Testament writer Douglas Rushkoff reports he is ok after being mugged at knifepoint outside his home in Brooklyn on Christmas Eve:
I got mugged at knifepoint while taking out the garbage Christmas Eve at 9pm.
I negotiated with him for my health insurance card - not only because it has my Social Security number and was really hard to get, but because I knew that such a request would humanize me in the mind of my attacker, and make it harder for him to stab me. Such are the benefits of studying human behavior. All I lost was my phone, cards, and money.
Getting a knife pushed into your ribcage now and again is just part of the price we pay to live in a city, and New York is supposedly one of the safer of the bunch. But I have to admit, it makes me question working two extra gigs (I won’t divulge which ones they are) in order to pay the exorbitant rent this part of Brooklyn - when the streets are less safe than they were in the supposedly bad parts of Manhattan where I used to live.
Related: Rushkoff interview at 10 Zen Monkeys
December 27th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Glad that he is OK. Folks should follow the link, as the comments section is an interesting collection of mugging experiences. Perfect thing for me to read as I’m taking a small vacation in NYC next month. But hey, crime can happen anywhere–it is not unique to NY, I’m well aware. Most importantly, glad he’s relatively OK (except of course for the crime…)