Night Life, Night Death

After a god-awful French film (La France) at the New Directors/New Films festival (widely varying quality, but often very exciting stuff, such as Red Road last year) and thoroughly blitzed by a marg on the rocks with salt at the well-named 125 Small Plates place in the previously Black Hole restaurant location at 3143 Broadway, I walked out on to a Broadway blocked off by police vehicles and yellow Incident Do Not Cross tape. There had been no screaming sirens while I was in the restaurant but also no indication of anything amiss as the 1 train I'd been on surfaced 45 minutes earlier. The strobbing red lights were up at 122nd at Manhattan School of Music, so I walked up, driven by the drink and the craven, but ubiquitous something-happened curiosity, passed an NYPD detectives van, and at the Manhattan School of Music was asked by a plainclothesman to turn left and walk up toward Riverside, past the glut of NewsChannel Blah Blah vans and away from the scene, which seemed to be across Broadway at the SE corner of 122nd. I asked him what had happened and a bit to my surprise instead of replying "Can't tell you," he said, "A cop shot somebody." Read about it in the Times tomorrow, or online tonight, but a couple hours ago, maybe as I was picking my way out of the dark Walter Reade Theater while the credits rolled, a cop, another person, and a bullet (or several) were converging in a moment none of them expected when the alarm went off this morning.

Footnote : Either the plainclothesman was wrong, or I misunderstood him. In fact, three kids accosted a Columbia graduate student from China on the median at Broadway and 122nd. One began attacking the student, who broke away across Broadway and was struck by a southbound car that had no chance to see him and stop. He was killed. We found out another day later that he lived in our building, making the whole tragedy even sadder. His attacker is fourteen years old.