Thursday, December 18, 2008
I Live Near Famous Crimes
I actually went to this Community Council meeting last night that the 6th Precinct has once a month in a church basement. I wanted to hear the cops talk about the spate of muggings that have been happening within a five-block radius of my home for the past few weeks.
The inspector led with a speech about how they believe they've apprehended the perpetrators and have linked them to at least two of the muggings. Our City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who sounds like a sane Rosie O'Donnell, was the guest speaker. She said that even though the cops had caught the suspects, you should still exercise all the caution she told you to exercise in her e-mail. She was welcomed with a slew of complaints from community leaders about how, even though the cops had caught the suspects, it wasn't going to make any difference in the quality of life in the West Village until somebody does something about the insane transvestite crack ho's. Drug dealers see the ho's and they figure, the cops are letting them get away with it, and then other criminals see the ho's and the drug dealers and they figure it's a good location to set up shop.
This isn't the first time I've lived in the middle of famous crimes. In 1977 I was just out of school and still living with my parents in Queens, and Son of Sam did two murders within ten minutes of their house. And most of the victims were girls around my age with long brown hair. I would come home late from the City with my hair under a hat and walk ten blocks from the subway to my parents' house. I was full of guerrilla vigilance and expected that at any moment, "Sunna" was going to leap from a car, or out of the bushes, or suddenly break up from the ground like Jaws.
On one such night I got in and was sitting at the kitchen table when my mother ran out of her room in a frenzy. I was ready to say, "What? You said I could stay out until two!"
"They caught Son of Sam! His name is David Berkowitz." And my first response was to crack up. The shark from Jaws, and he turns out to be some creepy nerd that I would have turned down for a date. Who knows--maybe I did and that's why he shot all those girls.
The Summer of Sam...that time when every New Yorker looked nervously over their shoulders and said, "Oh thank God...It's a black guy."
The inspector led with a speech about how they believe they've apprehended the perpetrators and have linked them to at least two of the muggings. Our City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who sounds like a sane Rosie O'Donnell, was the guest speaker. She said that even though the cops had caught the suspects, you should still exercise all the caution she told you to exercise in her e-mail. She was welcomed with a slew of complaints from community leaders about how, even though the cops had caught the suspects, it wasn't going to make any difference in the quality of life in the West Village until somebody does something about the insane transvestite crack ho's. Drug dealers see the ho's and they figure, the cops are letting them get away with it, and then other criminals see the ho's and the drug dealers and they figure it's a good location to set up shop.
This isn't the first time I've lived in the middle of famous crimes. In 1977 I was just out of school and still living with my parents in Queens, and Son of Sam did two murders within ten minutes of their house. And most of the victims were girls around my age with long brown hair. I would come home late from the City with my hair under a hat and walk ten blocks from the subway to my parents' house. I was full of guerrilla vigilance and expected that at any moment, "Sunna" was going to leap from a car, or out of the bushes, or suddenly break up from the ground like Jaws.
On one such night I got in and was sitting at the kitchen table when my mother ran out of her room in a frenzy. I was ready to say, "What? You said I could stay out until two!"
"They caught Son of Sam! His name is David Berkowitz." And my first response was to crack up. The shark from Jaws, and he turns out to be some creepy nerd that I would have turned down for a date. Who knows--maybe I did and that's why he shot all those girls.
The Summer of Sam...that time when every New Yorker looked nervously over their shoulders and said, "Oh thank God...It's a black guy."
