Rachael Elderfield was sitting in her tiny jewelry shop on Harrison last week when a man came in ostensibly to buy a gift for his sister. He chatted her up for a while, but in the split second it took for her to let her husband in the front door, he swept an entire shelf of merchandise into the paper bag he was carrying. She was already suspicious — he was wearing two suits layered on top of each other and had deliberately dropped dog treats on the floor while they spoke, asking her to pick them up. (She refused.) So she was on high alert.

When she came back through the shop door from the hallway and saw what he had done, she grabbed his bag, threw it into the corner, and she and her husband screamed at him to leave. He strolled calmly out of the store and up Greenwich. “He was clearly a professional,” she said. (The store is equipped with video cameras and a button that alerts the police.)

It took a few hours for her heart to stop pounding, she said.

Shopkeepers have told me there has been quite a bit of shoplifting going on, and several stores are keeping their windows boarded — Thom Browne for example, whose windows have been shattered three times.

Harrison Street, Rachael noted, is much quieter than usual with the bakery and Terroir closed and the orthodontists working just a couple days a week. Make sure you give a wave the next time you are going by.