Ot: Nyc '77

[johnmdesigner]

Hunkered down in the storm?
Remember your roots baby!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxZFGf8chg8

[fuzzalow]

As a lifelong New Yorker, I grew up in that and endured the grit, the crime and the sleaze all while being a teenager/young adult, which means it didn't strike me as oppressive as it should have. When you're young you haven't got anything people really wanna steal from you and you get used to anything because unless you lived in one of NYC's war zones, it wasn't THAT bad. Middle class New Yorker was still better than middle class almost anywhere else, right? Even if I didn't know it.

But looking back it is always through the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia. No way anyone wants a return to 1970s NYC. New York is now a city the grapples with a problem centered around too much wealth as opposed to too much sh-t, piss, crime and chaos as from the time of the OP video. That's a good problem to have in spite of the dislocation and inequity downstream from the income stratification integral to living in NYC and also many great cities.

Times Square is like a Disneyland for tourists, real in ways Disney could never be.

Manhattan is like a Disneyland for the rich, real in ways only those living in similar bubbles could understand.

[fiamme red]

Originally Posted by fuzzalow

No way anyone wants a return to 1970s NYC.

Speak for yourself.

The super-rich and tourists may love what New York has become, but not all of us middle-class residents do.

[Climb01742]

I was also in the city in '77. Everyone's perspective is different. Somethings were worse in '77, for sure, but some were better. Like a rent-stablized apartment for $250. Two friends and I were in entry-level jobs (as in starting salaries below $10,000/year) and all of us had our own apartments for less than $300/month and we had money to live on, not well but decent enough. Would not want to try being at the bottom of the employment ladder in NYC today.

[fuzzalow]

Originally Posted by fiamme red

The super-rich and tourists may love what New York has become, but not all of us middle-class residents do.

I hear you. In a town that attracts wealth from all over the globe, that makes me a nobody too. But this town drives excellence and thrives on intensity so it forces upon us all to find a way.

No great city in any country anywhere is cheap to live in. Some of old time NYC from the era of rent-stabilized apartments still exists but they will vanish with the onslaught of age. There is no easy answer as even a favorable rental via government auspices, like some of the lottery apartments in rental developments in NYC/Brooklyn, will still not meet total demand to say nothing of the income brackets that fall into no man's land as far as urban subsidies and housing access.

It will never be easy. But those who persevere and those who have found a way will each have their own story as to how they did it. Part of having a tale to tell within a mosaic of a million different stories is what goes into making NYC what it is.

[beeatnik]

New York is alright if you like saxophones.

Anyway, LA is the global city of the future. Once we get beyond speculative wealth, that is.

[Tony T]

A good read about that time:

[Tony T]

[pinkshogun]

It's fascinating all the different sub cultures in New York and other large cities but prefer the relative quietness of the 'burbs and of course cycling in the country

[tctyres]

I've been here for 7 years. NYC is both great and terrible at the same time. There isn't a lot of middle ground.

I ride a lot through the burbs on the NW side of the city. Some would be OK to live in. Others would be like middle class prison.

[velofinds]

Originally Posted by tctyres

I ride a lot through the burbs on the NW side of the city. Some would be OK to live in. Others would be like middle class prison.

Where is this referring to exactly? (Riverdale? Yonkers?)

[tctyres]

Originally Posted by velofinds

Where is this referring to exactly? (Riverdale? Yonkers?)

Rockland and Bergen counties. There are some pretty cool places. There are some places I wouldn't want to live.

Riverdale is a part of the Bronx.

[fuzzalow]

Originally Posted by tctyres

NYC is both great and terrible at the same time. There isn't a lot of middle ground.

I don't deny I live in a bubble. But I also make every attempt to see outside my bubble so I can stay grounded. Thus my question to you:

From your perspective what is terrible about NYC?

I think I already know the great parts but I could understand the debilitation felt if living here took more outta someone than NYC actually gave back.

[johnmdesigner]

I arrived here in 1979 after escaping a small Midwestern town. Like most transplants I was escaping a world that I didn’t fit into. Maybe it took a lot of balls for a hick who had never been anywhere to pack a suitcase and come here with no job and no money and no prospects. I think it was easier to do back then. You could find work but then it seemed just as hard as now to find a place to live. I started out in an SRO hotel off Park Ave. filled with crazies. One broke into my room in the middle of the night so I slugged him with my T-square. The pigeons used to make love on my window sill and the painting over the bed was signed by all the couples who enjoyed the place over the years. I had enough money to last 2 weeks and I vowed I would never go back to my home town. I managed to find a job in those 2 weeks, an apartment a few weeks later. I told myself I would stay 5 years but ended up staying 38.
I’ve been robbed, burgled, had guns pointed at me, been beaten up but I never had any desire to go back to my previous life. I think that’s something that natives could never understand. That transition and that liberation that changed my life forever.
That part of NYC is disappearing. Walk down the street today and you are confronted with large suburban buildings that do not admit the public. The small shops and the street life is gone. Try making eye contact with the zombies looking at their phones.
Sure it was risky back then to make eye contact with a stranger. But I met a hell of a lot of interesting people that way. I miss that part of NY. Like 6 stool lunch counters in the subway. Camera row on 32nd street. And just walking around and looking at interesting things. Those days are passing. The streets are just as filthy now as then but it’s because the storefronts are empty and no one pays attention.

[velofinds]

Originally Posted by tctyres

Rockland and Bergen counties.

Oh okay. You had said "NW side of the city" so..