NYC's history is RICH with stories of graft and coruption.. but most (not all but most) of it is a thing of the past.
NYC is one of the safest cities (crime wise). You are far more likely to murdered (by a stranger) in almost any other city in US. NYC has an incredible low murder rate. (now, pick pocketed? as you are gawking at a skyscraper?unfortunatley that is a possiblity.)
Unfortunately,tto, in the past 4 years, poverty levels have been increasing (i know, bordering on a political message here) but, all in all we are city blessed with a low level of natural disasters.
yes, we get hurricanes, (and Anges, back in 1970, was no fun for NYC--and less fun, much less fun, for upstate NY and parts of Penns.--but generally by the time a hurricane reaches NYC, its pretty mild.
we get blizzards too, but again, most are more of a pain in the neck than disasters.
same goes for our earthquakes.
thunderstorms have been known to spin off a tornado or two, but only small ones (bad, enough!)
Even the WTC and its destruction didn't shut down the city. (90% of subways were working by rush hour of 9/11! i, eventually, took one home!)--MOST people in MIDTOWN didn't even leave work on september 11th.
and while a large (a surprizing large!) percentage of Manhatanites don't have cars (mid-class and poor alike) we have lots of mass transit.. buses, subways, light rail..and most of the bridges (remember, manhattan is an island) have pedestrian paths.
More over, NYC is used to dealing with crouds.. (the daytime population of NYC is 15million..(almost double the resident population of 8 million)--so our cops are very good at the logistics of crowd management.
With the UN headquartered here, we are also used to dealing with VIP's and political threats and attempts at terrorism.
tenderloin
