Right? The people who hate cities are more than welcome to not go to them. I'm not even sure why they feel obligated to have an opinion on something that they have no intention of engaging with.
Anti-city sentiment has been a core part of right wing politics for my entire lifetime at least (since the 1970s) At least in the 70s 80s 90s backlash to big cities the urban crime rate really was high, New York was going bankrupt etc. Now they're still doing it at a time of historically low crime rates, relatively decently functioning cities etc.
Yeah I think you can definitely trace a through line from the crisis of crime in the 70s that helped sell neoliberalism to the ordinary person and the panics about subway crime today
I take the subway multiple times a week....because NEW YORKERS HAVE TO TAKE THE SUBWAY. If all ten million of us were getting attacked on a regular basis, that would be one thing, but as you have illustrated so well above, that does not happen. My biggest annoyance lately is people smoking cigarettes on the platforms sometimes, and accidentally getting into the smelly car (100% my bad, if its an empty-ish car at rush hour, I know better). But my discomfort is not actual danger and I wish people would understand this.
You said everything that I've said to people who poo-poo New York and point to the "dangerous, crime-ridden" subway as proof, exactly the way I'd say it minus some spicy New York fuggedaboudit language.
The subway is New York.
It is the "great melting pot" of New York IRL.
Real New Yorkers, native or transplants, at the bottom of their deep down love-hate relationship with the subway really do love the subway for all that it is and all that it stands for.
This transplant from a farm in the Kentucky Bluegrass who lived through some of the worst times for the city will tell anyone who cares that New York has been the greatest, most enduring love of her life and the subway is part of that.
On a visit a couple of decades after living there, I was on the subway from Queens to Manhattan. I realized with fond amusement that absolutely no one in the car was speaking English.
Excellent observation. The MTA truly is a stand in proxy for the entire city of New York isn't it? It's the lifeline between boroughs and neighborhoods. You popped down into the subway in one neighborhood and several minutes later you pop out in another. It's really quite lovely and dynamic and integral
When we were visiting some family in California, my wife's friend got us passes to the nearby Great Wolf Lodge water park-complex-thing. I swear this is relevant, just go with me. I went into it being like "oh shit, it's a water park in Southern California, there are going to be a bunch of Hot People and then my pasty, flabby ass.
Reader, I saw literally EVERY SINGLE BODY TYPE in my time at the Great Wolf Lodge water park-complex-thing. Far from making me self-conscious, I actually felt BETTER about myself after that day, like, all the hot, not-hot, and everywhere-in-between peeps are just having fun and not giving a shit, why do I have to? The Subway, Metro, L, whatever you have, is the Great Wolf Lodge water park-complex-thing of getting to work! That's all it is! Get over yourselves!
I have the unfortunate experience of glancing at Fox News at my gym most days. It's really my only connection to conservative media outside of what gets shared in my Twitter feed or what's written about in spaces like this. To say that conservatives (and let's face it, centrists and lots of Dems) are living in a different reality can't be overstated. It's 24 hours of fear mongering about "Democrat Cities" run amok (even though most of these cities are actually run by center-right, hardcore capitalists who love their cops). Nonetheless, they think they're burning to the ground. It's unhinged, and sadly, I don't think there's anything we can do about it. We're 20+ years into this Murdoch brain-washing program. At this point, we'd need an official re-education program. Let's bus in suburban and rural folks to tour Times Square and eat at Guy Fieri's restaurant.
I fucking love the NYC subway. It largely defines the city for me. First time I went to NY to visit a friend, I was terrified...would only commit to a 2 day visit. 2 weeks later I'm in tears because I have to go back home to work. The subways were the most magic part of my first visits. I had no idea where my friend and I were in the city or where we were going, obviously he did though. But we would just pop into one subway station and pop right out of another. emerging into a completely different landscape with a completely different vibe. I kind of miss those days of not knowing what the hell was going on! Learning a place is the best part of a place.
So here's what I don't get: people who hate NYC, would never VISIT NYC, are worried about subway crime in NYC? since they hate New York, shouldn't this make them happy? Shouldn't they want more violence? Maybe they do. Maybe they're feigned concern is just like all of the other feigned concern they have over everything else like women's health, and children's safety. Lol
NYC is economically effective and artistically vital. Republicans want to crush that kind of thing. Everyplace should be the worst part of the worst state or maybe the third world.
So the murder rate here in Louisville is around 25 per 100,000. NYC is around 5 per 100,000. People are just being racist and classist. You guys also probably have fewer tent cities due to your housing laws.
What a satisfying read! I'm dealing with the same thing in my own city: NIMBYs going all out to protest a proposed women's homeless overnight shelter (put it in some other neighborhood where people are already genuinely unsafe.) The CBT (Cognitive Based Therapy) term for it is catastrophizing. The other aspect here is that once we're not afraid we're ready to watch for and deal with real threats just in case. We have infinite choices for this that the mentally ill and homeless do not have.
I got my street smarts in NYC during the 1970s, and have a couple of stories about engaging people with psychiatric symptoms (as fellow humans) rather than fleeing them.
Still wondering where this sociological trend of overestimating risks and refusing to take personal, reasonable responsibility for one's own safety comes from. The other CBT idea is that society "should" be a certain way and we resent it if it's not perfect. The serenity prayer has gone out the window these days, (along with the more useful teachings of Jesus & Paul: no, you don't have to believe in God to consider these ancient but excellent ideas about living together.)
Let me get this straight - the NYT ed board would rather have the guy responsible for hundreds of death in nursing homes than the guy who wants to actually address homelessness without resorting to the same stupid bullshit we've been doing for decades?
The best thing I’ll read all month. Subways are the absolute best part of any big city I visit. I can’t even imagine how horrible it must be living in such fear of anyone even the slightest bit different than themselves.
I rode Metrolink and LA Metro rail for work in SoCal for seven years and had maybe two memorable incidents, both of which I survived fine. OTOH, driving around the SoCal basin during that time has left me with innumerable cases of dealing with murder-twats.
I mean, to me it's no challenge, I leave the homeless guy passed out across two seats alone, he leaves me alone and I go about my day. Whereas on the freeways, I will regularly have some psycho try to use their 4,000 pound murder missile to end me for slights imagined or perceived.
My girlfriend is one of the few people who realizes just how dangerous it is being in a car (or SUV for that matter; People buy SUVs because they're scared of being in a sedan.) Whenever we get home, for example, from the Safeway, it's always, "Cheated the Grim Reaper again."
Here is what is scary about the subway: cops. And the overtime bill from said cops.
Also, people are forgetting basic MTA etiquette like removing backpacks, not blocking the doors, and only taking up 1 (maaaaaaybe 1.5 if you’re on the wider side) seat per person. As a NYer I am doing my best to be scary in ways that encourage pro-social behaviors like these!
The most aggravating part of these latest fictions – all of which are informally associated with that evergreen GOP chestnut, "Democrat-run cities," which of course must be crime-ridden by default – is that many liberals are buying this bullshit as well, in large part because even the Gray Lady unfortunately reports "subway scares" in a too-similar fashion to the New York Post.
It's not quite as irrational as being afraid of flying because of a handful of high-profile crashes over the past year, but we have over 45,000 daily commercial flights in the US alone. While we definitely need more folks working in ATC, flying is still the safest way to travel – and taking the subway is similarly safer than driving or walking, regardless of Sean Duffy's Trumpian boogeyman stories.
Which any New Yorker who uses it daily can tell you, much like Angelenos who live near DTLA can tell you its problem with "illegals" is absurd, or urban Americans in general who know full well that crime levels peaked in 1992 and have been in steep decline ever since, aside from a brief spike during the pandemic.
But OTOH I think we all know by now that the truth remains as inconvenient as ever for Trump and his proxies.
What I don't understand is how some New Yorkers could buy into the fear mongering. I mean millions of people use the subway every day. How can something so evidentially false have traction when the proof is literally right around the corner. It would be like believing that your neighborhood was on fire because Fox News was telling you it was on fire even though you can look out your own fucking window and tell that everything is OK. This is what I don't understand. I get how someone in Alabama or South Dakota could be led to believe lies about the New York subway, but New Yorkers? I mean how does that even work? That's what I can't wrap my head around. It just seems that there are too many people who take the subway every single fucking day for this lie to persist in New York City itself. Frankly it is a level of psychosis to be that deluded. Seeing things that aren't actually there is just as weird as not seeing things that are there.
I think part of it is that rich Sex and the City type New Yorkers have really bought into the SATC fantasy that the city is just a playground for the rich with no homeless people, zero real danger etc. and any time it deviates from that at all it upsets them. So they say they're upset about "crime" or lack of safety but realy what they mean is they saw an unhoused person or some litter
Yes!!!! I cannot believe the nonsense that folks believe about the subway. I take pictures of cute dogs on the train all the time and post them to push back on the hysteria.
You can partially blame movie and television writers for some of this. They romanticized the seediest and most dangerous aspects of the city, particularly in the 1970s. Whether it was a comic mugging or an updating of the Anabasis set in Brooklyn, it set the tone. It's story telling. Ancient Greeks went to the Temple of Apollo to see stuff they had heard about, the oracle and the various rites. Modern people go to places like NYC to see the Friends apartment building, the Godfather sets and the harbor with the Statue of Liberty that was used for scene setting in countless productions. The scenes of menace and violence stick with one. No one expects to see Lucille Ball with a pot on her at the 23rd Street station but they'll remember the tension in the Taking of the Pelham 123.
I rode the DC Metro for a decade. So much better than driving in an inch at a time. And it’s a lesson in work, class and race. When I got on my bus, then metro before 730 am I was often the only white person. Hard working mostly Latino construction workers and housekeepers and other cleaners and domestic workers.
Subways in many countries are the pride of the city.
People have to be pretty fucking racist to prefer driving in DC to taking a nice leisurely subway ride into the city... that is if the subway is a viable option. I understand if some people have to drive in just because of the nature of their work and timing and all.
Say that! I’m so sick of the anti-city sentiment that circulates everywhere these days
Right? The people who hate cities are more than welcome to not go to them. I'm not even sure why they feel obligated to have an opinion on something that they have no intention of engaging with.
Anti-city sentiment has been a core part of right wing politics for my entire lifetime at least (since the 1970s) At least in the 70s 80s 90s backlash to big cities the urban crime rate really was high, New York was going bankrupt etc. Now they're still doing it at a time of historically low crime rates, relatively decently functioning cities etc.
Yeah I think you can definitely trace a through line from the crisis of crime in the 70s that helped sell neoliberalism to the ordinary person and the panics about subway crime today
THANK YOU.
I take the subway multiple times a week....because NEW YORKERS HAVE TO TAKE THE SUBWAY. If all ten million of us were getting attacked on a regular basis, that would be one thing, but as you have illustrated so well above, that does not happen. My biggest annoyance lately is people smoking cigarettes on the platforms sometimes, and accidentally getting into the smelly car (100% my bad, if its an empty-ish car at rush hour, I know better). But my discomfort is not actual danger and I wish people would understand this.
You said everything that I've said to people who poo-poo New York and point to the "dangerous, crime-ridden" subway as proof, exactly the way I'd say it minus some spicy New York fuggedaboudit language.
The subway is New York.
It is the "great melting pot" of New York IRL.
Real New Yorkers, native or transplants, at the bottom of their deep down love-hate relationship with the subway really do love the subway for all that it is and all that it stands for.
This transplant from a farm in the Kentucky Bluegrass who lived through some of the worst times for the city will tell anyone who cares that New York has been the greatest, most enduring love of her life and the subway is part of that.
On a visit a couple of decades after living there, I was on the subway from Queens to Manhattan. I realized with fond amusement that absolutely no one in the car was speaking English.
They say that New York is not America, it's the world.
Excellent observation. The MTA truly is a stand in proxy for the entire city of New York isn't it? It's the lifeline between boroughs and neighborhoods. You popped down into the subway in one neighborhood and several minutes later you pop out in another. It's really quite lovely and dynamic and integral
When we were visiting some family in California, my wife's friend got us passes to the nearby Great Wolf Lodge water park-complex-thing. I swear this is relevant, just go with me. I went into it being like "oh shit, it's a water park in Southern California, there are going to be a bunch of Hot People and then my pasty, flabby ass.
Reader, I saw literally EVERY SINGLE BODY TYPE in my time at the Great Wolf Lodge water park-complex-thing. Far from making me self-conscious, I actually felt BETTER about myself after that day, like, all the hot, not-hot, and everywhere-in-between peeps are just having fun and not giving a shit, why do I have to? The Subway, Metro, L, whatever you have, is the Great Wolf Lodge water park-complex-thing of getting to work! That's all it is! Get over yourselves!
I have the unfortunate experience of glancing at Fox News at my gym most days. It's really my only connection to conservative media outside of what gets shared in my Twitter feed or what's written about in spaces like this. To say that conservatives (and let's face it, centrists and lots of Dems) are living in a different reality can't be overstated. It's 24 hours of fear mongering about "Democrat Cities" run amok (even though most of these cities are actually run by center-right, hardcore capitalists who love their cops). Nonetheless, they think they're burning to the ground. It's unhinged, and sadly, I don't think there's anything we can do about it. We're 20+ years into this Murdoch brain-washing program. At this point, we'd need an official re-education program. Let's bus in suburban and rural folks to tour Times Square and eat at Guy Fieri's restaurant.
Republicans are chicken shit. (Yes, I know, that's an insult to poultry and fecal matter.)
Hear hear!
I fucking love the NYC subway. It largely defines the city for me. First time I went to NY to visit a friend, I was terrified...would only commit to a 2 day visit. 2 weeks later I'm in tears because I have to go back home to work. The subways were the most magic part of my first visits. I had no idea where my friend and I were in the city or where we were going, obviously he did though. But we would just pop into one subway station and pop right out of another. emerging into a completely different landscape with a completely different vibe. I kind of miss those days of not knowing what the hell was going on! Learning a place is the best part of a place.
So here's what I don't get: people who hate NYC, would never VISIT NYC, are worried about subway crime in NYC? since they hate New York, shouldn't this make them happy? Shouldn't they want more violence? Maybe they do. Maybe they're feigned concern is just like all of the other feigned concern they have over everything else like women's health, and children's safety. Lol
NYC is economically effective and artistically vital. Republicans want to crush that kind of thing. Everyplace should be the worst part of the worst state or maybe the third world.
So the murder rate here in Louisville is around 25 per 100,000. NYC is around 5 per 100,000. People are just being racist and classist. You guys also probably have fewer tent cities due to your housing laws.
What a satisfying read! I'm dealing with the same thing in my own city: NIMBYs going all out to protest a proposed women's homeless overnight shelter (put it in some other neighborhood where people are already genuinely unsafe.) The CBT (Cognitive Based Therapy) term for it is catastrophizing. The other aspect here is that once we're not afraid we're ready to watch for and deal with real threats just in case. We have infinite choices for this that the mentally ill and homeless do not have.
I got my street smarts in NYC during the 1970s, and have a couple of stories about engaging people with psychiatric symptoms (as fellow humans) rather than fleeing them.
Still wondering where this sociological trend of overestimating risks and refusing to take personal, reasonable responsibility for one's own safety comes from. The other CBT idea is that society "should" be a certain way and we resent it if it's not perfect. The serenity prayer has gone out the window these days, (along with the more useful teachings of Jesus & Paul: no, you don't have to believe in God to consider these ancient but excellent ideas about living together.)
Let me get this straight - the NYT ed board would rather have the guy responsible for hundreds of death in nursing homes than the guy who wants to actually address homelessness without resorting to the same stupid bullshit we've been doing for decades?
...
Yeah, that tracks.
Also the subway is great.
The best thing I’ll read all month. Subways are the absolute best part of any big city I visit. I can’t even imagine how horrible it must be living in such fear of anyone even the slightest bit different than themselves.
I rode Metrolink and LA Metro rail for work in SoCal for seven years and had maybe two memorable incidents, both of which I survived fine. OTOH, driving around the SoCal basin during that time has left me with innumerable cases of dealing with murder-twats.
I mean, to me it's no challenge, I leave the homeless guy passed out across two seats alone, he leaves me alone and I go about my day. Whereas on the freeways, I will regularly have some psycho try to use their 4,000 pound murder missile to end me for slights imagined or perceived.
My girlfriend is one of the few people who realizes just how dangerous it is being in a car (or SUV for that matter; People buy SUVs because they're scared of being in a sedan.) Whenever we get home, for example, from the Safeway, it's always, "Cheated the Grim Reaper again."
Here is what is scary about the subway: cops. And the overtime bill from said cops.
Also, people are forgetting basic MTA etiquette like removing backpacks, not blocking the doors, and only taking up 1 (maaaaaaybe 1.5 if you’re on the wider side) seat per person. As a NYer I am doing my best to be scary in ways that encourage pro-social behaviors like these!
The most aggravating part of these latest fictions – all of which are informally associated with that evergreen GOP chestnut, "Democrat-run cities," which of course must be crime-ridden by default – is that many liberals are buying this bullshit as well, in large part because even the Gray Lady unfortunately reports "subway scares" in a too-similar fashion to the New York Post.
It's not quite as irrational as being afraid of flying because of a handful of high-profile crashes over the past year, but we have over 45,000 daily commercial flights in the US alone. While we definitely need more folks working in ATC, flying is still the safest way to travel – and taking the subway is similarly safer than driving or walking, regardless of Sean Duffy's Trumpian boogeyman stories.
Which any New Yorker who uses it daily can tell you, much like Angelenos who live near DTLA can tell you its problem with "illegals" is absurd, or urban Americans in general who know full well that crime levels peaked in 1992 and have been in steep decline ever since, aside from a brief spike during the pandemic.
But OTOH I think we all know by now that the truth remains as inconvenient as ever for Trump and his proxies.
What I don't understand is how some New Yorkers could buy into the fear mongering. I mean millions of people use the subway every day. How can something so evidentially false have traction when the proof is literally right around the corner. It would be like believing that your neighborhood was on fire because Fox News was telling you it was on fire even though you can look out your own fucking window and tell that everything is OK. This is what I don't understand. I get how someone in Alabama or South Dakota could be led to believe lies about the New York subway, but New Yorkers? I mean how does that even work? That's what I can't wrap my head around. It just seems that there are too many people who take the subway every single fucking day for this lie to persist in New York City itself. Frankly it is a level of psychosis to be that deluded. Seeing things that aren't actually there is just as weird as not seeing things that are there.
I think part of it is that rich Sex and the City type New Yorkers have really bought into the SATC fantasy that the city is just a playground for the rich with no homeless people, zero real danger etc. and any time it deviates from that at all it upsets them. So they say they're upset about "crime" or lack of safety but realy what they mean is they saw an unhoused person or some litter
That scans. It's basically their complaint that they can't have everything.
Yes!!!! I cannot believe the nonsense that folks believe about the subway. I take pictures of cute dogs on the train all the time and post them to push back on the hysteria.
You can partially blame movie and television writers for some of this. They romanticized the seediest and most dangerous aspects of the city, particularly in the 1970s. Whether it was a comic mugging or an updating of the Anabasis set in Brooklyn, it set the tone. It's story telling. Ancient Greeks went to the Temple of Apollo to see stuff they had heard about, the oracle and the various rites. Modern people go to places like NYC to see the Friends apartment building, the Godfather sets and the harbor with the Statue of Liberty that was used for scene setting in countless productions. The scenes of menace and violence stick with one. No one expects to see Lucille Ball with a pot on her at the 23rd Street station but they'll remember the tension in the Taking of the Pelham 123.
I rode the DC Metro for a decade. So much better than driving in an inch at a time. And it’s a lesson in work, class and race. When I got on my bus, then metro before 730 am I was often the only white person. Hard working mostly Latino construction workers and housekeepers and other cleaners and domestic workers.
Subways in many countries are the pride of the city.
People have to be pretty fucking racist to prefer driving in DC to taking a nice leisurely subway ride into the city... that is if the subway is a viable option. I understand if some people have to drive in just because of the nature of their work and timing and all.
This is beautiful! I feel the same way about riding the bus around New Orleans!