Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
11, the odds of being killed were one in fifty. In New York City there is one murder every
four hours. Murder there has become the most common cause of death for people under
thirty-five-and yet New York isn't even the most murderous city in America. At least eight
other cities have a higher murder rate. In Los Angeles there are more murders on school-
grounds alone each year than there are in the whole of London. So perhaps it is little won-
der that people in American cities take violence as routine. I don't know how they do it.
On my way to Des Moines to start this trip, I passed through O'Hare Airport in Chicago,
where I ran into a friend who worked for a St. Louis newspaper. He told me he had been
working extra hard lately because of something that had happened to his boss. The boss
had been driving home from work late one Saturday night when he had stopped at some
traffic lights. As he waited for the lights to change, the passenger door opened and a man
with a gun got in. The gunman made the boss drive down to the riverfront, where he shot
him in the head and took his money. The boss had been in a coma for three weeks and they
weren't sure whether he was going to live.
My friend was telling me this not because it was such an incredible story, but simply by
way of elucidating why he was having to work so damned hard lately. As for his boss, my
friend's attitude seemed to be that if you forget to lock your car doors when you're driving
through St. Louis late at night, well, you've got to expect to take a bullet in the head from
time to time. It was very odd, his deadpan attitude, but it seems to be more and more the
way in America now. It made me feel like a stranger.
I drove downtown and parked near City Hall. On top of the building is a statue of William
Penn.It'sthemainlandmarkdowntown,visiblefromallaroundthecity,butitwascovered
in scaffolding. In 1985, after decades of neglect, the city fathers decided to refurbish the
statue before it fell down. So they covered it in scaffolding. However, this cost so much
thattherewasnomoneylefttodotherepairs.Now,twoyearslater,thescaffoldingwasstill
there and not a lick of work had been done. A city engineer had recently announced with
a straight face that before long the scaffolding itself would need to be refurbished. This is
moreorlesshowPhiladelphia works,whichistosaynotverywell.NoothercityinAmer-
icapursuesthetwinidealsofcorruptionandincompetencewithquitethesameenthusiasm.
When it comes to asinine administration, Philadelphia is in a league of its own.
Consider: in 1985, a bizarre sect called MOVE barricaded itself into a tenement house on
the west side oftown. The police chief and mayor considered the options open to them and
decided that the most intelligent use of their resources would be to blow up the house-but
of course!-even though they knew there were children inside and it was in the middle of
a densely populated district. So they dropped a bomb on the house from a helicopter. This
