While I was in San Francisco last week, I started noticing that in that city people talk to strangers, even when they’re sober. I found this experience to be seriously evil as several times I found myself assaulted with casual conversation by persons completely unknown to me, commenting on this, that and the weather. I’d hiss threateningly and scurry off, making an inverted sign of the cross, shocked and scandelized at this invasion of my little bubble of dudeness.

People in New York do not chat. There’s nothing to share and if there was, we wouldn’t care to hear it. You can smile if you want, but there’s not a damn thing funny. If you come up to me while I’m putting sugar in my coffee and remark how you never have a second cup, but today you decided to break the rules, I immediately know one or more of two things:

1. You are fucking insane.
2. You are from someplace that lacks spitting crackheads, mad subway masturbators, gang-bangers, muggers and stanky-ass homeless dudes rubbing themselves less than discreetly. This means that you do not deserve to breath my air, much less accost me because I have to suffer through all this shit and you don’t.

If you fit either or all of these descriptions, I don’t want to be anywhere near you. You’re sick and you need help, but not from me.

It boggles my mind why people would make small-talk with strangers. What’s the point of commenting on the weather? I know it’s cold. I know you know it’s cold. I don’t see any reason why it needs to be validated further. Why am I supposed to respond to “Sure is cold, isn’t it?” with “Oh geez, it sure is!”? If I were to answer by discreetly mentioning that I enjoy duct-taping my balls to the inside of my thigh for that “sporty and aerobic testicle-taping look”, just to get people to leave me alone, would any sane person really fault me? Would it be any less blasphemous than if I were to willingly give in and “shoot the shit” with Billy Dee from Denver on his first trip to NYC with the family?

The problem isn’t just that as a defining rule, I dislike people. It also has a lot to do with the fact that in New York, when some stranger talks to you, you’re either going to get mugged, murdered or latched on to by an insane person and/or tourist. You learn this pretty quick. It only took a couple hours of listening to some crackhead’s life story and his unddying love for “fishscale” as he and his cardboard box parked themselves on the ground next to my table at an outdoor bar during my first visit to NYC. Deserved payment for making the error of responding to his chatter. I’ve not made that mistake since.

Brooklyn at night, in the summer (as long as you’re not getting your ass mugged or shot at) is the shit. Last night, I walked up to the Brooklyn Museum, about a block from me to check out a huge dance party in the back parking lot. The was a good 400-500 people there, but the music really wasn’t my thing, so I just kept walking down Eastern Parkway, getting dizzy off of the lilac flowers that seem to be everywhere and tried to find a decent cup of coffee. I ended up having to walk well into Park Slope, but it was worth it to be outside. Walking around the neighborhood at night is something I haven’t done in a long time, especially since I got mugged. But last night it seemed everyone was out on the streets, so I felt safe enough. It made me miss the nights in Vermont, where restless at three in the morning, I’d roll a big joint and roam the streets on my bike, aimless and insane.

Earlier in the day, while hitting up the farmer’s market for some eggs, I took a spur of the moment excursion into Prospect Park. I rarely venture in there, partly because it can at times be pretty lawless (or at least there’s no one around if it ever should get that way) and also because, being a card carrying member of the BBG, I tend to head there more often, seeing as I paid for it. That’s a mistake. Prospect Park is fucking amazing. I think I found the most beautiful cul de sac in Brooklyn there. It’s crazy that, here in the city, I get to have this jungle only a couple blocks from where I live.

It gets me thinking. What price beauty and culture, if you have to live in places where it seems like every day, something bad happens? Someone gets shot, hit by a car, mugged, robbed, you name it. I can walk out of this building I live in, go one block south and be knee deep in flora, art, culture and every goddamn reason why civilization and city life is the epitome of human existence. Yet, to get there, that one block I pass through shows me the everything thats wrong with it. If I go any distance east, it only gets worse. On my block there have been robberies, muggings, shootings, hit and runs and it gets no better. No one learns. It’s a perpetual ass-fuck of people living in shit and not giving a fuck about their fellow man. Just a few nights a go, I watched a car crash from my living room window. Nothing minor, mind you. It was a pretty good crack-up, leaving one car spun out in the middle of an intersection. This car, after coming to a stop, sat motionless. The driver and passengers either hurt or in shock. People walked right by, deliberately avoiding looking. Crowds gathered on the corner and stared, talking amongst themselves. Finally, about eight minutes after the accident, someone walked up to the car to see if the passengers were all right and dialed 911 from his cell phone. When I got mugged there was at least a couple people farther down the street that just watched like my suffering was that evening’s special entertainment. This is Brooklyn and this is Prospect Heights.

But this other side… the museum, the park, the gardens. Tom’s Restaurant and all the other places that make this neighborhood, unique, original and a fascinating mix of the massive and the mundane. I see these things as much as I see the crap that lives here. I love these things as much as I hate the cancers that rot this neighborhood.