I agree with you. Perhaps it’s just me growing older or overall ennui but New York City just reminds me of anywhere USA these day. Nightlife is the worst but maybe bottle service killed that.
Ah, Times Square. A golden place to spend one’s formative years during the late '60s and early '70s.
My high school (H.S. of Performing Arts) was located in a decaying building about a block off the square. Great atmosphere - bright lights, filth, hookers, peep shows, drug addicts, clueless tourists, Orange Julius, Nathan’s Famous and similar classy food joints.
Our school orchestra played on an upper floor with the windows open during warm weather. The derelicts who lived in the Luxor Baths Hotel across the street would hang out on their fire escapes listening to us.
I hear Times Square has been substantially cleaned up.
Too bad. 
Before it actually took, there were periodic efforts to pretty up Times Square going back many years. I remember a New Yorker cartoon showing a seedy individual holding a picket sign saying “Save Times Square - Stop The Cleanup!”
The Meatpacking District, though that too is cleaning up at the ends. It’s all about the rents. New businesses, especially restaurants, trying to establish themselves can’t afford the higher rent districts, so they move to the edge of a lower rent area. If a business or two hits, traffic to the area increases, bringing in more business (still at affordable (for Manhattan) leases). Eventually, the lease rates will catch up to the area’s new-found popularity, and the cycle will repeat. This was also happening in the outer boroughs, but the other boroughs were hit harder by the recession.
Is there an in between, then and now? I mean, “cool old school NY” sounds dirty, dingy and gross. Is that what made it so awesome?
I live in “New New York,” and it seems all right to me. There are definitely still crappy gross bars you can go to if you want seediness. And the parts of New York that made it cool are still there–Central Park, the museums, theatre, etc.
I’m not interested in dingy. I was no more interested in hanging out in Tompkins Square Park then than I am now. Sure, there were a lot of seedy parts (and still are) but IMHO, the equation “cool, old school NY = seediness” comes from people who didn’t live here pre-Giuliani or live in New Jersey.
I just think NYC as whole has become bland, homogenized and boring. I could be a snob, I could be getting old or it could be ennui. I don’t know. I wish I could describe it better but I can’t other than to say the atomosphere, IMHO, has changed a lot and not for the better.
I’ve noticed that most of the posters in this thread seem to be guys. Believe me, for a girl it was a rather different experience. Exciting and colorful, yes. But when you’re ten and two guys wave their dicks at you from doorways within a block (or at your Mom who’s next to you, walking quickly and not looking right or left as women were told to do down there), or thirteen and have guys coming up to you asking if you’re interested in “modelling”, or sixteen and get your purse snatched (no innuendo, the guy grabbed it off my shoulder) and you know there’s no point to calling for help because you don’t want to attract attention to yourself–you kinda get a different perspective. If you were female or the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time, Times Square really wasn’t a fun place.
The city in the 70s was I was kid was a wonderland with some beautiful things, but the air of decay and utter hopelessness was very strong. The idea was that things would never get better. Garbage was piled up, graffiti covered the windows of busses and subways and came off on your clothes, you clutched your purses and took off your jewelry and listened to raving derelicts on the subway (no Walkmen back then altho some people got blaring radios later) with no idea that it would ever end. So, in 1982, I jumped at the chance to go to college in Boston. Every time I came back things would get a little better. Bryant Park was a homeless camp and a no-go zone when I was a kid; so was Madison Square Park and Washington Square. No green spaces to sit and relax aside from certain parts of Central Park. I still remember the half-naked, heavily pregnant woman begging in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal; they removed the benches in the Vanderbilt Waiting Room because it became crowded with homeless, sleeping row after row. Public bathrooms were unknown or unusable. Libraries were closed more often than not and our schools had the heat turned off Fridays at noon to save money.
There was a lot of freedom for kids though, fewer security guards and gates, and I generally had a less depressing childhood than it may seem. But I don’t miss the sleaze. And don’t get me started on what it was like to live in an outer borough back then; we all thought people who lived in Manhattan were rich and had no problems.
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote Mehibatel.
When my parents bought their house, in 1982, their block consisted of half burned out vacants, and half dilapdated brownstones in need of repair. When we got drug education in 5th grade, I learned that those little red-, blue- and green-capped plastic vials I saw in the sidewalk every day were crack vials. (and I thought it was called crack because you always saw the vials in the cracks of the sidewalk). We had a biker bar on the corner, but we liked them because the bikers weren’t above beating up crackheads who got in their face (or your face, if you were a 10 year old girl). A small clothing store up the block closed after it was robbed 6 times in a year. This was in that nasty ghetto known as central Park Slope, today one of Brooklyn’s most expensive and desirable neighborhoods.
I think it was 1988 a jury determined that Bernie Goetz shot four unarmed black teenagers in justiafiable fear of his life, just south of Union Square, when one of them asked him for 5 dollars on the subway. contemporaneous article from “Time”. Many people, including black leaders, felt his actions were not just justified, but morally correct.
People advised you to keep extra money in your wallet to give muggers, so they wouldn’t be mad and hurt you for having too little. Beat cops were virtually nonexistant (something that changed hugely during the Giuliani administration).
In pop culture it was only a slight use of hyperbole to imagine that NYC might be permanently walled of from the rest of the US (See, Escape from New York & the song “Miami 2017” by Billy Joel, in which the Navy sends an aircraft carrier to rescue the Yankees and then “sinks Manhattan out at sea.”)
I saw “Cats” for my 10th birthday in 1985. Notably, its home, the Winter Garden theater, was not in Times Square. It’s up on 50th street, and people felt safer taking their kids there. When they renovated the New Victory Theater on 42nd specifically as a kid-friendly venue, people thought they were stone cold crazy, and that was in the early 90s.
I hate the current Times Square. It’s way too touristy and doesn’t feel like NY. However, it is a cash cow for the city, much more than it was two decades ago. As a NYer, I benefit from that.
The old Times Square was a more horrid place, especially after dark. Given a choice between the two, I’ll take the current incarnation. I like a safe NY. I don’t worry about my daughter (and friends, never alone) traveling into Manhattan for a day and wandering, in a way that I (a guy for those who don’t know) could never do when I was her age (17). NYC still has character, it just isn’t in the high-priced touristy areas.
But what is it that made it “cool” back then?
Mehitabel–My mom lived here back when it was like that. (Well, she lives here now still, but anyway.) She’s got a lot of robbery/mugging stories, and tales about how taking the subway was awful all that.
Yep. My folks considered buying a townhouse in Carroll Gardens but decided it was just too dangerous. I can only wonder how many millions it’d be worth now!
The subway was tough because if you lived in the Bronx it was a long, long ride. I remember seeing lots of fires from the el train as it travelled through the South Bronx.
I think what many NYers would like to see is somewhere between the on-location sets for The Warriors and Escape From New York and the current incarnation of NYC with Pinkberry’s, Starbucks, iStores and Banana Republics on the ground floor of every 40 story residental luxury tower.
IMHO, NYC is “cooler” below 14th Street. The East and West Village, Soho, Tribecca, Lower East Side, Alphabet City and whatever else is down there still has a bit of that old-school NYC neighborhood feeling. You can still find narrow cobblestone streets in places, smaller walkups and mid-rises, ecclectic shops, small hole-in-the=wall neighborhood bars and restaurants.
Sleazy? The sleaziest thing about the MPD are the i-bankers and Carrie Bradshaw wannabees that hang out there. Red Rock (a sort of Coyote Ugly style bar) has some faux-sleeze.
I think I used to see those dudes over in Herald Square a few years back.:eek:
I live in NYC and I love it. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable moving here if it had been like NYC in the 70’s. I am actually really happy about the tourist trap that is Times Square because it keeps the tourists in one location and stops them from getting in my way! I live in Harlem so I get lots of the New York character and I feel safe walking to the subway to get to work.
Again not really sure as I might just be projecting my feelings on the situation.
One thing though, the city while always crowded is even more so these days. Most of the SoHo I loved and grew up with is gone. Now all you see are interchangeable shops and sidewalks so crowded it’s almost impossible to walk. You go down to the Public and the entire area is overrun with NYU students, not to mention the NYU machine gobbles down all the interesting architecture in its quest for more space. I also used to love walking around Lower Manhattan but that’s crowded too since tourists need to fulfill their proud american badges by gawking at a hole in the ground. Broadway/Off-Broadway productions seem safer than they used to be. Nightlife turned into bottle service and boring Wall Street traders though I haven’t done that scene in years so perhaps things have changed. New architecture all looks like the same Frank Gehry/Renzo Piano garbage and I’m sure I could whine for longer but I’ll refrain since I’m coming off like a petulant child.
Overall, I think it might be the people that bother me. As I was leaving my building the other day, a dog went to the bathroom underneath the building’s canopy. The owner cleaned up after it and they went on their merry way. No big deal, right? Not for my neighbor who started screaming at our doorman for not stopping the dog. Dogs should be curbed but sometimes accidents happen and more to the point, it’s not a doorman’s job to deal with something like this. In any event, l feel like that’s the type of person (my neighbor) I’m forced to interact with on a more and more frequent basis and I hate it. I simply don’t remember people being such delicate little flowers when I was growing up.
I’m not saying the city was a bed of roses back when I was growing up. I’m too young to remember the 70’s but I know most people will say it was a truly terrible time. It’s also nice to walk around the Village and not see people obviously sick with AIDS, too many people died far too young. Maybe people are more high-strung now? I dunno other than to say I really can’t verbalize what bothers me so much these days.
I believe they were part of or an off-shoot of the Commandment Keepers. Haven’t seen them around in a long time.
I seem to remember those guys being called “Black Hebrews” or “Black Israelites”. Other Jews liked to argue with them. At their peak they had small loudspeakers and would stand at the corner of 46th and Broadway berating pretty much everybody who walked by. There were also some Black Muslims who roamed the subway pressing their literature on the reluctant black riders, even the nice old ladies reading their psalmbooks. I’m not singling out Black preachers, but those are the two groups I remember, aside from some annoying but non-aggressive Hare Krishnas dancing in the parks.
I agree that Soho and places like that are so crowded now it’s hard to move, but at least there’s something more to look at than the few dusty old storefronts that were open. Many of the neighborhoods weren’t places you went unless you had a reason to go there. You went to Times Square for a show and then you fled to the subway; you went to Soho to get some fabric and made a beeline back to Canal Street (Houston St. was a mess); downtown NY emptied out at night like it was Buffalo.
But if you wanted to see the lobby of the Woolworth Building, you’d walk in and ask the one guard, “Can I look around the lobby?” and he’d smile and let you. We hung out in the woods amongst the abandoned cars, since there was no afternoon kid’s TV to speak of. And we were all so skinny! And yarn for ponytail holders and polyester clothes were cheap, so everybody could look cool. 
When I used to live in the East Village, every Saturday all these various left-wing weirdos would set up booths in Union Square and bicker with each other about their various causes. It was like a real life SDMB!
Something I’ve noticed since moving to Hoboken, NJ. Jersey and Outer Bourogh people used to be considered “Bridge & Tunnel”. Now parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Hudson County (Hoboken, JC, Weehawken) are pretty much gentrified and even “trendy”. Apparently there’s this whole echelon of Jersey people below “B&T” who come into Hoboken on the weekends from places like Elizabeth, Bayone, Teaneck, Secaucus and wherever else. They don’t go into Manhattan though. They just party here in Hoboken.
A few years back with my work it was always “bottle service at the Gansvoort Hotel.” “Happy hour in Bryant Park.” “Scotch at St Andrews.” Followed, of course, by late night at some strip club.
Or even worse, we end up at what I call “douchebag row”. Basically the strip of any East Side bar that extends from E 14th street up through Murray Hill and Turtle Bay (specifically Joshua Tree, Mercury Bar, 515, Turtle Bay, Sutton Place, Metro 53 and so on). These seem to be the bars where every frat guy and sorority girl from a college like mine congregates after college to relive their frat days for a few more years while they live with 3 college friends in the Upper East Side and work at their 1st year analyst job at Deloitte/Goldman/Morgan Stanley/Wherever.
I prefer to hang out with friends in a cool bar somewhere in the Village.
I thought Manhattan was a complete dump the first time I visited. For family reasons, I’ve been back every year for the last five years. The place is growing on me.
It’s no San Francisco, but I have to admit the museums are impressive.
Dude. You have a doorman and a canopy. You obviously live in the land of the wealthy/entitled. Different kinds of people live in different kinds of places; consider living elsewhere and you won’t meet people who scream at the doorman, because there won’t be a doorman.
I mean, I hate hipsters/trust fund kids which is why I don’t live in Williamsburg. They are easy enough to avoid.
While it is categorically true that there are more entitled Special Snowflakes in NYC today (because in the rough days of yore the Special Snowflakes were much too scared to live here) overall I think the city is a much kinder place. People help each other more. New Yorkers definitely do not care about your bullshit but if you are in actual trouble they are the goddamn salt of the earth. I saw an old lady trip on 7th Ave and immediately several people stopped to see if she was ok and offered their cell phone to call ambulance/taxi/son/daughter/friend. My husband left his laptop on the train and someone picked it up, called us, returned it, and wouldn’t take anything for it. Every day I see people offer other people seats on the subway instead of just shoving them out of the way like it used to be.
I don’t have a problem with tourists. Not at all. I love to see them spending their Euros or Pounds or whatever and keeping this city afloat. I love that they think NYC is a place worth visiting. It is a shame about the Woolworth building, though.
I think you’re painting a broad brush here. I know people from every income level under the sun. Economics simply has nothing to do with whether or not you’re an asshole (though I wish Williamsburg would ban the fedora).
Eh. No one got up for the 7-8 month pregnant lady the other day when I was on the 5 so experiences will differ.
I understand how important tourists are to NYC’s economy. It just really puzzles me that people will drive or fly tens/hundreds/thousands of miles to go to the same shops that they can find wherever they live.