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I am not sure what one even has to do to get mugged in NYC. And I am saying that as someone who has walked across Manhattan through Times Square on multiple occasions after midnight, all while very properly inebriated.

However, there is imo no way to avoid seeing rats if you used NYC subway more than once and had your eyelids up.

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I'll be the first to admit the city cleaned up a lot between my first vist there in the late 1970s and more recently a year or two ago ... that said, for whatever reason, a lot of non American first time visitors seem to still carry that '70s image of NYC as a crime hub.

Might be all those 'classic' NYC films exporting a vibe.

I still haven't seen an NYC rat chase a cat while carrying a pizza though, admittedly I'm an infrequent and short term visitor.

I was a frequent visitor to Manhattan in the 2000s, and I generally felt very safe at any time in midtown, and the upper east and west sides. My recent visit last year (the first in 10 years or so) was shocking in how much Manhattan had deteriorated in terms of safety. I don't know what it was like in the 70s so I can't compare.

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