I moved to New York City in October 1973, about 3 days after I got my M.A..
At first I lived on the Upper East Side, specifically at the end of East 79th Street, next to the East River and East End Avenue. That apartment was very tiny, almost like living in a large closet. Even so, we stayed there for about two years. Besides tiny it was also five long blocks to the subway at Lexington and 77th Street, about 20-30 minutes' walk each day to and from.
Once I got a better job, we moved to the Upper West Side, 102nd and Broadway. That neighborhood wasn't very nice in those days, at least on my side of Broadway, but my apartment was HUGE. 1600 sq ft for about $250/month. Parquet floors, windows everywhere, the works. It was pretty nice, but the Super was a piece of shit, like insane. So next we moved to Hell's Kitchen where I am now.
This blog is just random memories of my time here in the 1970s and 1980s. Those were amazing times. New York City was crazy then. Like, C-R-A-Z-Y. The City was verging on bankruptcy. Heavy crime. weirdness, emerging punk scene, dance clubs suddenly appearing, especially after Stonewall. Huge bars, like one on West 23rd was 5 stories. But even with all the crime and decay, I was never afraid even when I'd come home from the bars at 4AM.
Now the city is so anodyne, so safe. That's not necessarily a bad thing for most people, but definitely not as much fun, or rather, exciting. For instance, Times Square was not kid and tourist friendly like it is now. Then it was an odd combination of porno stores (they were pretty common, sometimes several on a block), where men could either watch short movie clips or see real girls dance, gay porno theaters where men could watch guys dance, and expensive Broadway theaters where people in tuxedos and fur coats often came and went in limos. On the whole, it was dirty and trashy. A lot of New York was dirty and trashy.
But oddly, the crime, the decay, the weirdness gave people, I think, at least some of us, a feeling of shared experience, like we were all on some kind of latter day Mayflower going...who knows where?
(Note: the date at the top is the only way I know to keep this as the first post.)
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