Christopher Street isn’t my favorite part of Greenwich Village because it’s too crowded and commercial, but it sits at the center of a hub of my favorite part of the Village. I love the leafy side streets like Bedford, Barrow, and Grove. I also like to walk north of W. 10th Street. But, I guess it’s not safe anymore. Meddling packs of unruly kids, thugs, punks, pickpockets, and aggressive drug dealers are overrunning the neighborhood. Even in the late 1980’s, when walking up Fashion Ave. in midtown was an invitation to a mugging, this part of Greenwich Village was fairly idyllic. The neighborhoods around Washington Square Park were sketchy, but the quiet areas around Christopher St. were the perfect place to take an out-of-towner for a real New York experience. And things got much, much better throughout the next fifteen years.
This is still the first place I gravitate to in Manhattan, and I haven’t had any problems, so these reports come as a surprise. I’m not sure what’s driving it. It could be a sustained bad economy. It could be that police work in other neighborhoods has shifted drug activity into the area. It could be something else, like the destigmatization of Christopher St. as the gay mecca of the City means that kids are treating it like Manhattan’s version of Philly’s South Street. It’s now the hip place for teenagers to hang out and cause trouble. I don’t spend enough time there to know.
But, if it’s true that my favorite part of Manhattan is now unsafe for nighttime strolling, that’s pretty upsetting.