TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

I walk home from work a few times a week. I”ve gone over it before. Last week we got our first dose of spring via a stretch of a couple 65-70 degree days. Naturally, three days later, we’re in the process of getting buried under 8 inches of snow. There’s nothing quite like weather patterns in March/April and October/November here in the Northeast.

Regardless, I take basically the same route home every day. Down fifth avenue to Washington Park, through the park, then MacDougal or Hudson to Canal, and then West Broadway to the World Trade Center. All told it’s about 3.5 miles and pleasant little range of neighborhoods, bars, and NYU trust-fund kiddies playing their angsty music in the park. On one of these walk home was the night I witnessed a light-sabre fight in the park. I’m not kidding.

Wednesday night I did this walk. I got home and discovered that about a half hour to an hour after I walked through Greenwich Village, there was a shooting that left a pizza guy, two auxiliary cops, and the shooter dead. Auxiliary police are essentially rent-a-cops who get a uniform and, if shit starts going down, are supposed to take cover and get on the radio. Apparently, the shooter, not knowing the difference, hit one in the head killing him instantly and hit the other bad enough that he died in the hospital a few hours later. The real cops then caught up with him and proceeded to empty 50 rounds into the street, killing him about 10 times over. Just about every blog in New York (and there’s a ton of them… more than there should be, really… with fun names like aboygrowsinbrooklyn, thatstrangegirl, and such) including a bunch of people who were either eating or drinking outside on Bleecker Street when it happened.

I know, if you watch Law and Order enough, you get the sense that Manhattan is just one long murder spree, but it generally isn’t. Greenwich Village and the West Village is generally pretty peaceful, other than the occasional NYU fraternity nonsense. There’s a square that’s essentially 96th street, 8th Ave, Park Ave, and the southern tip which is pretty much crime free. This is “the guest room.” It’s where we entertain our tourists, so it’s cleaner than the rest.

This story has legs for a couple of reasons. One, auxiliary cops aren’t armed, so the shooter essentially took out two members of the neighborhood watch for looking like police officers. It’s in a neighborhood where rich people’s kids hang out. It’s in a neighborhood where the Carrie Bradshaw NYers hang out. And it’s on the heels of indictments coming in about the Sean Bell shooting (where Bell’s car got shot into 51 times for, allegedly, coming at the cops with his car). The story has made a comeback because black leaders in New York have hinted toward LA-esque riots if the police officers in question weren’t indicted, even though, according to witnesses, the three guys were overheard saying they were going to the car to get a gun to settle an argument inside the club, then proceeded to get in the car and drive toward two police officers when they realized shit was going wrong. Three of the five officers were indicted… and two of them were black. Since Al Sharpton fell fully on the side of the “wronged” guys who were going to find a gun to take care business, I’m interested to see where he comes down on the black police officers. Should be fun.

It’s a strange feeling having been almost around for something like that. The whole “if i finished fixing that bug instead of leaving it for tomorrow, a screaming mad-man with a gun would have run down the street next to me.” I’m sure it’s much stranger for those folks who actually had to watch people get shot. I wonder how much that fucks with your perception of the world. I know how much it’s fucked with mine, and I wasn’t even.