According to the New York Times, there has been a pate of muggings in recent months on the border of Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuy. The Times reports that “people walking or biking alone have been attacked with punches, kicks — and in one case, a baseball bat — and then had their cellphones or purses stolen before they could recover.; Turns out that Nica Lalli, author of the book, Nothing, Something to Believe In, was a mugging victim. She was also on last year’s Park Slope 100.

On June 10, Nina Lalli was mugged as she walked from Fort Greene to her home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, she said in an interview. As she walked past a group of teenagers at the corner of Willoughby Avenue and Walworth Street, she said someone hit her on the back of the head, and she fell to the ground. After she was kicked several times, the teenagers fled with her purse. (Ms. Lalli, for all her bruises, was lucky in one respect: a good Samaritan followed the attackers in a van, and somehow, retrieved Ms. Lalli’s handbag. “He was like Superman,” she said.)