Mark Steyn On New Yorkers’ Amnesia Of How Bad It Was In The 70s

Hugh Hewitt ^ | 3 Jan 2014 | Mark Steyn

[Cowboy Bob]

The subways are clean in NYC? Get outta here! I don’t believe it!

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Now we’re stuck with the deeply annoying and fake Naked Cowboy.***

Saw him also. Got a picture of my wife’s niece with him. Bet he’s not naked today!
Plays I saw on Broadway:
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT.
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
ANYTHING GOES.
EVITA.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***I was also taught at a young age not to look up at the tall buildings, as that would mark you as a tourist,****

With a thousand people around you looking up, you will really look out of place if you don’t!

Couldn’t help myself! Had to look up! Just like I had to look down when at the Grand Canyon, AZ.

[COBOL2Java]

3. You learn to look straight-ahead and ignore EVERYONE else. Do not smile do not frown, become as faceless as the millions of others walking the streets or using the subways.

That's a New York face, and it's what every New Yorker learns to do from an early age. It remains with me even though I left there as a young adult. It drives my family nuts that I still tend to not look people straight in the eyes.

COBOL2Java, born and raised in Brooklyn

[miss marmelstein]

Not only are subways clean, they are HIP! A relative of mine who actually takes private cars from his apartment to his place of work - 30 blocks away - bought a Metrocard. The wealthy have found out that the system works and is the best way to get around town.

[miss marmelstein]

My gosh - I remember that store!!! I bought moccasins there during the 1980s!

[midnightcat]

I know you didn’t write that to be funny, but you are hysterical!

[miss marmelstein]

Everything I wrote on this thread I meant to be funny. True, but funny.

[midnightcat]

I have no doubt that it’s true. I remember NYC in the 70’s just from listening to the news reports here in NJ as a kid. You had to be tough!

[OldNewYork]

Someone fire up the pictures from the garbage strike then. Or just start projecting Dog Day Afternoon in endless loop on the sides of buildings come summer. People will want out of 70’s New York real quick.

[Madame Dufarge]

In the 1970s, it had human scale. It was raunchy, filthy and it taught me all of my life skills in how to avoid Ratso Rizzo.

I hear ya.

Back in the 70's, my dear friend and I (at the ripe ole age of about 18) lied to our mothers about where we were going and went to NY for a couple of days. We stayed at this run-down old hotel in Times Square (complete with a bell-boy we immediately christened "Igor"),made the rounds of bars and coffee houses, met the most interesting people including a guy who offered to show us around - he was completely harmless.

We learned a lot, had a great time and never felt threatened. We had our guide, after all. :-)

[Owl558]

“That’s a New York face, and it’s what every New Yorker learns to do from an early age.”

I went to school with a guy from Brooklyn who took it upon himself to teach this California boy a little “Brooklynese” and the NY face was part of it! He said you risk getting called out, “What’r yoose looking at?”

I still haven’t been to NY, but thanks for the memory!

[miss marmelstein]

It was a wild and crazy time in NYC. The only time I lost my courage was when a college friend (a nice young lady) insisted we go to a show in Times Square that was in some cellar someplace that featured a fire eater and assorted freaks of nature. I hightailed it out of there, heading for the wilds of New Jersey. As someone once said, there are minerals as well as bacteria in soil.

[Madame Dufarge]

Well, we were from Lawrence, Massachusetts so we had developed a sort of primary education in sniffing out "don't go there" stuff.

Being 18 and immortal helped, of course.

Like you, we went to a couple of places, sniffed danger and got the hell out.

I still remember the great food at the neighborhood places that our guide took us to.

[GeronL]

NYC schools are already promising a “progressive agenda”

as if they weren’t already

[Moonman62]

MS: But it should be the American way, Hugh. He’s right. It should be the American way. But the sad fact is America now has less social mobility than all the countries people came to America to get away from. In other words, less social mobility, not just in Canada and Australia, but Britain and Europe, too. And the reason for that is because the Democratic Party has found it’s in its electoral interest to maintain tens of millions of people as a permanent dependent class. So they can, there’s the ruling class, and there’s the dependent class. and the escalator between the two is slower than at any time in American history. Americans should be ashamed of that. That’s un-American.

It's not just the Democrats.

[Moonman62]

Ford was good with the vetoes. Compare him to the Ruling Class prince, George W. Bush.

[COBOL2Java]

I went to school with a guy from Brooklyn who took it upon himself to teach this California boy a little “Brooklynese” and the NY face was part of it! He said you risk getting called out, “What’r yoose looking at?”

Absolutely! And whatever you do, you DON'T respond "nothing". They'll come back with "Oh! So I'm nothin' to you!".