I haven't been to out to our city centre for a couple of years and it's even more years since I've been 'out out'. I was pretty saddened today. I went with my DH to a restaurant. We took the bus and at the back of the bus there was 2 young men blatantly dealing weed. We decided it was too risky to directly challenge it but we did mention it to the bus driver as we got off and they basically shrugged and said there was no point telling the police. This was at around 5pm!
After our meal in a busy shopping centre we then saw another bunch of lads harrasing a man who was screaming at them to 'F off' This was at around 7pm and just as we were heading out of the shopping centre. We then passed a young girl loudly proclaiming that she 'needed a dealer'
It's 10 years since I was a student. I did most of my going 'out out' in a different city to where I live now. Of course I'm not naive. I know what goes on and I've seen plenty of people smashed out of their faces and minor fights. However, this just felt really 'different' somehow. It's hard to verbalise even when explaining the events as above but there was a sense of real hostility and I felt genuinely quite unsafe. I never felt like this in my student days. And this was at a time of night when we could easily have had our dd with us. Was I just unlucky? Am I becoming more risk averse as I get older? Or is antisocial behaviour (and I suspect associated gang mentality) becoming a bigger problem. I know these were on the surface quite minor incidents but the whole atmosphere was just quite ominous and made me worried and sad. Someone please reassure me that I'm just becoming a sad old fart 🤣