[MGSA-L] MGSA-L Digest, Vol 85, Issue 17

[George Baloglou]

Unlike Dr. Allen, I do not visit Athens frequently. But I hear from a
relative who lives there that you do not want to walk at Panepistimiou
Street at night, and a U.S. friend tells me that his aging mother has
minimized her walks at Patission Street even during the day. (These
are streets I am familiar with, streets that looked safe to me two
years ago.) And there is much more reported in the media, about store
owners that have been mugged several times, about closing downtown
hotels (largely because of high crime rate), and so on.

If you read http://seisaxthia.blogspot.com/2011/02/blog-post_4944.html
carefully enough you will realize that what happened to actor Stelios
Maynas was far from random; in my judgement, the situation described
in his statement fully justifies the term "crime-infested" (for a
substantial, and inevitably growing, part of Athens anyway).

George Baloglou

2011/5/19 james verinis <jverinis at gmail.com>:
> Without intending to make light of the situation, in line with Dr.
> Allen's thinking, with all the melodramatic press Greece has suffered
> over the past couple of years (I'm thinking of headlines such as
> 'beware of Greeks....' or 'Herculean debt'), I feel compelled to say
> that I wish Athens was the most crime infested city I've ever been in.
> And I'm really not that well-travelled. If the immigrants are so
> dangerous and the immigrant-hating Greeks are so dangerous, if we
> believe what we read, who are the people I know in Greece?
>
> On Wednesday, May 18, 2011, Allen, Peter <PAllen at ric.edu> wrote:
>> No. many of them live in Kolonaki, Zoographou, Pangrati, etc.  And when I go to Athens, which I do regularly (I was there last week and will be going again in mid-June), I stay in Pangrati and spend most of my time in the center of the city.
>>
>> PSA
>>
>> Peter S. Allen
>> Department of Anthropology
>> Rhode Island College
>> Providence, RI  02908
>> 401-456-9639
>> Fax: 401-456-9736
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: George Baloglou [mailto:gbaloglou at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 5:07 PM
>> To: Allen, Peter
>> Cc: mgsa-l at uci.edu
>> Subject: Re: [MGSA-L] MGSA-L Digest, Vol 85, Issue 17
>>
>> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Allen, Peter <PAllen at ric.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> I was a bit put-off (and puzzled) by the characterization of central Athens as "crime infested" in this posting. It seems to have come from the4 Associated Press.  Is there any justification for this?  I know crime has increased in Athens in recent years, but I would hardly describe it as "infested" with crime.
>>
>> Why do I get the impression that all your Athenian friends live in
>> nice suburbs???
>>
>> Here is some fresh news for starters (with a 'nice touch' in the
>> penultimate paragraph):
>> http://www.tanea.gr/default.asp?pid=2&ct=1&artId=4631330
>>
>> --
>>
>> Γιώργος Μπαλόγλου -- Θεσσαλονίκη
>>
>> http://www.oswego.edu/~baloglou (1988 - 2008)
>>
>> http://crystallomath.wordpress.com (2009 - )
>> _______________________________________________
>> List-Info: https://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/mgsa-l
>>
>



-- 

Γιώργος Μπαλόγλου -- Θεσσαλονίκη

http://www.oswego.edu/~baloglou (1988 - 2008)

http://crystallomath.wordpress.com (2009 - )