When I was growing up, a lot of bad things happened in or near my neighborhood. I lived on the near eastside of Indianapolis and it had an earned reputation for being a high crime area. In 9th grade I got into my first relationship and my 9th grade girlfriend’s parents didn’t want her coming down to my neighborhood.

I was furious. She couldn’t spend one day in a place where I spent my whole life? What bothered me most was that it was like they didn’t even realize what they were saying. It was like they didn’t even know the insult they committed themselves to.



Recently, one of the most prestigious Smash tournaments came under fire for an unusual reason: location. For a lot of people, the location simply didn’t feel safe. Some competitors even had their cars broken into. But the story goes a lot deeper than that. The story goes into the roots of Smash, the complexities of poverty and crime, what it means to be safe, and the ways we insult each other without realizing it.

Let’s start simple.

The venue that split the Smash community

At its face, the controversy over Genesis’s venue is pretty straightforward. One group thinks the area around the venue is too unsafe and could easily cause harm to competitors so the venue should be moved. Another group thinks that Genesis should not move the venue either because the area isn’t that dangerous or it’s not fair to hold the tournament organizers responsible for safety outside of the venue.

Underneath the surface, things get interesting. Most of the players calling for the change in venue are newer to the Smash community – coming from Smash 4 or Ultimate. Most of the players pushing against changing the venue come from Brawl and Melee – the older generation of Smash. Many of the older generation remember how Genesis was once a centerpiece of the community.

STOP hosting Genesis in Oakland. I don’t understand how such an important event is located in such a terrible area. Even walking around feels dangerous. I even heard gunshots near my hotel. This is not the first post I’ve seen about this. Please find a better area next year. https://t.co/TXAkU2iO3B — Maister @ Frostbite (@Maister_SSB) January 31, 2020 A tweet in favor of moving Genesis out of Oakland

Maybe I'm just out of patience but complaints about the Oakland convention center area are just the softest thing to me.



Will respond to what I can later. — HugS (@HugS86) January 31, 2020 A tweet in favor of not complaining about Oakland anymore

While certainly still relevant today, it has more competitors than ever as Smash gets bigger than ever. There are established events like Big House, CEO, Super Smash Con, Get on My Level, Frostbite, Shine, and the Sagas. And then there are rising stars like Mainstage, Low Tier City, Glitch, and Pound coming back from the dead. In the eyes of some competitors, Genesis is one of many tournaments. In the eyes of others, it’s hallowed ground. Both views are right.

Honestly, my life changed forever in 09



A crew willing to do EVERYTHING for our scene and over a decade later they keep going even if being TOs is such a thankless job



As someone that loved G1 and as someone that cried missing G7, thank you @Genesis_Smash



1/2 — Adam Lindgren (@ArmadaUGS) February 1, 2020

Of course, moving the venue doesn’t mean cancelling Genesis, it just means changing the tradition. The problem is, that tradition has regional importance as Genesis is the biggest event on the West Coast. California has had a huge role in Smash, creating top talents like Larry Lurr, VoiD, Falln, and of course Ken and Mang0. SoCal hasn’t just created Smash’s top talent, either. It’s created Smash’s most electrifying playstyle – the hard nosed aggression that put Ken and Mang0 into a league of their own.



California deserves a major of its own, but California is no small, undeveloped area. Genesis could move elsewhere. Outside of the obvious problem of making tournament organizers do a lot of work and the raw cost of other California cities, the other issue is crime is everywhere. Changing the venue doesn’t change the nature of cities and the crime in them.

TBH literally had a shootout across the street when it was at Dearborn.



Genesis had a smasher robbed on the way back to the venue from a different venue in Antioch.



I got harassed when Genesis was at San Jose.



Lima almost got jumped by a dude on a bike. — Strong (@D_DiscipIe) January 31, 2020

How dangerous is Oakland, actually?

As we talk about Genesis, Oakland, California, and the entire country undergo an incredible economic and social transformation as well as an ongoing battle with crime. These battles and shifts are happening everywhere in the bay area, as well as all around LA.



Crime in Oakland started to rise in the late 60’s and pretty much kept rising on into the 90’s. However, once the 2000’s came, Oakland started seeing drops in crime. This matches with a trend happening not only in California, but the US as a whole. According to data from the Brennan Center (a law and public policy institute), in LA crimes per 100,000 people dropped from nearly 10,000 to under 4,000 between 1990 and 2016. According to statistics website statista.com, violent crimes per 100,000 people dropped from about 758 in 1991 to 368.9 in 2018.

If the statistics are reporting the truth – and crime statistics rarely get the whole truth – then pretty much every venue is safer now than it was in the earliest days of Smash. This can explain some of the differences between the older and newer Smash generations. Many of the older Smashers genuinely could feel less threatened by high crime areas because they grew up in a higher crime era.

I feel this is true for myself, at least. People have stolen things from my house in the dead of night. Family friends have been mugged. Cops was filmed on location about a block away from me. We all survived. It doesn’t really build character but it’s fun to pretend it does.

However, the general trends don’t matter for Genesis as much as the specific trends within Oakland do. According to a study by Berkeley, Oakland does have quite a bit more crime than California as a whole – 8,587 total crimes per 100,000 resident as compared to the Cali average of 3,182 – but that’s normal of cities. And Genesis 8 will certainly be in a city, even if it isn’t Oakland.

The Berkeley study actually charted Oakland against a city average, making the data much more interesting. Unfortunately, the data is from 2011. In 2011, Oakland did have about twice the violent crime rate of the city average – a bit over 2,000 crimes per 100,000 people, versus a bit under 1,000 in the city average. Oakland’s crime also had more of a chance to be violent – 23% of crimes reported in Oakland were violent, as compared to 15% in the city average.

Worse still, Oakland leads California’s major cities in terms of violent crime rate per 1,000 people – according to a table on Wikipedia, which pulls from data from the FBI’s 2014 crime report. Nationally, Oakland ranked 11th in total violent crimes in US cities, tucked right under my own dear home of Indianapolis. That’s according to 2017 data.

Oakland does have more violent crime than other cities but we should be careful not to get lost in the comparison. As you saw earlier, violent crime has fallen at the national level and even in Oakland, the numbers aren’t that high. Pause and think about this figure – 16.85 violent crimes per 1,000 total people. Imagine you’re in a sea of 1,000 people and about 17 random people will experience a violent crime. How likely is it you’re one of them? Very unlikely.

People who have lived in high crime areas – and even high crime eras – understand this probability exercise more naturally than those who haven’t. I don’t pretend to have grown up in a South Chicago project but I can offer a personal example of the quiet math you do in a “dangerous” neighborhood.

What are the chances my childhood home was broken into at some point in my life? Near 100%. What are the chances the robbery turns violent? Much slimmer, maybe 5%. What are the chances somebody runs off with whatever they can grab before we wake up? Maybe 75%. What are things we can do to lower the chances of anything happening? Dogs. Locks. Leaving lights on. My family happened to forget the locks and lights one night and someone came in and stole things.



This is an example of what crime statistics call property crime. Property crimes suck but rest assured, you come out mostly unscathed.

California’s property (and prison) troubles

At G7, on Sun. morning me and my friend’s car got broken into. Unfortunately, some of our stuff was stolen. I’d love for my friends to at least get their laptops b/c of school. I’d really appreciate any donations and retweets. Thanks!!https://t.co/2jrf4fw56p — NachosdaDog (@NachosdaDog) January 29, 2020

If we want to talk Oakland, California and Genesis then we need to talk about property crime. One of the biggest focus points of the Genesis conversation was car break-ins. That only makes sense given that car break-ins are one of the biggest focus points in California right now – especially the bay area.

According to the same Berkeley study, 77 percent of crimes were property crimes. Oakland ranks 6th in total property crimes in the nation, according to 2017 crime data gathered by the FBI. San Francisco ranks 4th. An LA Times article calls these “crisis levels.”

The abnormal level of property crimes comes from car break-ins, which are at a high not just because of poverty and homelessness levels in California, but because of the law and the prison system. California has trouble prosecuting break-ins because under the current law the victim needs to prove that the offender broke the lock on the car to get in. If you know anything about car break-ins, you already know why this is completely fucked.



If you’re going to break into a car, you’re going to break the window – not the lock. Car break-ins become a surprisingly low-risk and high-reward crime. The problem is so obvious to fix that of course legislators have tried. However the city legislatures as a whole refuse to fix the law.



The legislatures aren’t doing this out of incompetence or malice. They do it because California’s prison system does not function properly and costs too much. According to the LA Times, California spent $64,000 per prisoner in 2016. In the 2014-2015 budget, California spent more on corrections than on transportation.

City legislatures understand that they could seriously drop car break-ins by changing and enforcing the law. The problem is if they arrest and have to imprison thousands of people, they put more burden on the back of the California prison system and directly lose money they could spend on schools, roads, and projects.

There is a best-case scenario where just by merit of enforcing and changing the law in the short term, break-ins fall in the long-term without needing to jail too many people. Or they could end up spending 3.5 billion dollars on prisons, like Texas does.

Oakland is literally so garbage i hate hate hate hateeee it, its so fucking bad and i hate how we have to go there because of Genesis. One of the shadiest places ive ever been to. Honestly wish Genesis could relocate — ⚔️ MVG Dark Wizzy ⚔️ (@Dark_Wizzy_) January 31, 2020

That’s a big risk legislatures aren’t willing to take. After all, losing the car window and the stuff inside sucks but a car window costs some $200-500 to replace. Even if there were $1,000 of valuables inside to steal, that’s still a $1,500 cost. Compare that to the $60,000+ cost of putting a person in prison. And all of this is before considering the intense humanitarian issues in US prisons.

The Bay Area has a crisis but calling it a car burglary crisis is surface level thinking. The bay area has an immense social crisis with roots in poverty and homelessnes, stems in the prison system and the law, and the budding leafs in car burglary and crime rates.

All of this is to say two things: One – a big complaint about Genesis’s venue, car burglaries, might be tricky if the tournament is anywhere in the bay area. Two – moving the venue from the bay area punishes the bay area (and the Genesis TOs) for larger systemic issues that aren’t entirely their fault. That will leave a bad taste in a lot of players’ mouths.

I think a huge amount of the disconnect on the "how safe is Oakland" issue stems from people conflating car theft (which is sadly extremely prevalent EVERYWHERE in the Bay) with violent crime.



The thing is, moving Genesis out of Oakland would NOT help with car crimes. — Toph (@toph_bbq) February 2, 2020

Other nearby cities like San Jose, Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Sacramento do have lower property (and general) crime rates than San Francisco and Oakland. These cities could be places Genesis could look to move to if the Smash community truly worries about car burglaries in Oakland. Not to mention, according to Liquipedia, Genesis has been in San Jose and Antioch, California before (though it has since probably outgrown Antioch). If it came to a move, Genesis has options.

But should it come to a move? The crime rates in Oakland are high. They would probably be less high, but still high, if I had 2019 data. Despite the data, I don’t think changing venues is as good an idea as it looks.



First, there is the matter of money and California not being cheap. A change in location could mean a big bump in venue fees for everyone. Second, the people who don’t like Oakland or feel fearful of it could just not go. The upside of the flush of S-tier tournaments is that Genesis isn’t a must anymore. No tournament is a must anymore.

If people don't want to go because they feel unsafe, that's totally valid. If people don't care and don't think the area is "that bad,", that's also valid



But being condescending assholes about people not feeling safe won't help.



Let people make their own decision — ESAM @ CFL BAYBEH (@PG_ESAM) February 4, 2020

The Oakland Convention Center area is seen as pretty safe and gentrified, but it’s still acceptable to not go to Genesis because of safety worries. Where I draw a line is changing the venue to assuage the safety worries of some players. I think it would send the wrong message and lead to us avoiding the issues we need to face.

Should Genesis not take place in Oakland anymore? No, it's just another city 76%, 35 votes 35 votes 76% 35 votes - 76% of all votes

Yes, it's too dangerous 24%, 11 votes 11 votes 24% 11 votes - 24% of all votes Total Votes: 46 Voting is closed Poll Options are limited because JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

Sending the wrong message

This is the part where I move away from fact and into opinion. I understand going to a new city for a function and not feeling safe. There’s little to enjoy about that and plenty of reason to avoid it. Statistics do point to Oakland having higher crime than people might be used to and a genuine part of street smarts is NOT going into a dangerous part of a city you’re unfamiliar with just to prove a point.

But I still remember the various times people refused or hesitated to come to my home because of where it was. I remember the message it sent. You don’t want to send that message from one person to another, least of all from one entire community to another.

Moving Genesis would send a lot of messages that could easily come back to smack the Smash community in the face. They lost touch with their roots. They can’t stay a weekend in place people live their whole lives. They didn’t listen to written warning from TOs about being careful with their vehicles and not leaving things in them. They can’t do the simple mental math everyone with street smarts does naturally. If they think Oakland is too dangerous to visit, what do they think about the people who live there?



Not everyone who wants Genesis to change their venue doesn’t have street smarts or hasn’t ever seen crime in their life. Nor are these the messages any player is trying to send. Most people who argue for the venue change do so from a good place: they don’t want their friends to feel unsafe.

In the process, they don’t realize that they are accidentally sending a deeply insulting message: They can’t spend a weekend in the place you’ve spent your whole life. This place is so unsafe they don’t know how people live there and they don’t care to learn. If you want them to come here, cut out a part of your city for them, gentrify it, and make it look and feel nice.

And I guess… this whole incident was a firm reminder to me that outsiders *do* want that glammed-up gentrified view and idea of ‘safety’, in a way that the actual city dwellers do not get the privilege to enjoy. — pereden (@perepereden) February 3, 2020

That message travels a long way past Oakland, too. As unique as all the statistics seem to make it, Oakland is familiar. You can feel the problems of Oakland in the arches of St. Louis, in the docks of Baltimore, in the dead skylines of Detroit, and in the quiet decay of Indianapolis. These are not just Oakland’s issues, they are everyone’s.

When these deep-seated problems fall out into break-ins, robberies, and even violent crime, we think about what happens if the fallout reaches us. That the statistics exist mean these crimes have been hitting others. Change the approach. If your fear is that deep, if the statistics scare you that much, don’t attack the area. Attack the issues.

If going to a Smash tournament in Oakland leads to understanding talking about these issues, then that could be a good thing. Sooner or later, you have to grapple with these problems. You have to grapple with poverty, with the fault lines in the justice system, with communities that have been uprooted, and with people who need to steal to survive.

You can change the venue, but you will have to turn and face these issues. They will come to your home to roost even if they’re miles and miles away from you now. I promise you that. I promise you on all the deadbolts on my door.