This City is Pretty Darned Pleasant
Despite what you may be regularly bludgeoned with from online communities, like Nextdoor, or the local news, our neighborhood is hardly ‘hellish’, even in the infernal heat of August, when it seems everyone and their pets are out of town.
For example, I went to Trader Joe’s this evening (August 10). It was reasonably temperate for August and I listened to a podcast as I made my way to Sixth Avenue. (See photo.)
This photo was taken at 22nd and Sixth. I was trying to capture the lovely pink clouds (I was only moderately successful, I’m afraid). Photo by Brett Leveridge.
Once inside the store, I strolled the aisles, eventually filling my cart to the brim and then some. They were out of a couple of items I was hoping to pick up, but two different employees, both of them very friendly and helpful, checked the stockroom to see if perhaps those items were there (alas, they were not). I had only two people in front of me as I joined the checkout line, so my wait was very brief. The young man who checked me out was very pleasant, and the two of us worked together to get my groceries evenly situated between two bags, both of which were a bit too full. But we managed.
As I left TJ’s, I came upon a beautiful little toddler in her mother’s arms. I spoke to the mother and waved several times to the little girl. She seemed to find me intriguing but never gave a return wave. Oh well, I tried. The mother was very friendly and seemed pleased that I was engaging with her daughter. I stopped at the produce stand at 22nd and Sixth, as I often do, to buy a ripe avocado (I had purchased two not-yet-ripe ones at TJ’s but I wanted one I could eat right away). My bags were heavy, but I was able to get them home without any trouble, though I did stop to mop my forehead a couple of times.
Once home, I cranked the fans and the AC and gave myself five minutes to cool off before putting away my groceries. Then I made myself a nice big salad for dinner, using one half of that ripe avocado, among many other ingredients.
Now, if you’ve made it this far, you might well be asking yourself: What’s the point of this rambling post? No real point, except to establish that people do leave their apartments in NYC and have a pleasant experience making their daily rounds. Not every city stroll results in a crime witnessed or a bad dish of pasta or an encounter with a rude employee. In fact, most don’t. Sure, all of us have rough days from time to time or a bad experience or even a frightening encounter (depending upon how easily one is frightened), but the truth—it’s my truth, anyway—is that life in this city is pretty darned pleasant most of the time. But honestly, you’d never know it by the posts shared here [in Nextdoor]. So I thought I’d share a simple tale—as a small counter to all the negativity that gets shared here—of an hour or so spent out and about early on a summer’s evening in a city some would seemingly have us believe is a hellscape.
This piece was originally published in the community blog, Nextdoor. Reprinted with permission of the author.
Brett Leveridge lives in Chelsea. His critically acclaimed book, Men My Mother Dated (and Other Mostly True Tales), was a finalist for the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor. His work was also featured in New York magazine, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, .net magazine, Long Island Newsday, The New York Daily News, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, and New York Press. Leveridge is also an occasional contributor to the popular syndicated radio program This American Life and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and has also been featured on NPR’s Weekly Edition.
A Note About Crime
The piece we published by Brett Leveridge, commenting on frequent posts in the blog Nextdoor, is not just a commentary on the frequent characterizations of our local neighborhoods as unsafe in Nextdoor. It is also a commentary about the frequent talk in our community about how “unsafe it is.” I pulled the NYPD Comstat Report for August 18, 2024 for the 6th Precinct, which covers the Village east of Broadway, to get a snapshot. What does it show?
Compared to 1990, crime of all sorts is down by 73.6 % in 1993. Those were hellish days, in NYC. And in the Village we thought we were better off than the rest of the City. In the East Village (9th Precinct) Comstat shows a 71.4% decline.
Year to date there was a 14% decline in the 6th. In the 9th there was a 31.1% decline. Compared to 2021, post-Pandemic, we had a 23% decline in the 6th, and a 34% decline in the 9th.
With the news filled with Trumpian pronouncements about how crime is soaring, the numbers don’t lie. Mayor Adams has done a pretty good job.
—Arthur Schwartz
