It is Harder Than You Would Think to Get Mugged in Gwinnett County

Happy Halloween, Gwinnetians! All these trick or treaters and their buckets of candy got me thinking about my own bucket list, and getting mugged has been at the top of mine for a couple of decades now. It has, however, proven an elusive box to check off. For those of you who have spent too much time OTP, mugging is "a low-level street crime involving the quick theft of personal property accompanied by threats of violence", and widely considered an integral part of the urban American experience. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I have thus far been unable to experience this rite of American passage.

I've tried New York and Boston, both ostensible hubs of the mugging economy, but stereotypes, as they often do, proved untrue, and I emerged woefully unscathed. However, while standing on a cold Bronx street corner at midnight with a fake Rolex and hundred dollars hanging out of my pocket that no one seemed overly interested in taking, I had an epiphany.

"What if I could get mugged a little closer to home?"

According to crimegrade.org, the overall Gwinnett crime rate is (somewhat unbelievably) only about 20 crimes per 1,000 residents, so the odds were not exactly in my favor, but I figured I could stack the deck a little by doing some research. 

Based on the violent crime map above, downtown Lawrenceville appears to be an epicenter of criminal enterprise, so I decided to make that my base of operations. Despite the DTL's relatively small urban footprint, there are more than a few promisingly sketchy spots, including the alley where longtime DG readers will remember something weird definitely happened, so now I just needed a gameplan. My efforts in the northern metropolises had shown me that I was not a hot commodity, so, in the parlance of our times, what would it take to get a right swipe?

As I often do when the answers are few but the questions many, I headed to my favorite junk shops for inspiration. They say those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it, and if you ask my friends what two words come to mind when they hear my name, "ignorant" and "doomed" are a couple of prime candidates. I hit the Bill Cowher Bathroom Goodwill with no luck, followed by Ally's Attics One and Too, but nothing jumped out and said "hey, let's get mugged today", so I headed to my second most common source of hope, the internet.

As is usually the case, the internet did not disappoint and I quickly located a mugging tutorial that was originally published in 1904, an era that many consider the golden age of post-Victorian street crime. Truly, the past is the key to the present.

Based on this account, I realized right away that I didn't have what a mugger is looking for, so I started assembling my kit. Seventy cents in change was an easy acquisition and quickly found underneath the couch cushions at DGHQ. Safety pins required a quick trip to the all-night CVS on West Pike, where I also obtained a perfume sampler through means that the law might frown upon but that any mugger would surely approve. The false teeth seemed difficult at first, until I remembered that my kids had some of those plastic vampire fangs left over from Halloween.

But did I look the part? No. As you can see in the tutorial, the successful muggee sports a bowler hat and trenchcoat, neither of which I currently possessed, but both of which were easily rectified via amazon for less than a c-note.

If you are still reading this, you've got to be asking yourself a few questions by now, most likely something along the lines of "what am I doing with my life?" and "did this guy actually try to get mugged on Halloween?" As to the first, we are all following our own paths and where yours leads, I do not know. As to the second, yes, though I am disheartened to report that my best efforts continue to go unrewarded.

You see, there I was, lurking in Lawrenceville's most infamous alley, battened against the All Hallow's Eve cold in a sweatshop bowler and trench coat. Seventy cents sharing space in my pocket with a packet of safety pins. Notes of cheap perfume wafting in the night air. Salivating due to the vampire fangs and the thought of a bucket list accomplishment finally within my grasp.

There were few revelers braving DTL's seedier side, and those who were present gave me a wide berth. It was when I overheard one say "yo I think place is haunted" that I realized I'd chosen the worst night of the year to dress for the occasion. I didn't look like a man trying to knock an accomplishment off his bucket list; I looked like the man in the bowler hat from The Haunting of Hill House.