Culture

A hatchet man in McDonald’s and I’m wearing pants under my dresses: This is NYC

You’ve all probably heard it by now. New York crime has been on the rise. Most New Yorkers know this and feel it everyday. They may not be able to tell you with absolute certainty the rates or which crimes in particular have gone up, but they know must assuredly crime is up. They know it because their peripheral vision has been sharpened and they are constantly scanning the area around them.

Yet, the data is actually mixed. Lets dissect for a moment. Three quarters of New Yorkers in a February Bloomberg report said crime was a “very serious” problem and that’s the highest number since the question was first asked in 1999, when the murder rate per capita was actually 50% higher. It was more da gerous in the 90s. However, what gets us is that NYC had the safest big city. We had seen homocides and other crimes go down. Thus, this increase from an all-time low jars us mentally and physically. And, you cannot discount or minimize perception and feelings of fear.

Just yesterday, widely reported in the local news was a story of a guy uses a hatchet in a McDonald’s in NYC. Ironically, he noted he was carrying a hatchet because he felt unsafe in the city. I don’t know about his motivations. I will tell you this. I love wearing dresses. You hardly ever catch me in anything but a dress. Yet yesterday, when I put on a pretty green dress for a beautiful fall day in New York, I put on a pair of jeans underneath it because I had to get on the subway. I was using and wearing my jeans as protection against harrasment. It’s sad that I had to think that way.

Now that the pandemic is ostensibly over, people are returning to normal life. Walking to work. Going to an office. Well, that’s still in flux and probably forever changed. Using public transportation including the subway which is a transportation system seemingly riddled with crime.

I want my old New York back. And, I bet millions of others do as well.

2 replies »

  1. Ah Yes Dear Miriam Always A Trade-Off of Safety Versus Freedoms
    For Societies to Continue to Potentially Exist and Flourish too

    Even Where i Live It’s Not Quite the ‘Andy Griffith Show’
    With ‘Leave it to Beaver Neighborhoods’ Where Children

    Like me Felt Free to Ride Our Bicycles All Around Town
    As there Wasn’t Any Scary Halloween Internet Channel

    To Warn About What is Happening on the Other Side
    of the Country As Such in Pockets Here and There of

    Real Present And Danger Yet Still the Chances
    Like Getting Hit By Lightening in So Many

    Instances of the Struggle For Feeling
    Safe and Exercising our Rights to

    Ride Our Bicycles Still All

    Around Town Even As
    Adults Now As Truly
    Not A Great Idea

    With Folks Driving
    Big Hunks of Metal
    Operating Smart Phones
    Instead of Their Minds and
    Bodies All Embodied YES ( F O C U S NoW ) For
    Real ON What they Are Frigging Really Doing

    Yet It’s True Most People Don’t Worry About The
    Overall Dangers of Driving Being A Worst Possible
    Danger Any Of Us Do in Life and True Sitting A Lot
    ‘They’ Warn is Like Smoking A Pack of Cigarettes

    As the Whole Damned Society At Least Ain’t Going
    Up in Smoke Like That Now With Tail Pipes of Carbon Monoxide
    Back in my ‘Forrest Gump Running Days’ on the Highways After
    i No Longer Am the ‘Highway Bicycle Man’ Back Then SMiles i’ve

    Never Felt And Sensed Safer in my Entire Faith in Life What i Pay Most
    Attention to Now is Driving as i Realize That is Still the Most Dangerous

    Part of my Life

    Yet of Course

    i’m a Numbers

    Guy And My Wife ‘Paid
    The Price’ With the Family
    Budget Hehe Until i Retired
    And She Inherited it All And Now i Just Play…

    She Loves the Control of the Money to Hell
    With That Now for me at Least Hehe There Are

    So Many Paths to HeLL ON EartH That Are Illusory
    And Actually Plain Silly Yet So Very Sad So Very True iN DarK

    And NO DOUBT i’m STiLL LEarning And no Doubt Change is An Only Truth..:)

    Like

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