(no subject)
On Monday there was a shooting starting at Marcus Garvey Park and running up Lenox Avenue in Harlem. Six kids were shot in this spree and four more were injured in other incidents around the same time. It feels incongruous with the neighborhood as I've known it in the brief two years I've lived nearby. I've walked that street at night and gone across the island alone on 125th well after dark. I've been to the park once or twice. They've got an old fire lookout post up on a hill and I sat up there looking out over the developments and projects, writing for a few hours, one winter day. It does have the dangerous quality of being largely abandoned and I was nervous a few times being one of two people on top of the hill. I guess I should be more careful, but I feel like I shouldn't have to be. What would Jane Jacobs say? Where are the watchers on the street?