Too Close for Comfort

On Friday night, there was a shooting across the street from my building. Turns out some rappers and magazine execs were involved. Amazingly, no one actually died, even though the main "target" (if you can call someone that) was shot in the head. The guy's in critical condition.

From the way some of the witnesses told it to me, there should be at least one guy dead right now.

I'm not really sure how to feel about this. I guess in a city, things like this happen. In a big city, it happens even more.

When I got to the scene around 2:30am, the whole block was saturated with ambulances and squad cars. Police were searching up and down the block with flashlights looking for who knows what-- blood, weapons, bullet casings? Apparently two guys were even chased down the street before they were apprehended, and perhaps shot in the extremities to slow or stop them. When I showed up, the street was illuminated with flashing lights, casting an alternating blue or red glows onto the surrounding buildings. People who sleep with their blinds open were probably in for a real show if they were light sleepers.

By the time the sun came up, you'd have never known anything had happened. The yellow police tape had been cut down. Joggers swiftly strode along the sidewalks. The bar where the incident began was full the very next night. Young 20-somethings strolled up and down the street wearing J.Crew button downs, halter-tops, and expensive jeans, looking for the next party at which to look fabulous and drink too much expensive vodka that's been ruined by a Red Bull. Unwitting, attractive, white girls stood idly on the sidewalk chatting on their Motorola Razrs exactly where a young black man of a similar age was nearly murdered by a bullet lodged in his brain not 24 hours earlier.

For all I know, the bullet's still in his brain.

In a city this big, it's impossible to dwell on this. You can run though a "what-if" scenario for every person in this city, and still not be satisfied. What if I had been lazy and decided to just grab a beer across the street at the bar where the fight began? Hell, even a busboy was hit with 3 bullets!

What if I had decided to walk home on the north side of the street instead of the south side? And what if I had left my party 30 minutes earlier? What if a bullet managed to miss its intended mark and made its way down the sidewalk to other pedestrians? It becomes absurd.

Living in a city this big, if you're looking 5 minutes back, you're 10 minutes behind schedule.

So in spite of the London bombings, you have to ignore the what-ifs. Instead, you pack your bag, jump down to the subway and hope the random bag checks aren't going to inconvenience you long enough to miss the next train, and render you too late to read CNN.com at work before your boss shows up. That's about as much control as you have so what does worrying do?

Read the Metro section of The NY Times. New Yorkers know that an attack in this city isn't of question of "if". It's "when". And yet most people can't or won't change their behavior. It's too overwhelming. Can you blame them?

It's nearly impossible to predict where the next bomb will go off, or even when the next shooting is gonna go down. So what can I do? This weekend, I'm going to put on my J.Crew button down shirt and jeans, grab my Motorola cell phone, and enjoy myself. Provided the worst injury I suffer is a liver no worse for the wear, I'll consider myself fortunate.

I just hope that busboy's okay.