“Somebody call the OED: is
“Somebody call the OED: is our beloved A^2 becoming a byword for yuppified pseudo-urban landscapes?” writes a sharp-eyed reader. The evidence: A Gary Shteyngart article in The New York Times Magazine about New York as “the city of stories.” In it, Shteyngart laments what he sees as a city “under siege by prosperity,” overtaken by “homogenization.” “Entire communities from Hoboken to Long Island City,” he writes, “change into local Ann Arbors and Chapel Hills.” Ouch.
Shteyngart’s fears may in fact be a little overblown. The new New York he deplores is a place where “You aren’t afraid of being attacked on Avenue C at 4 in the morning.” But if Ann Arborization is what he fears, he needn’t worry about an overabundance of safety. Among A2 crimes this week we haven’t blogged about are two fast food robberies - one of them a McDonald’s held at gunpoint while police patrolled outside, oblivious - and a taxi driver reporting being pulled from his cab and beaten near the medical school.