Is the fun, safe New York I used to know gone for good?

As a young woman living in Manhattan some years ago, the city felt like my playground. Virtually nowhere was off-limits, too unfriendly or unsafe to visit.

The Theater District for plays. The Lower East Side for live music. Harlem for soul food. The Bronx for Italian. Queens for Mets games. Brooklyn for beaches. My friends and I would walk the streets of Manhattan into the early-morning hours without worry. I felt perfectly comfortable taking the subway alone at night.

In the 13 years I lived there, I never had my purse stolen or a single uncomfortable subway encounter. In fact, after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, I worried constantly about unattended backpacks, mailbox bombs and transit terrorism — but never about being personally attacked.

That New York is gone, apparently. In the years since I’ve moved out to the suburbs, COVID-19 and crime have ravaged the town where I once felt so safe. Now, reading the crime section in the newspaper is like a walk down memory lane past all my old haunts — except the street is terrifying and unrecognizable.

There was a stabbing on West 44th Street and Ninth Avenue that sent a man to the hospital — it’s being investigated as a hate crime. That’s just four blocks from where my office was, and the exact corner of my favorite theater district restaurant. The theater district is now a crime haven.

Another night, two men were shot and wounded near Ludlow and Stanton Streets — where my friends and I would go to enjoy music at least one night a week.

The next morning, an ex-con released from prison a month ago attacked five people with a knife and a bottle during a meth-induced rampage on the Upper East Side, where I used to live. One victim was attacked two blocks from my friend’s old apartment. That victim was taken to the hospital where I regularly volunteered.

Later that day, a man slashed a woman in the leg on a subway platform at Herald Square, a station I once used nightly.

That was all over three days and managed to intersect with much of my old life in Manhattan.

That doesn’t even cover the Brooklyn subway rampage that left 29 people wounded. Or other recent gruesome attacks outside Manhattan in recent days.

Cops say shootings are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx — neighborhoods where residents are already struggling with other challenges.

It’s no wonder some New Yorkers want out of what we all once agreed was the greatest city in the world.

A recent Morning Consult poll found that 40% of New Yorkers working in Manhattan said they want to leave the state, and a whopping 84% said conditions in the city have worsened in the last two years, particularly with violent subway crimes and homelessness.

The numbers back it up. On the subways, a 68% increase in crime since this period last year. Hate crimes are up 41%. Overall crime is up 44%.

Robberies are up 48%, with rapes up 17% and shootings up 8%.

It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to visit a city, much less live in one, with crime numbers going in this direction.

Mayor Eric Adams says of the crime surge, “The most important city on the globe has become a laughingstock of the globe.” But for those of us who love this town and still want it to be great, no one’s laughing. It’s a tragedy.

New York City has survived a lot over the years. But can it survive this new crime wave ripping through too many of the city’s neighborhoods, crippling transit, terrorizing locals and tourists alike, and tearing away the sense of safety that once made it so livable and loveable? This once-and-always New Yorker hopes so.