Short Take: New York, Just Like JD Pictured It

The Battle of New York is raging again, although General Howe isn’t involved this time. Instead, it’s between the people fighting against the catastrophizing of crime and a hillbilly with a Yale law degree.

New York City isn’t the pristine City on the Hill it once was. Oh wait, it was never that, but it was vibrant and pretty damn spectacular even with the sort of issues that arise from a huge mass of people shoved together on an island, a subway, a lunchline, a sidewalk. And it’s less so now, with filthy streets, boarded-up stores, homeless people and, as Vance point out, a Washington Square Park problem.

You could witness the defunders’ plea for attention in the wee hours of the morning Thursday at Washington Square Park. For more than a month now, the park has been the site of a battle of wills between the NYPD enforcing an on-again-off-again midnight curfew and revelers determined to “reclaim public space,” as an ACLU volunteer monitoring the action told me.

Yet with their ranks diminished, the gathering of mostly white, heavily female and extremely young anti-police militants looked not a little like high school goths protesting the principal’s strict new bathroom pass policy.

The Park, a one-block area in the Village surrounded by NYU, reflects the inanity of the unduly passionate. So Washington Square Park has become home to the woke warriors? What else is new? And big deal.

But the New York Post story is typical pro-police, anti-crime, sky-is-falling crap one expects from the New York Post, so it can sell its tabloid to the people who don’t buy the Daily News. It’s not always wrong, but it’s almost never right. It’s just the flip side of Utopia for those who won’t make apologies for the odor of urine.

Manhattan has problems. Nowhere near as bad as they were when crack was King, and bodies were found in the gutters above 125th Street every morning. Not even close. But more than they were last year, and the trend of dropping murders has reversed. Does this make New York the Zombie Apocalypse?

Hardly, and such a characterization is just as absurd as those trying to ignore the significant upturn in the murder and shooting trend and rely on New York City’s very worst days to show that getting shot and killed today doesn’t matter very much. Of course it matters. And of course it’s not epidemic. And of course it’s trending upward. And of course we don’t know why it’s happening, because we’re so busy arguing one side or the other that we forget that correlation does not imply causation. Plus, it’s really useful to push a narrative.

Vance doesn’t say why he has to go to New York. I know I didn’t invite him. And there is no shortage of fine hotels, though I would need to know what his budget was before making a suggestion. New York isn’t Cleveland, either in Cleveland’s higher crime rate, burning river or hotel amenities.

But this competing effort to turn New York into a culture battleground is nonsense. If New York City is too scary for you, J.D., don’t come. We have problems, a lot of them at the moment, that need some serious fixing, but we don’t need some fear-mongering Yale-educated hillbilly to add fuel to the fire.

17 thoughts on “Short Take: New York, Just Like JD Pictured It

  1. James

    JD, you should stay at one of those ‘special rate’ motels on Rte. 1/9 in Elizabeth so you can make a quick getaway. And you get a nice view of the tanks interposed with the Manhattan skyline.

      1. Guitardave

        LOL…I’ve never liked the fact that our creator forgot to ship us in a stay-fresh container.

  2. jfjoyner3

    SJ is a great place. Rarely, very rarely, the scenery is unexciting. This one… meh.

    Nevertheless, it reminded me of a recent trip to Baltimore. I stayed in a hotel in the area of the riots, protests, whatever. What a difference from a couple of years ago! Physical damage was not prominent. But months after the riots-protests-whatever, it seems like the vibrancy has vanished. I lack the skills to explain it adequately. All I can say is that, although the same buildings stand, it is a different place. Whatever makes a city a city — it’s vibrancy, it’s creativity, its reputation, it’s groove, whatever — (this part of the city of) Baltimore has lost its “spirit,” like ancient beliefs about an offended local deity leaving the temple.

    I hope you’ll let us know when NYC gets its groove back. That will be my cue to visit again.

      1. jfjoyner3

        I was hoping you would be inspired to comment about that element that makes great cities great. When the subway beatings, excessive crime, empty stores, and property damage are reduced by, say, 2025, will the spirit of NYC return or will it remain absent like Baltimore? (Or maybe my question, too, is boring.)

  3. Rengit

    Doesn’t JD know that all he has to do is beseech protection from the Gramercy Riffs, and then he won’t have to worry about attacks by the Lizzies, the Rogues, the Baseball Furies, and all the other gangs?

  4. Paleo

    As the parties become more extreme and the moderates lose interest, the pols have to say extreme things to appeal to the remaining faithful. Thus we get AOC and her doppelgänger on the right making regular Nazi references. That’s why the Georgia voting law can’t just be bad policy or even unfair, it’s JIM CROW!!! And that’s why you get crap like this, which is only about 5% as clever as Vance thinks it is.

    And us rational people out here just continue to tune out.

    1. SHG Post author

      Not sure the moderates, whoever they are (people who are not on the extreme fringe and recognize there is a spectrum of possibilities between the dueling nubjobs, but still are of a clear political perspective?), lose interest, but reject the characterization of things as either perfect or horrible.

      Vance wanted to play the democrat run city as a zombie apocalypse to bring attention to himself and stroke his base, but it’s just inane as the defund shriekers.

  5. Drew Conlin

    Speaking of NYC and if I were asked I’d say it’s the topic here…. have you watched .. “ Summer of soul” ?
    It’s well worth watching and my state of Michigan is well represented by Motown including the backing orchestra led by a Detroiter
    Forgive me if I strayed off topic but this was a great event that happened in NYC.

    1. SHG Post author

      On the one hand, you strayed off topic. On the other hand, nobody asked and this ain’t your platform to hype whatever you think is “well worth watching.” Hit the type jar on the way out.

      1. Drew Conlin

        You’ve scolded me harsher than this. I hit the tip jar not the type jar meager but did it none the less.

  6. cthulhu

    Despite the “serious question” disclaimer, the second half of the tweet sure reads like snark to me, aimed at the panicking MSNBC talking heads…

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