Is it Just Me, or is New York Getting More... New York?

Perhaps its the departure of the original Law & Order franchise, the city feeling the need to cumulatively reassert its badassness, but wouldn't you agree that thing have, as the original Real World posited, stopped being polite and started getting real?

This morning on the Q, this guys just sits down, opens his book, and pops a 20-ounce Coors Light can.  No visible judgment from other passengers, which only made me laugh harder.  Well, life in NYC ain't easy, and as Anthony points out, it's always 5 o'clock somewhere.  (Still, be a gentleman and opt for a coffee stout before noon, it's NY Craft Beer Week for heaven's sake!)

Last night on the Bedford L platform, a fight broke out and my friend B (who will remain anonymous because he probably wants to get laid again someday) got pushed onto the SUBWAY TRACKS.  Quel horror!  He's okay, a few scrapes, but that's trauma to last a lifetime.

And two nights ago, in N's luxury Manhattan highrise apartment building, a 21-year old resident was shot and killed, possibly a drug-related crime.

Let's be serious: down economy equals hard times equals rise in crime.  The whole country is at a weird boiling point, no one seems quite balanced these days.  It's bound to keep bubbling over, especially in a city like New York.