| There was a jazz performance starting at midnight at Small's Jazz Club so we took the subway from our hotel to Greenwich Village. The person dressed with a red shirt below was playing a guitar in the subway and it was already almost midnight! |
| New York City is a great place for jazz. There are many venues that feature live jazz until the wee hours of the morning. This was a Sunday evening and Small's Jazz Club had jazz sets starting at midnight on a Sunday! So actually, these performances were in the wee hours of Monday morning! I'd be willing to come back to New York City anytime, even just for the live jazz. |
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We felt perfectly safe on the New York Subway at any hour of the day or night, at least in Manhattan. The entire week we were in Manhattan we never saw any graffiti in the subway. Actually, we didn't see any graffiti anywhere in New York City until almost the last day of our visit. And, where we did find it was on a wall that was relatively hard to find. Also during our entire stay, we did not see any homeless people in the subways or anywhere. There definitely were not any homeless pushing shopping carts or people living in tents on the streets as you see in many other major cities. What we did see in the subways and throughout New York City was a huge police presence, much more so than in any other city. A bit disconcerting were how many police we saw that were dressed in military type gear carrying military type weapons. But, it did give us a safer feeling in the city. My first visit to New York City was in 1968. My first impression was terrible. My impression was of a dirty and dangerous city. There was litter and trash strewn everywhere. Just about every wall, and even the elevated trains, were covered with graffiti. Much of the graffiti were gang signs. From others I talked to who frequented New York City, their impression was that it was a very unsafe place with a high crime rate. Somehow the city has obviously managed to get its act together and cleaned up the graffiti, trash, litter, and the crime to a great extent. Unlike years past, New York City now seems to be a clean, safe, and friendly place for visitors and tourists, even in the subways at 4 AM! |
