Stranger Danger

Take the candy!

After years of nearly zero brushes with unlawfulness in big cities, I recently fell victim to my first ever mugging. Being robbed in broad daylight ranks relatively high on the list of city dangers, but for me it lead to a far scarier threat ... Mary Kay saleswomen.

At first glance that cosmetics company would have no relationship to a purse-snatching. However, with my shoulder bag went a stash of newly purchased goods from "Facial Home Depot"*, Ulta Beauty. Cruel fate! It was a deep blow to my shallow side. Due to budget constraints, I settled on cheap drug store replacements but the feeling of loss lingered. (It did amuse me to imagine the thug's dismay when he realized all my assets were tied up in Bare Minerals. Or maybe "Golden Gate" was his shade too?)

"According to WMATA, this escalator is operational."

Stay to the right, guys.

The metro in DC is great - it's often orderly, on time, and clean-ish. (Of course, when something goes wrong, i.e. some anxious tourist or exhausted bureaucrat prevents the door from closing, the place makes the capsized Poseidon look like a poorly-done carnival ride.) One thing that's not great about Metro, though, is the escalators - they are so frequently incapacitated that, yes, they constitute a City Danger.

The escalator at the station near my office has been "closed for modernization" for months (I am expecting cup holders, charger outlets for my iPod, and leather) which annoyingly requires that traffic go both ways up the functioning escalator.

Welcome to City Dangers

My sister and I enjoy living in cities, mainly because they offer access to dainty things like coffeeshops, bookstores, subways, cupcakes, "eyes on the street", and so on. Also salient is the fact that they offer jobs - or used to? - but that's really just a funding vehicle for the coffee/books/pastries/etc. Sadly, the urban arena brings with it a host of colorful dangers, "city dangers" if you will. These dirty, scary, itchy, annoying, painful challenges are what our blog is about!