NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton may be intent on downplaying the recent spate of slashings in the city, but the incidents don't seem to be winding down any time soon.
Just Thursday morning, a man wearing an American flag bandana as a mask randomly slashed a woman across the neck in broad daylight, police said.
As a blues guitarist who goes by the Youtube handle messiahsez sings in a recent video, "There's a new fashion in New York town ... the fashion is slashin'."
That wizened bluesman isn't the only New Yorker taking artistic inspiration from city residents' worst nightmare.
As a subway slashing victim himself, stand-up comedian Doug Smith stars in a web series offering "urban survival" tips from a real survivor, the third episode of which he released on YouTube Tuesday.
In the opening sequence of "Secret Weapon," Smith tells his viewers he's devoted his life to "helping the people of the world's greatest city prepare for and defend against countless life-threatening situations." Those include, we find out later, confronting "rowdy teenagers" loitering outside a pizzeria, and making your way past those "clipboard-toting dweebs trying to make a difference."
The slashing portrayed in the show's intro is based on true events: on Sept. 30, 2011, Smith was on his way home from a gig when he saw a man assaulting a woman in the F train station at Second Avenue on the Lower East Side, he told The Interrobang. His efforts to intervene were met with violence; the attacker, later sentenced to 15 years in prison, sliced his left cheek from ear to chin with a box-cutter.
The encounter left him with an obvious scar, some material for his stand-up routine, and emotional damage he didn't recognize until "two or three years ago," he told DNAinfo New York, when "there was some wackadoo on the train who was ranting and raving and punching windows."
"I was finishing a slice of pizza, and subconsciously just started folding the paper plate, and then before I knew it I had this perfectly formed shank that really could have done some damage," Smith said.
Suddenly all the straphangers in the car turned their attention to him, he recalled.
"That’s when it dawned on me ... I would never have done this prior to the attack, but now I’m so hyper-vigilant that it’s turned me into kind of this character."
That character in "Secret Weapon" is an over-confident "urban survival idiot savant" whose self-defense advice invites greater danger.
Smith the comedian, who still takes the F train home to Park Slope, said that the recent series of slashings have him more worried about his family's safety than his own.
"I have a wife and I have a 5-month old son," said the co-host of a monthly show at the Creek and Cave in Long Island City. "Whenever she goes into the city with him, I am a little terrified."
But the news of more knife-inflicted violence also presents an opportunity: the series he produced with videographer and editor Dan Hirshon seven months ago could be poised for exposure now that it's particularly topical.
A screening of the first episode at the UCB East show Channel 101 Tuesday earned its advance to next month's round, said Smith, who has tentative plans to shoot a few more episodes this spring.
Watch the first installment below:
