Post-King-assassination New York felt empty and dangerous on the streets

Evidence

Saul Gottlieb would have been horrified. Reviewing the Who concert in EVO, Jules Freemond vividly described the anxiety he felt walking east from Café au Go Go. The streets were eerily empty, populated by “some sullen looking black cats” and “a few white kids with black armbands.” Nervously, Freemond and his companion jumped in a cab that brought them a half dozen blocks over to Second Avenue and the Fillmore, where they found the Who already in the midst of a long set. The sound was “deafening,” Freemond wrote, “If a rifle went off outside no one here would know until they read about it the next day in the papers.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1220