New York City’s radically reshaped political and economic landscape has me thinking more about the creepy fading Twilight of the Giuliani Era, a time when I viewed the city’s turbulent identity crisis from the vantage point of a silent Silver Man standing very still in the bowels of the subway system. In the decade-and-a-half that’s blazed by since, select sectors of New York have become safer but also heartrendingly sterile, with chain stores and bank branches muscling out locally-owned enterprises, and bohemian live-work warrens razed to accommodate obscenely costly condos—all of that frothy money polishing New York’s idiosyncratic edges into a smooth, homogenous sheen.

Children of the world, don’t believe your parents, your shrinks, or your imaginary friends: worst nightmares sometimes do come true. Sure, many humans can get through their entire lives without falling out of an airplane, having a leg eaten off by a shark, being kidnapped by a tiny car full of saber-toothed circus clowns, or being awoken at 2 a.m. by a group of drug-crazed hippies wielding ice picks and chanting “Kill the pig, acid is groovy.” But some don’t. We all have these fears and they are perfectly rational, so watch out.