“Some of that is avoiding places where riots like this are more likely.”
The problem is that these things are happening more and more where they are not likely. In NYC, places like Prospect Park, Brighton Beach, Union Square...shopping malls, restaurants, movie theaters.
Cellphones are enabling these young thugs to assemble a dangerous mob anywhere.
“The problem is that these things are happening more and more where they are not likely. In NYC, places like Prospect Park, Brighton Beach, Union Square...shopping malls, restaurants, movie theaters.”
That’s somewhat true, but even before this kind of communication, there would be what was called the bum-rush, or was later called wilding. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. As far as New York goes, I’ve lived in other cities where even in their worst neighborhoods locals wouldn’t go, I’d feel safer than I did in New York’s best neighborhoods. I think most New Yorkers would know from their own experience what I’m saying.
New York under Giuliani was actually a respite, but Bloomberg has mismanaged the relative peace he was handed, and things have taken a few steps back to the feel of Koch’s chaotic last term, which spun out into Dinkins’ only term.
Prospect Park is only on one or two sides contingent with ‘good’ neighborhoods - see above for what that means, really. At least one of them was only really gentrified fairly recently. It’s right on ghetto mess kind of areas. Union Square too is only recently a little more of a livable area. Bernhard Goetz lives a couple of blocks, if that, from there. When I was in high school we had trouble with a Black gang from a high school basically on Union Square that targeted our White students (not more than a slight majority at my school, if not just a plurality), but it never even made the local papers, so it’s more than unlikely anyone ever heard of it nationally. Brighton Beach generally is, relatively, free of at least disorganized crime, but shares Coney Island with housing projects as notorious as any in the city, and is at the terminus of the subway there.
Street smarts are still important, but you’re right about ‘flash mobs’ adding another dimension to this.