Staying safe in NYC

Hello all,Sorry for long post, my Wife and I just nearly avoided a potentially violent encounter in NYC and I’m wondering how to stay safe in the future.I’m new to this subreddit, but not new to self defense. With all this COVID-19 stuff going on it’s really bringing out the crazies.I live in NYC on the lower east side. My Wife and I were taking our dog outside our apartment out to pee at around midnight. We saw a homeless looking guy stumbling towards us through a parking lot. He was yelling “I’m so fucked up” and was smacking cars parked in the parking lot as he lumbered towards us.My Wife and I moved to avoid him but we had to cross paths. He started to yell at us and get agitated when we ignored him. It became apparent we had to stop or he’d get aggressive. Once we saw him he looked high on meth or something else. He asked us for $ and told us how no one cares about him and people for sorry for him because he’s homeless and asked us for money. He was obviously very unstable acting calm but very unstable like someone who could snap at any moment.I told him we didn’t have any money on us and did my best to keep the situation calm, say as little words as possible to him to not “feed the crazy” as you can’t reason with these people. When we walked away he started to very aggressively punch trash cans and runaround like a psycho.We are safe, but that could have gone very different and been a very bad situation. I was going to buy Pepper spray, but after reading posts on here it’s largely in-effective for 40 seconds. If a guy is high on drugs it won’t slow him down.How can I stay safe in situations like this. After this I’m going to apply for my CC license and start to train to stay safe. Is there anything else I can do to stay safe in the future? via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/2JHmraF