Tonight, I went down to the D to hang out with a couple of grad school girlfriends who are from the South Side of Chicago and south central L.A, respectively. We ended up exploring downtown using the People Mover... and I almost had my bag snatched for the first time in my life. My friend from South Side Chicago quickly moved between me and the young dude who was just about to go for it. There were other people in the car, but he seemed absolutely determined, like he had nothing to lose.

I've ridden the People Mover since its inception, without any thought of the time of day, and without incident. Has something changed that I should know about? I'm not used to being treated like a mark, especially not on Detroit public transportation. I didn't have a car until I was 23 and was intimately familiar with both the DOT bus and the People Mover for anything I wanted to get to, day or night. I *always* have taken a bag everywhere I went in Detroit, *everywhere*, and have never been a victim of personal crime.

This left me wondering if I'm an absolute idiot for considering a move back downtown as a single female. My friends, who are no strangers to rough and notorious urban environments, now definitely think so. They say that I've lost the instincts that probably protected me while I treated the city as my oyster in my teens and throughout my 20s, and can't behave the way that I used to, going here, there, and everywhere as night as a woman. My mother just thinks that folks are more desperate than they were in 1990 or 2003, and that I should wait the recession out before renting or buying down that way... "things will turn around, they always do," she says.

What happened has shaken me up pretty badly. I've never felt threatened anywhere in the CBD, ever, in almost 33 years of living. Detroit has always been my haven, the place where I return to recenter no matter how far away I roam. If I have that taken away from me, I'm not sure what I'll do.