The US is generally is A LOT LESS dangerous than it has been in a generation. Crime rates have been falling dramatically for more than a decade after all-time high levels were reached in the 80's and early 90's -- crime experts credit several factors including the waning of the crack epidemic that lead to an explosion in violent crime in the 80's, longer sentences for repeat offenders, the aging of the baby boomer generation of criminals, and increased spending on street policing efforts. New York City ranks 49th out of top 50 most populous US cities in crime, with lowest levels of homicide and violent crime seen since the late 1950's and early 60's. The crime numbers began falling under Giuliani (thanks in part to Mayor Dinkins "Safe City, Safe Streets" program which put a thousand additional cops on the beat in the mid-90's) and have continued to decrease every year since, making New York the safest big city in America -- by FAR.
I don't know, I never worried about drug dealers or prostitutes, even when I was 8 years old. To me they weren't much different from the pretzel vendor on the corner (except they wore more interesting clothes) -- if you wanted what they were selling, they're happy to do business with you; if you didn't, they never bothered you. And in all my years they never have (even when I lived next to one of the biggest crack markets in the city that had guys with walkie talkies hanging out in the streets at all hours and I regularly came home by myself at 4am -- you don't bother them, they don't bother you).
As for the monte players and the dice hustlers, I was probably 6 or 7 years old when my folks explained to me how it was a total scam that only suckers or clueless tourists ever fell for. I used to watch people get taken all the time, amazed at their gullibility. They're still very much around -- separating fools from their money to this day.
I don't know, I guess I sound unsympathetic, but it's amazing to me how generations of people, millions and millions of adults and children managed to come to NY and Times Square in the century before Disney got here, go to shows, go to restaurants, go shopping, go sightseeing and how probably 99% percent of them were never mugged, were never robbed, were never hustled and were able to walk the streets and enjoy themselves and emerge from the experience unharmed and unscathed.
All this stuff about how they needed to make Times Square more family-friendly struck me as a bunch of hooey -- I remember being in audiences packed with kids when I saw "Pippin" and "The Wiz" and "Fiddler on the Roof" and "A Chorus Line" and "Annie" before I was a teenager. As a kid and as a teenager, I remember Broadway being a fun and exciting place and don't ever remember being afraid of anything about it for one second -- and I'm sure most of the millions of other families that were there in the 70's and 80's felt the same way.
Heck, Damon Runyan wrote about pickpockets, hustlers, prostitutes and ne'er-do-wells hanging around Times Square over 80 years ago, back when Broadway was REALLY thriving with 200 - 300 new shows every year as opposed to the few dozen we get each season nowadays -- and his stories weren't cautionary tales, they were a celebration of a vibrant world that's now lost forever. Yeah, getting rid of some of the sleaze wasn't a bad thing and having a couple of real theatres full of audiences (rather than abandoned buildings) is a great thing, but the rampant overcommercialization, to my mind, has some troubling ramifications.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 6/16/04 at 07:23 PM
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