My family in Pennsylvania and Ohio still can't believe I live in New York City, and they worry about me constantly. "I hope you don't take the subway," my aunt said when she visited. But New York is pretty safe, and I realize I feel safer here than I did on my college campus in rural Pennsylvania. That's fucked up. So I decided to rate the safety of the places I've lived. 1 is not safe at all. 10 is super safe. Here you go:
Hudson, Ohio
The Scene: "We live on the most boring street in the whole United States of America, where nothing even remotely dangerous will ever happen. Period." -- Buzz McCallister, Home Alone, 1990
Word.
When my friend's boyfriend came to visit Hudson, he kept on referring to it as Pleasantville -- a fair description of the affluent community of about 25,000 people. With all the ice cream socials, gazebos, and Olde Tymey Shops, there isn't much space for violence or crime. My mom could set me loose on the hood when I was five, I have never felt threatened or unsafe, and the police blotter, which I often had to write when interning for The Hudson Hub, our local paper, was mostly just full of people complaining about barking dogs. Every so often, there are accounts of domestic violence, but it's always about the wife knocking the shit out of her husband. That's probably because the women get really buff playing all that tennis and the men are golf-playing-pansies with high-paying nerdy jobs. My dad, to this day, always calls me when one of these reports makes the paper, insisting that my mother is equally abusive. I always reply: "you probably deserve it."
My dad, who grew up in the projects in Farrell, Pennsylvania, once saw some Hudson kids "fighting" after school, and he got really mad. "Those kids don't even know how to fight!" He exclaimed. He also gets pissed because none of them are ever outside playing sports on our street. In Hudson, we're raising the future generation to be pampered, XBOX playing people who don't know how to kick someone's ass.
Precautions I Took: I always locked my car doors, but that's because I'm OCD about it, and technically locking your car doors doesn't make a difference anyway, when your own friends actually pick up your car and move it to the bushes.
Incident Report: None.
How Safe? 9
It would be a ten, but it's pretty dangerous to live near all the meth labs.
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
The Scene: At first glance, the Gettysburg College campus looks exactly like Hudson -- affluent, bursting with well trimmed lawns, BMWs, and people who looked like they've pranced off the pages of the J. Crew catalogue. But I never felt safe or happy there, and there were few people I trusted.
When I came back to campus after studying in Florence for a semester, people asked me about Italian boys and if I had to watch out for them. I see where Italians get a reputation for being overly flirtatious -- they actually do yell, "Ciao, Bella!", will smack your ass while walking by, and expose their penises. But oddly, I felt less threatened by them than the guys on the Gettysburg campus. The Italians might approach me on the street, but I didn't feel a whole lot safer around college boys. Many of the Fraternities encouraged brothers not to take rape seriously, use roofies to get what they want, and Frat houses were purposely confusing and maze-like so girls had a hard time being in control of their situations. Those boys were cordial to me on the street, but I wasn't stupid, and I knew what they were up to behind closed doors. I felt it was far scarier. At Gettysburg, I always felt like I was experiencing the quiet before the storm -- that something really fucked up was about to happen, or was happening.
Precautions I Took: Didn't make eye contact with anyone. (This was mostly because I had no friends.) Didn't take drinks from boys. (This is mostly because they weren't offering them to me.) Tried not to spend the night in fraternities. (This is mostly because I rarely frequented them.)
Incident Report: None, which is weird because 127 N. Washington St didn't even have door locks and we let a homeless guy sleep in our living room. But this is a testament to the town, not the campus. Gettysburg PA was a different universe than the school situated among it's battlefields.
How safe? 6
Florence, Italy 
The Scene: Living in Florence was like living inside a dreamy snow globe. I instantly fell in love with the people, the streets, the food, the shops, and the language. I lived near my school and the Duomo, so transportation usually wasn't a problem. Italian boys vary region to region, and in Florence, many of them are pretty feminine. I wasn't really threatened by their complicated, spikey hair-dos, expensive sunglasses, and tight pink pants. They seemed more concerned about themselves than about me. But like most of Italy, sexuality hung heavily in the air. It didn't scare me, it was just there.
Incident Report: I saw a lot of publicly exposed penises. I don't know what these guys were trying to accomplish, but several times, I'd walk by a man on the street -- in broad daylight -- and see that his pants were down. And he'd just kind of look at me, like, "what do you think?" As if he really wanted to know. One time I was on the phone with my mom and a young guy ran up to me, slapped my ass, and when he turned around to look at me I saw he was jerking off. I didn't say anything because I didn't want my mom to worry, but I was sort of freaked out. But it really wasn't a scary situation. It was bizarre. I was glad I was on the phone, kept talking, and walked quickly away.
My roommate was walking around our neighbor hood and a gypsy took the banana she was eating out of her hand and said, "Thanks" (in English.) A bizarre -- not scary -- incident. And let's face it -- the gypsy was pretty cordial about the whole thing. I'm not saying terrible things don't happen in Florence, but they didn't happen to us. Lots of students studying abroad live in a bubble.
How safe? 8
Rome, ItalyThe Scene: I loved living in Rome, but I almost never felt safe. I lived by myself in a poorer section of the city, Via Appia, one of the oldest streets in the world, right under the ancient city walls. My apartment was at the top of the escalator stairs of a dilapidated outdoor mall and when I walked home at night, I'd have to walk a stretch under the desolate wall, which made me really nervous. I always thought if I started screaming nobody would hear me.
The transportation system in Rome is horrible, which made me feel unsafe. The bus drivers act like they're just kind of driving around and doing you a huge favor by bring you somewhere -- and their route doesn't always follow the path printed on the maps. If bus drivers don't feel like working, they don't. They're always on strike.
The subway closes at midnight, and there are only two lines. Every time they try to dig a new one, they run into Julius Caesar's remains or some ancient relic from the Forum or some shit, and have to stop everything, so it's taking forever to expand underground. Most people rely on cars or scooters.
My neighbors, Rome's poorer people, weren't usually Italian, they were from Albania, India, Asian countries, or the Middle East, and they were the ones making me uncomfortable on my lonely walks home. I know that there are shady Italians in Rome, but I never feel incredibly threatened by the ones I met. I find them to be pretty goofy people who like to laugh, eat, and flirt. Many of them men are either mamas boys or metrosexuals.
Precautions I Took: The apartment I was living in was furnished when I moved in and there were no huge knives in the kitchen. But I wanted to protect myself somehow. I noticed a 12 inch, metal, two-pronged pitch-fork looking thing in the kitchen. As a vegetarian, I wasn't in need of a meat poker so I kept it in my purse and remembered it in times I felt unsafe. When I went out with Roman guys, I'd always show them the meat poker. "I'm just saying," I'd tell them, sort of for a good laugh, but sort of as a way of saying, "Don't fuck with me." They didn't.
I also changed out of my cute clothes and into my burglar-outfit when I walked around my neighborhood at night. (Jeans, black turtle neck, black winter hat -- the hat to disguise my hair. There were absolutely zero blondies in the hood. Keep in mind: I loathe turtle necks and I wore the heavy hat even in the warmest weather.)
Incident Report: None, but that's probably because I was weirdly cautious.
How Safe? 5
New York City
The Scene: I realize I am pretty sheltered and fortunate, and I live in a very nice neighborhood, which isn't necessarily an accurant representation of the entire city. But my experience has been very cozy. I feel really safe in New York City. I live near Lincoln Center, which means there's always a bunch of old people on their way to the Opera hobbling around. This is strangely comforting. I can walk around in my neighborhood at any time during the night.
I think why I feel so safe in NYC has a lot to do with the transportation system. I know that no matter where I am, there is a subway station nearby, which means there are people and a way to get home.
There are also so many people that you are never alone. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a little naïve, that maybe I should hug my purse a little tighter to my side, stop using those shady ATMs on the street, or stop talking to strangers on the Subway at three in the morning. But I trust New York City. I'm lucky to live and work in safe areas -- I know that a little farther north it's extremely dangerous.
I haven't seen Cloverfield, but apparently there is a scary scene in which the fear factor comes from the presence of a monster attacking the subway system. After seeing the film, my mom called me to warn me of the dangers of the B Train. It's natural to worry about your daughter living alone in New York City, but can we please cross worrying about monster subway attacks off the list? She also keeps telling me about this story about a young woman... who looked exactly like me and lived exactly where I live and had the exact same job that I have... who was THROWN onto the subway tracks before a moving train!!!!! I get it mom, you can stop worrying. When I'm waiting on the platform, I always cling to the columns with my entire body until the train has arrived. (Sanitary? No. Safe? Yes.)
Precautions I Take: I always triple check to be sure my door is locked, and just as obsessively unplug my flat iron so I don't burn my building down. I don't leave my purse unattended. If someone really creepy is hitting on me I tell them I have a boyfriend. I don't tell strangers where I live. I never put my drink down.
Incident Report: None
How Safe? 7
Conclusion: I've never had to knock on wood, but I know someone who has, which makes me wonder if I should.
Nobody ever really comments on this blog, but I'd love to know how safe other people have felt in places they've lived, or if they think I'm way off about my probably unfair assessments of Italy, New York, and Gettysburg.
