“I had a long walk home in the rain. It was a very Gotham City morning.” That was how one witness to Tuesday’s horrific subway attack described leaving the scene in South Brooklyn. Everyone who lives in New York City has at least some sense of what this means. Unease on the subway, a twinge turning into a dark alley you wouldn’t have thought twice about a few years back. It feels like we are in darker times from long ago. Mired in crime and shadows.
Aside from the huge police presence and tragic injuries, what stood out most after the subway attack was how calmly the shooting was responded to, including by heroic MTA employees in the station. In the aftermath interviews of victims, they almost all had a plaintive quality of inevitably about them. They didn’t seem sufficiently shocked. Neither does the city.
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