Bad guys on the street are not sportsmanlike. You heard it here first.
They are shopping for victims, not for sparring partners. They are not looking for a fair fight; they are looking for easy prey.
So the easiest way to avoid being a victim is to avoid seeming to be easy prey.
Bad guys who have been interviewed have indicated that they, exactly like wolves, look for vics who are unsteady on their feet and seem disoriented.
Here’s the lesson for the day, which I received about twenty years ago from the only native-English speaking cabbie I’ve ever encountered in New York City: walk fast, don’t smile, don’t look up at the buildings, and don’t do “anything stupid, like carrying your wallet in your wallet pocket”. He added that binoculars or a camera around your neck might just as well be a sign that said, Please Mug Me Now, Because I Want it BAD! He also pointed out that if I scanned everybody else around me and I was the only one with neat pens and watch, being elsewhere was a good idea.
Some people just walk like victims, and therefore have either a bad day every day in a big city, or have a great job as a police decoy (spelled “bait”), like Muggable Mary.
Here’s the lesson for martial artists: thank your Sensei politely every day of your life that you are not mugged, because you will not in general be saved from being a vic by your lightning-like technique, but instead by your balance, orientation, and the obvious center when you walk.
Summary: when you are in a big city, you need to walk places from time to time. During that time, you are part of the big smorgie of vics, as you present yourself as a potential vic. You want to fail your vic audition. You can often do so by walking balanced and centered and oriented.
Note that the vic audition is a little different in cities that permit concealed carry of firearms by civilians. And there are fewer happy perps in those cities.
London has recently become a much better city for muggers: the politicians in London and England generally have recently banned katanas and big knives. One can only wonder why politicians in England are so compassionate to muggers and BGs generally. If you guarantee that victims are without weapons, that makes it a lot easier to pick your vic with confidence. And if you’re a BG, you don’t CARE that there are laws against weapons. You’ll have one anyway, because you’re a BG! Note that in Australia, a country that should have known better, when guns were banned, home invasions went up 40%.
p.s. even if you don’t look like a vic most of the time, you may be able to improve your chances of being chosen in the Great Vic Audition that happens on your streets everyday. You can probably up the odds by walking out of a restaurant loudly saying, “Oh, God, I’m so full I can’t walk!” or by leaving a bar and shouting to your friends, “If I had one more drink I’d swim home!”
Generally, eat less and drink less when you’re out in the world, because, Smile! You’re on Candid Victim!
