Twilight of the Guardian Angels

Born in the crucible of seedy 1970s New York, does Curtis Silwa’s red-bereted band of citizen crime busters have a place in post-Giuliani, post-Bloomberg NYC?

Photos by Kyria Abrahams

It’s Friday night in the West Village, the second night of Fashion Week. I’m wearing a red beret and a white T-shirt with red lettering that spells out “Guardian Angels.” At least I match. Walking the Christopher Street patrol at ten o’clock, this is the first occasion in my life when model types have gawked at me.

“It’s a good feeling putting that uniform on,” Benjamin “EQ” Garcia, a Guardian Angel vet and current patrol director, says.

He must be used to it. I’m just anxious, very uncertain about what’s to come tonight.

We walk a few blocks and it doesn’t take long for a tall guy in his late twenties to call us “heroes.” He might be a little drunk, but even though I’ve only been an honorary Angel for ten minutes, it’s nice to hear.

EQ, whose police scanner revealed earlier that a bystander had been stabbed a few blocks away, tells us to “post up.” We form a line, our backs up against a building, looking toward the street.

The Angel next to me is on his first-ever …