Saturday night in DC - "Chaos"

I just got back to DC from a friend's wedding in New York City - I drove up during the afternoon and drove back through the night, about 9 hours of driving in all. I've been thinking recently that it might be interesting to live in New York someday, so it was interesting to check the city out, although I only had about 90 minutes to do so before the wedding. I did get to see Ground Zero (the former site of the World Trade Center) and the view of the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park, but that was about it.

The only time I've spent more than a day in NYC was when my family visited there for a couple of days, probably between 15 and20 years ago, and the only thing I remembered from that visit was that our car got broken into. Probably because of that, I've never had positive thoughts about living in the Big Apple. But after living in Moscow for such a long time, I grew to like the feeling of living in a big city, which Washington certainly is not, and I feel like we could perhaps handle another metropolis - and that it might be an interesting challenge. I did find getting around Manhattan by car a bit difficult today - although probably no more difficult than getting around by car in Moscow - and in general the idea of living in New York still seems a bit intimidating.

Anyway, the drive home was uneventful, and I was surprisingly awake in spite of the late hour. I had almost made it home when I found my route along 18th Street blocked by a huge assemblage of police cars and other emergency vehicles. I stopped to ask one of the officers on the scene what had happened, and his short answer was, "Chaos." He elaborated: "Two people got stabbed, and then people wanted to fight the police when they showed up." I parked the car and strolled down 18th Street to take in the mayhem - there were lots of gawkers and club-goers who had just been kicked out of the various bars and clubs at closing time, and, as always, a huge crowd in front of the jumbo pizza slice joint. And I thought to myself, if this is the kind of thing that still happens in Mayor Tony Williams' "gentrified" DC, maybe New York isn't so intimidating by comparison.