At Least the Trains Ran on Time

Two library security guards dropped by on their rounds the other day. They looked wearier than usual and told me that they had just come from breaking up a catfight between two partially clothed women on the front steps of the main library. Before you get too titillated, the combatants were filthy bag ladies who both looked a lot like the bloated body in the bathtub of room 217 of the Overlook Hotel. As they were screaming filth and grappling with each other they tore each others clothes off until they were down to what would have been their underwear if they had been wearing any. Just the thing you want your children to see on a visit to the library.

Homeless congregate on the steps of the library because misguided Good Samaritans will drive by and hand out food and clothes to them there. Citizens trying to help the homeless use it as a centralized drop off location for food and clothes, in effect making the library an unoffical rescue street mission/soup kitchen, but with none of the proper staff or facilities. The security guard told me that he often see homeless men walking around with plates of food and trays of lasagna, which they eat and leave half eaten on the library steps. People also drop off bags of old clothes so the homeless will use the library's bathroom as a changing room. He will find filth encrusted outfits crawling with vermin shoved in the trashcans of the library.

It's not that I haven't any social conscience or feel that the homeless should be hidden from view. But outside the library they loiter, shoot up, deal drugs, fight and the library and its staff are neither equipped nor trained to deal with this. The hit and run philanthropists who hand out food can get a warm fuzzy high but in the meantime the average patron avoids the library for fear of his life and the library is left to deal with the mess. At times I feel that the main has been basically ceded to the homeless.

What is so sad it that even though I consider myself a very live and let live liberal, when I see and hear these sort of things I feel myself sliding down the repressive (but well maintained and graffiti free!) slope of fascism. Intrusive phrases like "At least the trains ran on time" pop into my head. I envision more of a Starship Troopers style fascist utopia than Mussolini's or Mayor Giuliani's. In any case, the codependent, free for all style of this city is not working.