Before I Begin.

First off: a confession.

I’m writing from my laptop in Burlingame just before midnight, and this scenario is playing itself out in my mind: as I rumble up the 101 in my big green truck, I have to make a decision. There’s the exit to Cesar Chavez; I can veer right and descend into the Bayview, or I can keep straight and overshoot it, maneuver back eventually, back toward the airport, to my white suburb. Two imperatives are at work here. I need to walk around in Hunters Point at night; I need to keep safe. Twice before I have chickened out.

Online, by reputation, the worst things about this neighborhood are the easiest to find. Skim the reputation of this place in print and video, you’ll find clips of Kevin Epp’s documentary “Straight Outta Hunters Point” with footage of gang shootouts. You’ll hear of children hit by stray gunfire.

But in the neighborhood that danger, that immediate negative, is noticeable at first only in small details. There are three mortuaries along Third Street’s 2.2 mile stretch through Bayview. While here at night, James Ansbro, a resident, wouldn’t let me walk the four blocks back to my car, driving me instead. Just before that, when an acquaintance of his had walked 20 feet or so down Third Street to show me his church building, Ansbro insisted on staying back, keeping watch. Despite all this, I have never actually felt threatened.

More easily noticeable is the good. Churches and community organizations make up a large and visible portion of this neighborhood. And something else: so much more than in the suburbs, people here greet each other in the street. Walking one day, I sneezed. A man across the street called out, “Bless you!”

Reporting on Bayview Hunters Point has come down to a balancing act. While walking around for the first few days in this neighborhood I would consciously relax my body. How far do I let go of my cautions? How far do I ignore the reputations this area carries? Where does objectivity end and naivety begin?

I want to be prudent, but I also don’t want to be blind to the good that is here.

As I drive, I wrestle with whether to lock my doors. To lock them means judging those I am trying to observe, to predispose myself to fearfulness. To leave them unlocked means…Well…

So far, I’ve left them unlocked.