Once upon a time, the world regarded New York City as a dangerous place to be. Graffiti was strewn all over buildings and the subway, rapes and homicides were frequently mentioned in local news, and young women were often advised against going home alone at night. Lucky for me, I will never know what that is like since I moved to New York in 2008, long after the city cleaned up, and because no one really sleeps here, you’d rarely be on any block at any hour of the night and be alone. I was briefly reminded of my ignorance of this when a friend warned me to be safe during our planned trip to St. Louis, Missouri, because the city, though a cosmopolitan area, is still struggling with poverty and does not have even a fraction of the racial diversity that New York has.