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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30029 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Hm. In the 11 years I have lived in NYC, I have taken the subway every day, except during the early days of COVID, but I can't recall every being being harassed or verbally threatened by homeless people. Nor do I recall friends complaining about it. I have certainly had my senses assaulted by smelly homeless guys once in a while, but that's it.

We’ve discussed this before & I will just have to say that you must be lucky since I have been menaced by crazy homeless people a couple times (both times late at night past 2am) since moving to NYC last year.

Well, I am rarely on the subway that late. I am sure it is more likely at that hour. But my point is that this trope that people are constantly being menaced on the subway is just silly. It would be like me thinking that people are constantly in fear of being shot in open carry states.

I have lived in Manhattan for close to ten years now, taken the subway some unknown thousands of times, and I see this quite regularly. Just a couple of weeks ago I was in a 2 train that was packed like sardines, and I was standing near a couple of women who were doing their best to ignore the drunk hissing in their ears right behind them (this guy actually had a bottle of something and was taking swigs from it). I've never been assaulted myself, but that's probably because I'm a man. I know women who have been assaulted or harassed on the subway - one of my paralegals was stalked by a random vagrant, and had to get out before her stop and run from the station.

Aesthetically what bothers me isn't just the smell, it's the fact that an astonishing number of these people often have open, suppurating wounds that they don't even seem perturbed by. I vividly recall this morbidly obese woman sprawling herself out over a whole set of seats on the train to Astoria one day, and her leg was hideously swollen and visibly rotting. She was too stoned to care.

Yeah, I meant to say that I am rarely on the train at times when people are returning from bars drunk, and the last time I was on the train at 3 am some drunk kid threw up on the floor. But OTOH, I have never heard of anyone being run over by a drunk driver on the subway.

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