A mugging out of the '70s...

There was a great television show on for a while last year called "Life on Mars" which portrayed the bad old days in NYC back in the 1970s. I loved watching the show (a ratings flop) because I remember the bad old days of the 1970s, and I gotta tell you that the city is so much more civilized now than back then when crime was rampant, buildings were abandoned, and hookers walked many a corner (okay so it wasn't all bad....kidding.) The film "Taxi Driver" with Robert DeNiro as a resident psycho sums up the era nicely.

Anyway, a friend of mine was mugged exactly one week ago. It was a mugging so brutal and so random that the reaction of a lot of people was, "Boy that sounds like something out of the 1970s." Indeed. I'm writing about it to warn anyone who may be coming out of the subway stop at 23rd Street and Broadway because, according to the cops, the same type of assault happened one week before my friend was brutalized.

He was coming home on a Sunday night and it was 12:30 a.m., not late at all for this neighborhood in the middle of Manhattan. He got out of the train, headed up the stairs when, bam, he doesn't really remember anything else. But thanks to surveillance cameras, he knows that the moment he headed up the stairs, a thug behind him motioned to another thug who must have been hiding at the top of the stairs. The plan was in effect -- one guy grabbed by friend around the neck while the other one smashed his face over and over with his bare hands. There was a witness which is why the thugs ran off rather quickly. All they got for their trouble was a bad cell phone (not a smart phone) and a backpack filled with newspapers.

My friend got 25 stitches in his face, a chipped tooth and a bad case of the nerves. It's hard to feel secure after a thing like this. It's easy in this day and age to get lulled into a false sense of security in NYC what with the crime rate down and all but bad things do happen still. Yes, the murder rate is way down but there are still 500 souls who lose their lives each and every year.

Be aware of what's around you, and retain what Gavin de Becker calls "The Gfit of Fear." It's a landmark book that basically tells people to trust their instincts. If the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, better listen. Do not shrug off what your instincts are telling you, no matter how politically incorrect they may be