other territory, run into each other outside anyone's territory.

Is the data for this available?

I once walked in on my 15-year-old brother and his friends watching what looked like a home video of some guys in wifebeaters apparently standing around doing nothing. I asked them what they were watching, and they said it's a gang video. I got interested so I ask them some more questions, and they went off describing local gang activities, their sources of income, etc.

A few years later, I was taking a criminal justice class at a nearby community college, and the term project involved working with local law enforcement to understand criminal activity. When we got to talking about gang activity, I realized I already knew a lot about what the sergeant was saying, and I remembered that encounter I had years ago with my brother. I mentioned it to the sergeant, and he told me about pee wee gangsters and how they have been an increasing problem recently.

I'd forgotten about all of that until just now, and I hadn't realized how disturbed it all had made me feel back then.

The whole Bay Area

I know! There are some unsavory folks in our hood; surprised it's not on the map.

That's because they're a motorcycle club, not a gang. ;)