I cannot resist a tale told to me, in fact, by a service provider, who was at the Empiricon science fiction and fantasy convention in New York, some years ago. At about 3 AM, six attendees decided to go to a Chinese restaurant they knew was still open, and chose to take the subway. At the time, this was _not_ a safe transportation route. To compound their strange choice, they were all in costume. As it was told to me, they were joined by four young men, wearing leather, as is common to the Thief class in Dungeons & Dragons. Indeed, the laughing young men pulled out daggers, or modern equivalents, and demanded purses. At that point, things took an unusual turn. Some conventions allow no actual weapons. Others will allow certain items, but "peace bonded" with a symbolic seal on the scabbard. Three of the convention-goers were D&D players, and, as things developed, things went considerably beyond "That's not a knife. THIS is a knife." In this case, the three drew what were, indeed, not knives. They were swords. After the smallest woman in the group broke one of the young gentlemens' arms, with a firm blow from the flat of her saber, things became a bit confused...but, soon afterwards, the four young gentlemen were spread-eagled against a subway station wall, the waistbands of their trousers cut and hobbling their ankles. When the Transit Police arrived, had it explained that a sword was hardly a concealed weapon, the young gentlemen greeted the constabulary with great relief. You see, the remaining three convention-goers were admirers of Star Trek, and were suitably garbed. The young gentlemen knew only a bit about Star Trek, but just enough, considering their recent experience with true blades, to have absolutely no desire to determine, experimentally, if the leveled phasers were real. -----Original Message----- From: Christopher LILJENSTOLPE [mailto:cdl@asgaard.org] Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 10:48 PM To: Steve Gibbard Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Hauling gear around a NANOG meeting -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Greetings, I think the 0.02 take-away for this discussion is: If you don't feel safe doing what you are doing, or being where you are, then stop/leave. In almost any big city, it's really not a problem - there are lots of people around and things are usually ok. However, your intuition is usually a pretty good guide. A corollary is, if you are scared, even if the area is "safe" certain actors will pickup on it. Therefore, the simple act of feeling uncomfortable will probably raise the likelihood of you getting into trouble. Unless you've lived a very sheltered life, your "intuition" will usually give you warning WAY before you get into trouble. BTW - there are a lot of big cities that I have no concerns walking alone in at 0300. However, not all cities fit in that bucket. There are also places that you just don't go to even in the middle of the day. Chris On 23 May 2008, at 17.53, Steve Gibbard wrote:
I hesitate to weigh in here, but my observation after several years of doing a fair bit of traveling to a wide variety of places is this: In any big city, anywhere in the world, there will be plenty of people ready with lectures on how "this is a big city, and is therefore a dangerous place. You need to be careful." Often, this will be repeated with escalating tones of alarm if it becomes clear that I've been ignoring it. Sometimes the claim will be that their city is especially dangerous, and sometimes the claim will be that it's dangerous just like any other big city. Sometimes it takes on the form of "this is a really safe city, but don't go out at night." It doesn't matter. Some cities really are dangerous, and some seem quite safe, but there's no quantifiable difference between lectures received in places that really are dangerous and places that aren't.
-Steve
On Fri, 23 May 2008, Paul Stewart wrote:
A lot of it is common sense - New York is a GREAT city .. no question and very safe overall. But common sense will tell you not to take a leisure walk through Harlem at 3AM .. having said that, I've walked through Central Park (65th St.) at various times of the night and never had a problem, but then again that's different too...
Travel in herds and mind your own business - don't travel at 3AM (on foot) and you'll be fine..;) That really goes for any city when you think about it...
Take care,
Paul
-----Original Message----- From: Alex Rubenstein [mailto:alex@corp.nac.net] Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 5:06 PM To: Rod Beck; David Diaz; Martin Hannigan Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Hauling gear around a NANOG meeting
I hate to break the news to the New York bashers, but New York is one of the safest American cities. This is not a controversial statement.
While I generally agree with what Rod is saying, saying "NYC is safe" is like saying "all routers are cisco"
There are safe areas, and there are not safe areas. I don't know how the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn bridge rates, but I don't think I'd be overly concerned. And, since people going to NANOG tend to have a herding instinct, there shouldn't be a problem.
New York has a lower incidence of crime than Miami, Detroit, Seattle, Los Vegas, Houston, Atlanta, DC, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.
Yes, but in at least most of those locations, my Florida or Utah CCW is valid.
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