One thing I’ve noticed about the, “It’s [crime] not as bad as it was in the 1990s” crowd is: they actually never lived through it. They either weren’t born yet, just a baby, or moved to #NYC in 2010 as a urban pioneer. For those of us that did, we never want to see that again.
If you base your entire perception on what is happening right now on statistics and not experiences, I have news for you, the same conversations were happening in the 1970s. As the famous quote goes, “If you don’t know your history, you’re doomed to repeat it.”
If you lived through the ‘bad ole days,’ homelessness, crime on the Subway, shootings, stabbings, disorder, chaos, graffiti, etc. were all the top stories, sort of what we are seeing in the headlines today. The only thing I’m missing is the ‘why?”
Parents would put their kids to sleep in cast iron tubs so they wouldn’t get hit by a stray bullet. The Bronx was burning, East New York had multiple homicides every day, Green Acres Mall was the stolen car capital of #NYC, the 5 Families ruled Manhattan with an iron fist.
Burnt out buildings, garbage, aggressive panhandlers, Times Square was drugs, prostitutes, and peep shows. Stores were boarded up, you had to walk in the streets to avoid stepping on a homeless person or a passed out drunk. So yeah, we never want to see that again.
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