Gratuitous Insult, Canal Street

Is the gratuitous insult, flung in an anonymous public writing, just a New York City thing? Probably not.



I'm fascinated by the psychology of it. So personal, yet so random. Some unsuspecting 6-year-old kid could be reading those words.



It would never have occurred to me to randomly seed a public space that way -- to set a visual booby trap for the unwary. Look in the wrong place and