There has been a depressing reversal of the decline in violent crime rates in recent years, but you know... 20 years ago, I'd probably never have opted to live where I do now. And when I first came back to Edmonton, the core was packed with stabby bars. It wasn't too terribly long before that that we used to have streetwalkers plying their trade downtown.
My calibration of risk is a bit weird, but I remember being blasé about having knives pulled on me, or people trying to start fights with me because I was reading a book. One night I got pepper sprayed in an apparent mugging attempt near the Greyhound terminal, because that was the popular thing back then, but the stuff did not have a strong effect upon me, and as the guy was trying to grab my wallet I reflexively elbowed him in the face, and knocked him out cold. I stood there for a moment, puzzled and trying to process what just happened, then declared, "Oops. Sorry about that, eh?" and socially awkward penguined my way out of there, hurrying to catch the train home. I accidentally cleared out the car because I was still nicely seasoned and definitely had a spicy aroma wafting off of me.
The stuff I used to see on the LRT on a regular basis was wild. Feral even. Granted, I'd take the train home to Belvedere a lot, often around midnight, and the Transit Hotel attracted an element to the neighbourhood. I ended up getting pepper sprayed AGAIN because a loud drunk and some punk kid started an argument which turned to physical conflict. I lost track of the number of times I saw a fight on the train or on the platform (Coliseum was like Waffle House without the cuisine).
Like the month before I moved in, a police raid on the next building over resulting in a couple of deaths because they breached as the guys they were after were climbing over their balcony rail. A flash bang went off and they landed badly on the concrete below. Not long after I moved in, I had to intervene in a domestic dispute the floor above, after at about 0130 I heard a woman loudly expressing that someone was trying to kill her. Another night I went jogging and the police helicopter shone its spotlight on me because apparently that was suspicious activity. The police officer in the patrol cruiser pulled up on me was rather bemused that I was just out running.
Another night I had some guy bang loudly on my window, calling out for some friend of his. I told him I thought he was in the wrong place. He looked confused and/or impaired, then asked if I wanted to buy some meat and I shit you not he unzips his jacket and like something out of a cartoon has a bunch of packages of fresh steaks tucked into his coat. I tactfully declined and he went on his merry way in search of more steak buyers.
I remember eating in a late night diner near the U of A and some drunk wanders in and after about ten minutes just started uttering threats to slit all of our throats. And I'm sitting there looking skeptical and eating pancakes.
The news was frequently a cycle of gang murders, or unidentified corpses found in interesting places. Gun crime in particular got attention.
Oh. We had an actual shooting range downtown, in an old warehouse at the corner of 105 Street and 104 Ave. It was just a bit sketch. It got shutdown after someone got shot in it.
It's very weird for me seeing the way that all of this is covered, because the core and LRT all feel kind of calm compared to what I remember, and the world just seems to act like that old Edmonton never existed.
(Insert obligatory Pepperidge Farm Remembers meme.)