Some of you may remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned briefly that I was only minutes away from being able to witness a stabbing. 

Actually, it was three stabbings... sort of.  One guy stabbed three people, so I guess that counts as a "tripple stabbing," rather than three individual stabbings.  Still, it’s much better than only a single stabbing, or even a double stabbing.

And, to answer your question - yes, I can joke about this, because no one died.  If someone had died, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to see it... but these guys just got "mildly" stabbed, so it would have been entertaining; even moreso because it was apparently fueled by an argument among affluent businessmen over something to do with money.

My guess is that here on the streets of New York we’re going to be seeing a lot more affluent, money-based assaults, especially with the sudden implosion of Wall Street icon Bear Sterns and its low-paying buyout by JP Morgan at $2.00 a share (yes, that story broke a matter of minutes ago, and perhaps you heard it here first.  Beat that, New York Times).  There are going to be some pretty angry, pretty unemployed businessmen come tomorrow morning.

But that’s not the point of this blog.  I’m getting to that.

Yesterday, I was walking through a part of Manhattan I hadn’t visited before.  I walked from the Rossevelt Island airtram down Second Ave.  It’s a pretty nice part of town, and I was just admiring the buildings and eating a doughtnut.  At one point I stopped and watched a crane work on a new building going in.  I remember thinking to myself that I’ve never really stopped and watch one of these tall buildings being worked on, and it’s kind of been a dream of mine to get to work on one of these things, even if only for a couple days - to climb out on girders thirty, forty stories up, and to look down at the streets below...

Anyway, again, not my point.

My point is that about an hour after I continued on my way, that crane collapsed, crushing an entire building and killing at least four people.  For the sake of sensitivity, I really can’t joke about this.

But it does raise an interesting question - I’ve narrowly missed (at least) two pretty momentous tragedies in the two months that I’ve lived in this city.

Is it me?  Should I start warning people after I’m about to leave a place that there is a good chance that something bad is going to happen?

Of course not.  That would be absurd.  I wanted to put that out there, though, just so that it’s on record, in case this trend continues.  Then I’ll be able to say that I told you so.