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Sep. 25th, 2007 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gone_byebyeThere have been days when it has been good to be NYPD Detective John Chen- very, very good. This is not one of them.
He lives in Brooklyn, so we should begin there. The entrances to the DeKalb Avenue subway station is being upgraded for greater ADA compliance, which translates into ‘half the stairs have been closed off and the street level elevator’s tied up with people who don’t’ particularly need it’. He’d drive into Manhattan, but the lower level of the Manhattan Bridge is still having repair work done. Besides, he’s had a look at the traffic advisories for the day. He’ll take his chances with the train.
You see, New York is a city of something like nine million people. Thirty-six per cent of those people were born in other countries, and most of the rest are intensely proud of their heritage in one way or another. They like to have festivals. They like to have parades. They quite often have parades at the same time as each other. This is not the problem, since in John Chen’s experience most of these parades’ spectators are pretty civilized towards one another. The problem is that they like to have parades down the long avenues that run north-south (or the closest approximation thereof, given that Manhattan Island is slanted in a north-northeast direction). And that means that streets are blocked off en masse for safety’s sake. Lots of streets.
Today the streets in question are Sixth Avenue, from 58th south to 39th, and 40th and 41st between Fifth and Park Avenue, then Madison Avenue south to 27th. Armenians down the first, Malinese (and a lot of other West Africans) down the second- Independence Day celebrations. They couldn’t get enough cops over the Yom Kippur weekend to ensure the parades went down smoothly, so they’re doing it today instead.
Which, you know, would be fine with Chen, except that it’s never only one thing. He and the rest of the Spook Squad have a special assignment. The Dalai Lama’s visiting the United States, and he’s speaking in Central Park today. They’re expecting fifty thousand people to turn up at the Great Lawn, maybe more. Given the ever-looming shadow of 55 Central Park West and the incident under Cleopatra’s Needle the year after that, it was pretty much a given from the start that the security would involve paranormal measures. His Holiness’s monks’ve given the area a good solid going-over, plenty of blessings and purifications and all, but the Spook Squad’s still been assigned to security duty just in case.
Could be worse, though. They could be down at the UN. There’s a conference on the restriction of illegal trade in small arms and oh, God, the protesters. Anti-gun groups, pro-gun groups that want to make sure their good names aren’t besmirched by people who can’t be bothered to pay attention to their national laws, Amnesty International, parents of gun violence victims, it just goes on and on and on. It wouldn’t be so bad if half the Burmese population of the city wasn’t also protesting at the UN, mostly as a show of solidarity with the monks and Aung San Suu Kyi back in Myanmar.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the temperature weren’t rising towards the nineties for the third day in a row.
It wouldn’t be so bad if- oh, hell, who are we kidding. Today is a really bad day to be NYPD Detective John Chen, and it’s only going to get worse.
He lives in Brooklyn, so we should begin there. The entrances to the DeKalb Avenue subway station is being upgraded for greater ADA compliance, which translates into ‘half the stairs have been closed off and the street level elevator’s tied up with people who don’t’ particularly need it’. He’d drive into Manhattan, but the lower level of the Manhattan Bridge is still having repair work done. Besides, he’s had a look at the traffic advisories for the day. He’ll take his chances with the train.
You see, New York is a city of something like nine million people. Thirty-six per cent of those people were born in other countries, and most of the rest are intensely proud of their heritage in one way or another. They like to have festivals. They like to have parades. They quite often have parades at the same time as each other. This is not the problem, since in John Chen’s experience most of these parades’ spectators are pretty civilized towards one another. The problem is that they like to have parades down the long avenues that run north-south (or the closest approximation thereof, given that Manhattan Island is slanted in a north-northeast direction). And that means that streets are blocked off en masse for safety’s sake. Lots of streets.
Today the streets in question are Sixth Avenue, from 58th south to 39th, and 40th and 41st between Fifth and Park Avenue, then Madison Avenue south to 27th. Armenians down the first, Malinese (and a lot of other West Africans) down the second- Independence Day celebrations. They couldn’t get enough cops over the Yom Kippur weekend to ensure the parades went down smoothly, so they’re doing it today instead.
Which, you know, would be fine with Chen, except that it’s never only one thing. He and the rest of the Spook Squad have a special assignment. The Dalai Lama’s visiting the United States, and he’s speaking in Central Park today. They’re expecting fifty thousand people to turn up at the Great Lawn, maybe more. Given the ever-looming shadow of 55 Central Park West and the incident under Cleopatra’s Needle the year after that, it was pretty much a given from the start that the security would involve paranormal measures. His Holiness’s monks’ve given the area a good solid going-over, plenty of blessings and purifications and all, but the Spook Squad’s still been assigned to security duty just in case.
Could be worse, though. They could be down at the UN. There’s a conference on the restriction of illegal trade in small arms and oh, God, the protesters. Anti-gun groups, pro-gun groups that want to make sure their good names aren’t besmirched by people who can’t be bothered to pay attention to their national laws, Amnesty International, parents of gun violence victims, it just goes on and on and on. It wouldn’t be so bad if half the Burmese population of the city wasn’t also protesting at the UN, mostly as a show of solidarity with the monks and Aung San Suu Kyi back in Myanmar.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the temperature weren’t rising towards the nineties for the third day in a row.
It wouldn’t be so bad if- oh, hell, who are we kidding. Today is a really bad day to be NYPD Detective John Chen, and it’s only going to get worse.
