sounds like NYC in the 70’s - totally wild place. My buddies & I would ride the train in to go bar-hopping in Times Square at age 14. Drinking pints w/ homeless old men at the bar. 200+ strip clubs! Freedom to do anything or buy anything you want. Freedom to be kidnapped into the back of a van and sold into sexual slavery if you weren’t careful and watching your friends! 
All good.
It’s been awful to watch watch what gentrification has done to SF and NYC. It’s a conquest IMO. People are now herded into pens like animals to “celebrate” New Years’ Eve.