cce blog

posters in inwood

Our neighborhood has seen some sad and unsettling news this past week: on Tuesday, the body of Sarah Fox was found in Inwood Hill Park. The vast, unlandscaped park has been a favorite place for outdoor exploration (especially for my roomate Michael), and apparently it was for her, also -- she's quoted as telling her mother "I’m exploring my neighborhood” shortly before she disappeared.

Images of Sarah Fox have been ubiquitous around here, from the missing posters on every pole last week, to the stories filed by all the TV crews that showed up this week, to the cover of the Daily News yesterday (alongside "West Side Rat Whacker"). The Times did a final profile on her today, and also provided further, troubling details on the investigation. It's all very sad. The prospect of a killer-at-large in my favorite park/neighborhood disturbs me, to say the least -- I'd always felt this was a safe, family-friendly place (as did fellow 207st blogger fshk), and used to merrily explore off-the-path areas near where her body was found. Now the crimestoppers posters and the police van blaring a recorded appeal for information have deflated this optimism considerably.

During my semester at Dinwiddy House in London's dodgy King's Cross district, a man was shot in a parked car right outside my dorm window. I was studying late that night, and remember being jolted upright by the shots, but assumed it was the local kids playing with firecrackers again. It never occurred to me what I'd heard until the police woke me up the next morning looking for witnesses; a shooting was just outside the realm of possibility, especially on a road I regularly traversed on the way to the chip shop. My neighborhood felt a lot grimmer/scarier after that; I hope the same won't apply to Inwood now.

Finally, on the subject of posters in Inwood, the Dominican elections are finally over, with the purple dude winning. At first, I assumed the posters with his face all over the neighborhood were for city council or somesuch -- but that didn't explain the purple cars, or the marchers I saw waving purple flags on Dyckman St. Turns out this is the first year Dominicans living in the US voted in the DR's election. So, neat.