Besides all of the obvious differences in culture, accent, and attitude, one of the things that used to divide NYC and London was the awareness of unattended bags and packages. In NY, people weren't too worried about bags or packages being left alone. You would care if it was yours, but you didn't even notice ones that were left by themselves. In London, if you stepped away from your bag, they'd start evacuating the block. And for good reason, as I discovered when a number of bombs went off on the street outside my hotel.
New York is quickly becoming the same way, as shown by this backpack in Union Square. We didn't stick around to see the Bomb Squad show up, but Rion and Ekavet have some good photos of other scares. Update: I believe Ekavet was able to photograph the bomb squad opening this backpack.
I was glad to see NY1 showed up right away though. A whole bunch of people started pulling press passes out and huge cameras. My little optio just didn't compare :)
