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The following website Guide to Safety in New York City warns visitors to 'Stay below 96th Street and out of Alphabet City in the East Village', from what I've read in the many forums here this advice seems outdated and based on old reputations from the 1980's and 90's. Why then do such websites still provide this advice?
It's written by some tourism board,what do you expect ? Their advertisers are all mid town tourist traps and sights.Would you expect them to encourage people to go out of the tourist trap zone ?
The only really annoying thing is they make it sound like everywhere but midtown is a danger zone when the reality is that you probably have a better chance getting mugged in midtown than in most outer borough neighborhoods.
It's all geared to making people from Iowa safe in a certain area even if it means having to insinuate that most of the NY crime is away from midtown.
Sad.
That website also talks about people trying to steal a calling card number and run up your bill. Who uses pay phones let alone calling cards. This reminds me of when I went to europe with school and they made us wear money belts. Later when i went with family we realized it was ok to carry a purse since pretty much every Italian was.
Is Alphabet City really considered that bad? Couple of years ago I traveled on foot to Manitoba's (I believe on Avenue B), and aside from walking over a homeless person who was sleeping on the street there was nothing intimidating about it. But after talking with the owner of the bar (the former singer of The Dictators) he was telling me that it was only about 10 years ago where it was a really nasty place, it was where he used to go to get drugs. For all I know that could be true, but when I was there it wasn't bad atall. Then when I mentioned to a friend that I went there he looked at me in horror, and this is someone who's a firefighter in Flatbush.
Um, I would STILL caution most tourists to stay out of the far eastern edge of Alphabet City (Ave D & some stretches of C) and many parts of Harlem. I wouldn't go there myself and I have more street smarts and a handle of what rough/ sketchy areas look like compared to urban areas that look sketchy but really aren't than the average tourist.
I have a pretty old Eyewitness Travel book I bought prior to moving to NYC and even it includes the main "tourist" attractions in Harlem/ Upper Manhattan that are perfectly safe to visit- Apollo Theatre & 125th Street, St John's Cathedral, The Cloisters, Columbia, & Museum of the City of NY. I'm not sure why else a tourist would really want to tour residential neighborhoods- esp ones that are potetially unsafe if you happen to pick the wrong block.
I would caution tourists to stay out of Harlem & Alphabet City after it gets dark in the evening.
But the tourist guide makes no reference to either Harlem or after dark.It flatly states "Stay below 96th Street and out of Alphabet City in the East Village." Presumably that means the upper west side in the high 90's and 100's and along Riverside Drive up to and around Columbia....even in the daytime.
Pretty ridiculous.
In general I would caution people from going anywhere around Times Square, Rockefeller, and 5th Avenue shopping districts in general as you will probably be mugged either by con artists, street thugs, retail shops and restaurants.
That's a silly Web site designed for people who have never been to a city, any city, before. If you're from Sydney you shouldn't have a problem. Alphabet City is perfectly safe.
Prime, i.e., central Harlem is fine too. It gets a little sketchy at night the further east you go, i.e., Spanish Harlem. However, the main reason to go to Harlem would be for the architecture and street life, which you would want to see in the day anyway. The same applies to Bed-Stuy.
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