Victor Kerlow Dear Diary:
Some of my earliest memories coincide with New York emerging from the 80s, that last hurrah of resilient perms and synthesizer songs. I recollect the yellows and oranges of the Coney Island-bound D train’s plastic seats, each insufficient in width, demarcated by cream-colored bands. Mixed into these sunrise shades were intermittent reds and whites: the red felt berets of the Guardian Angels, their red, satiny varsity jackets screen-printed with white celestial wings and that all-seeing eye.
As New York transformed from the inner city into simply “the†city, I noticed the Angels disappearing. The forces that made willing-and-able straphangers out of budding bankers I assumed concurrently outmoded the necessity for a citizens’ brigade.
On a still September evening along Christopher Street, I saw the Angels â€" red berets, red jackets, white wings â€" for the first time in 20 years. I was with my sister, and, excited, I blurted in a failed whisper: “They exist!â€
Nearly a decade separates us in age, and through that gap fell the Guardian Angels. She had never heard of them, and, seeing them for the first time, doubted their guardianship. “They’re a bit old, no?†True â€" most looked 40 and beyond, not quite the karate choppers of repute. We conjectured that they were having a reunion; one held an iPhone in what seemed could only be Instagram ready-to-document position.
My sister and I soon parted ways; she turned east, and I dove deeper west. The following morning, she wrote to me: “That iPhone doubled as a walkie-talkie.†She had passed them again and overheard their conversation with a Midtown patrol.
That brief splash of red and white was a nostalgic nod to the New York of my youth and a testament to the city’s enduring evolution, for the Guardian Angels are still on the lookout, and they, too, have upgraded.
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