NYC is my hometown, specifically, the Bronx. While I have been living upstate now for over twenty years, I am still very connected to NYC, as my mother still lives in my old neighborhood, my brother lives in nearby New Rochelle, and works in the Bronx, and I still have many friends and former EMS colleagues that live there. I have a cousin from Maryland who is making her way there, living in Brooklyn. I still love going down a few times a year to visit, and soak in the energy that only that city can give. So, when I read what has been happening to my hometown over the past year or so, it gives me pause.
I remember all too well the NYC of the 70’s, 80’s, and much of the 90’s. It was a dangerous place. I worked in EMS through a lot of it, and saw it starting to come out of it. Neighborhoods, for better or worse, became gentrified. Times Square became Disney-fied. Crime stats, which were once off the charts, steadily declined. NYC, in many places, actually felt safe, or at the least, safe-ish. I couldn’t imagine it going back to those incredibly dangerous times. It seems however that of late, it is.
I read with horror, and watch the news with horror, of the backsliding into crime, and utter lawlessness that has been plaguing my city. The blame has been placed on the pandemic, the current city administration, and a variety of social ills that still plague it. One thing I’m sure of: Bail reform, however well intentioned, has not helped matters. It has allowed repeat offenders, who have no business being back out on the street, to commit crime after crime without fear of repercussions. Please don’t tell me no, as I see the same effect here in Syracuse. Every week there are stories of those who were released time and time again, only to go on committing the same, or more serious crimes.
Washington Square Park has become a nightly melee of “raves.” Those perpetuating it scream that it’s their “First Amendment right to assemble.” If I recall, the exact phrase in the amendment is to assemble peaceably. These assemblies are anything but, with stabbings and other forms of assault becoming the norm there. The local residents are afraid to go out at night, for fear of being attacked.
Now, I’d be the last person to deny folks to have a good time in public, but what is happening in that park is close to anarchy. It reminds me of the movie “I Am Legend.” It’s a post apocalyptic story, where virus laden “zombies,” who only come out at night, wreak havoc on an empty NYC, save for a lone survivor, in this case, personified by Will Smith. Funnily enough, he lives off of Washington Square Park in the movie.
Now that the pandemic has been quelled to a degree, and that Patti and I are fully vaccinated, we’ll be going down this summer to visit my family and hers, whom we stay with on Staten Island. There are many things we want to do, including going into Manhattan, to visit many of the places we love, maybe hit a museum or two. Broadway won’t be opening up until September, so we’re sorry we’ll miss that. What concerns me however, is what we’ll find when we get there.
The rise in subway crime that I’ve read about is concerning, along with the big uptick in shootings, many of them random. I don’t want us to be holed up in Staten Island, only venturing out by car to visit family, but I must admit that the rise in crime concerns me. To see the city I still love, even from afar, become the nightmare that it used to be fills me with dread and disappointment. I’m hoping I’m wrong, but my instincts, and the observations from friends still there, tell me otherwise.
Cawffee Thoughts 