stan: visiting manhattan with loved ones in the spring and fall can be a wonderful experience...one just needs to be careful and avoid dangerous situations...lived above there and worked in and around there for almost forty years...never had a problem...
There are very few, if any, remaining "dangerous" places in Manhattan, especially south of 96th. Quite simply, Manhattan is now a gated community for very rich people and the few of the servant class allowed to live there so they are close to the masters they serve. If you stay out of the few remaining poor neighborhoods, the most dangerous things are getting hit in a crosswalk or falling off a subway platform. You can walk down the Bowery and see fashionably-dressed women pushing expensive Euro-modern-design baby carriages but you will not see bums. You can walk through Times Square on a warm evening and have no one jostle you - the crowds are largely a thing of the past.
BTW, by turning it into this gated community, TPTB have also managed to kill the city's vitality. But, like a great old tree, even though it's already dead it hasn't realized it yet.
