Culture

Teaching Hipsters About Safety

A new social media-driven safety campaign targets Brooklyn’s millennials.
Simone Mescolini / Shutterstock.com

Katie Osborn is used to watching her back. The twenty-three year-old was regularly trailed to the subway by a leering man who waited around the corner from the Long Island City, Queens, bike shop where she worked. He catcalled her and shouted lewd remarks. “Eventually, I had friends pick me up to drive me to the subway,” she says.

Osborn lives in Brooklyn’s South Slope neighborhood. “I’ve walked around this area at all times of the night,” she says. She feels safe there. And when she rides her motorcycle to bars—“I go out a decent amount,” she says—she plans ahead, knowing where she’ll park it if she gets too inebriated to drive home.