Aaron wrote in with another New York story:
So I'm walking to work up sixth avenue today, and there's a small crowd gathered around the intersection of sixth and Christopher street with a fire truck, ambulance, two police cars, and nearby NYPD waving the traffic past the site. I stopped to look, a little apprehensively since the scene was oddly quiet. What some minutes before had been a car was now burning metal crushed around street light pole. The front end was wrapped clear around the pole from the impact, and the front windshield was sprayed across the street in bloody chunks. Grey smoke drifted from what remained of the car.I had the opposite happen to me when I worked in East Harlem. I used to see camera crews up there frequently, shooting for "New York Undercover". I was walking down 110th Street and saw they were shooting another scene -- guy up against the wall, cops frisking him, a cop across the street with her gun drawn but hidden behind her leg. Then I realized -- where the hell are the cameras? That's when I decided I should perhaps move on. Quickly.
I was struck by how the angle of impact was completely wrong. Christopher street is one way, this car was heading the other direction and had hit the pole at an extreme speed. What the hell had happened? But then I also notice something equally unbelievable -- there were two very bloody bodies lying on the street, and the EMS people were standing arund them just chatting. Just like that, chatting like they were discussing Yankees box scores. Unbelievable. Nobody was lifting a finger to help the two people on the ground. I was thinking to myself, geez could people around here be any more callous?
I was getting more and more indignant about the situation. Then one of the bodies on the ground lifts himself up on an elbow, and one of the EMS medics pops a cigarette into his mouth and lights it for him. The bloody body takes a long drag and then thanks the medic. A guy with a film camera walks over and says "hey nice work guys" and the bodies stand up and dust themselves off. And I'm thinking then, don't they have a law around here about giving people heart attacks?
