If you read my post in any objective manner, you would see that I disagree with 3 administrations who tried to turn this area around without success. If you think modern day Times Square is a fine place to hang out, so be it. I think it is just as awful as it was in the 1960s - only with worse lighting, terrible chain restaurants, national brand name stores instead of the great mom and pop stores of yore and our own, indigenous bad restaurants. If we’re going to do terrible, let’s do New York terrible: Tad’s Steakhouse, the Kon Tiki Room and the late, lamented China Bowl.
Please keep your personal abuse to a minimum, thank you.
Giuliani did not close off Broadway, Bloomberg did.
What’s more, the area has been turned around with great success.
When the Giuliani administration successfully broke up the porn shops, zoning them out of Times Square, coupled with policing quality of life crimes, the area transformed.
It is not by any stretch of the imagination as awful as it was in the 80s. You say it’s as bad as it was in the late 60s. Were you there in the 60s? If so, can I assume that you are in your 70s or close to that age?
I don’t know about the 60s, but I know that in the 80s 42nd Street was a scary place, filled with (as I said) drug addicts, prostitutes, bums, petty criminals and porn shops/theatres. If you went into Port Authority after midnight, you heard wailing and gnashing of teeth. Bryant Park behind the library was needle park, filled with passed out junkies and alcoholics and prostitutes.
Once again, Giuliani did not close off Broadway to car traffic, Bloomberg did. You unfairly link these three administrations in this regard.