I'm in Manhattan and...

It's been a while since I walked around the city and I'm actually finding myself missing the days of filth and craziness. This place doesn't seem to have character anymore. It's certainly cleaner and safer, but I kinda miss the old days. Where's all the crazy people and peep shows? Nobody is pissing behind a dumpster. Everyone is clean cut with lots of money. This isn't the same place I grew up in. It might sound weird, but I miss grimy NY. Is it just me?

Have you read ANY of my posts about gentrification?

I don't have the energy, and people are probably tired of me posting about it anyway. But that New York City is gone and it's not coming back. And what are you, in your thirties, right?

I'm not breaking your balls because you know I like you. But the changes started when you were just a kid. Plus, you didn't really grow up here anyway. Just imagine if you lived here all your life and you couldn't afford to live in a neighborhood where your family dwelled for three generations. Such unfortunates DO EXIST. Missing out on a peep show is small potatoes by comparison (but I feel your pain there, too ).

In the Bronx.

No we're not. Yes we are. No we're not. Yes we are.

I did live here for years before moving upstate. Even after that I spent weekends and vacations here before moving back to queens for a while in my 20's. And yeah I saw your posts all the time but it's weird seeing it in person. I just wish there was one little section to remind me of the older days.

Ya gotta remember that I have avoided manhattan for many years. Most of my time in the city in the last decade or so has been in Queens and brooklyn. So when I walk around manhattan it's unfamiliar. My last memories were of a much more seedy place

As you get older you'll learn that you can never go back.

That's exactly right. That's the main reason I get a little impatient with younger people here when they start to lament the fact that "Old New York" is gone.

Because, first of all, they've never even seen it. And second of all, it's like SC says, the realization that you can't "go back" only comes with the passing of time.

It's really about aging and loss in general. Not just about yearning for the "old neighborhood."

Well I'm a little younger but not so young. I think I was probably the last generation to see 'old NY' before it completely changed. Granted I was young, but it was the last years my father was around here and right before a lot of big life changes. So I guess those years stuck with me more.

I wasn't talking about you, buddy. I know where you're from .

Speaking of Manhattan, I just watched a History Channel episode that stated that there's a stream that runs below the Empire State Building that was discovered when excavating the buildings foundation.

By the way, is the new WTC opened yet?

It's completed. I don't know if it's open to the public since I haven't tried to go.. One question I have is where the hell are these young kids coming up with the rent money to live here? It's overrun with these early 20's hipsters. Are their jobs so great or are mom and dad just that rich?

We have some of them in the Village and in our Astoria property. And in my experience, I've gotten checks directly from their parents MANY times. The only saving grace is, most of them only stick around for a couple of years before the novelty wears off.

Take it from someone who is in the same age bracket. People this age are not successful. Having money you got from mummy and daddy does not equate to making it. Just foolish, needy, insecure people that feel pressured into showing how great their lives are because social media puts them on some pedestal 24/7/365.

Where are all the nuts? I didn't see any. I still CANNOT believe I stayed in Times Square for 2 nights with my kids last month AND felt completely safe. How things have changed...

It is a shame that these young adults get everything handed to them without having to work hard to earn their keep. All these parents who think they are helping their kids make it in the world today by paying for everything, their rent, cars, clothes are only HURTING them in the long run.
As young adults OUR GENERATION wanted to prove to our parents that we didn't need their help. Yea we struggled we worked hard did things the way we wanted them done, were broke at times ,yet we made it! That type of attitude is long gone.

True. My parents indulged me and only now am I beginning to become self-reliant. Still learning in fact.

I was also amazed walking around New York at 3 am and feeling safer than walking around in my own hometown at 3 am.

Where do you have to go to get held up at knife point in that joint anymore? I wanted the authentic NY experience!

Lol...Believe me you there's a lot of spots in Ny where they cut you for the sneakers you have on...The Bronx and East Ny is a good starting point.

Visit the outer boroughs (and Williamsburg and Park Slope don't count anymore ).

You should clarify that to parts of the Bronx. Country Club and Throggs Neck boast some of the highest property values and lowest crime rates in all of the outer boroughs. And don't forget Riverdale, where a mansion overlooking the Hudson will run you into the millions .

Yes you are right P, South Bronx to be exact.

Moe Lol you want to get mugged by a nut with a knife COME TO CALIFORNIA. I'm sure some tweeker who's been up for 3 days high on meth will find you

Ola le vato, Mami?

PB ur funny. As the vatos would say Simone esé.

Viva la raza!

Oh please. Times have changed completely! Granted, my parents were very frugal and saved their money, but they also moved to the suburbs and sold house after house for more & more money. This is how the previous generation became so well off . . . . As for our generation, we are all perpetually indebted because of student loans! I will probably retire as a debtor, unless of course I sell-off the properties that I will inherit from my parents . . . . This is the simple truth

You are NOT the young adult of your generation I am referring to my friend. We are talking about young adults who are mooching from their parents. It's very refreshing to learn there are hard working productive young adults like yourself who do not believe the world owes them something. It saddens me that you have so much debt to contend with.

To get back to the original post:

Aons ago, when I was 10 or 11 and lived in Brooklyn, my friends and I would just jump on a subway and ride to Times Square when we had nothing else to do. Just walked around, took in the sights, came back 3 hours later--parents didn't even know we went. Never felt in danger because we were too young/dumb to know better.

When I was 15, I had an after-school job as a messenger boy for the old New York Post, which was on West Street in lower Manhattan (years before the World Trade Center was built). Arrived there about 3:30 and delivered and picked up advertising copy at ad agencies all around the city until 9 or 9 p.m. Great, exciting job for a kid--running all around the city at night, very much different than daytime--a real adventure. Times Square was getting kinda edgy by then. I carried a knife, to make me feel "safer" (as if it would have made a difference); but except for getting cruised by an occasional "chicken hawk," never had a problem.

Worked in Manhattan from 1959 through 1971, then moved to and worked in suburban NJ from '72 on, so we missed the really bad years of NYC's decline. When we visited the city, it was a never-ending blitz of dirt, aggressive panhandlers, hustlers, noise and sirens.

In '97, I took NJ Transit to Penn Station and walked all the way up to a big hospital on 100th Street and Fifth Avenue to visit a sick aunt. I was amazed at the improvement in the city: the homeless and the panhandlers were gone, the streets were clean, it was relatively quiet, and it felt completely safe. In the intervening years, Disney had transformed Times Square into something sanitized, like Disneyland for adults. I suppose it had less character than it did in the late Fifties (cheap bars and restaurants, what passed for X-rated movies and shops, crumbling theaters, street hustlers, overpriced souvenir shops), but I just consigned that era to nostalgia.

I couldn't have said it better myself !

turnbull, did you ever know a writer for the post, from Brooklyn, named pete Hamill ?

Anyone who's picked up a New York paper in the past fifty years has heard of Pete Hamill. He's as well known as Breslin. He's just slightly less angry and self hating. And Denis Hamill is a damn good writer himself, but he's been living in his brother's shadow for his entire career.

pete's one of my favorite writers, he's very good.

Binnie, I knew Pete when I worked for the NY Post. A fine guy, always taking the side of the working guy against the powerful. Very broad minded. He also gave a talk to a club I was a member of when I was in college.


That's a big understatement Readers of the NYC dailies in the Sixties got two different views of Irish New Yorkers from Hamill and Breslin. To Hamill, every Irishman was a poet, a revolutionary, a Robin Hood for the poor against the rich, a family man, an honest workin' stiff. To Breslin, every Irishman was a lout, a dunce, a drunk and a fool. NYC Irish didn't take kindly to that characterization. When Breslin ran for NY City Council President on Norman Mailer's Mayoral ticket in 1969, angry Irish NYers ran him out of Gaelic Park in the Bronx--he barely escaped with his life.

Well, I was being nice .

We've talked about this in the past, TB. My grandfather was a delegate in the typesetter's union. But just like anyone else, he started in the old News building downtown. Some of the best memories from my early childhood in the '60s was going to visit him downtown. That enormous globe in the old building is as fresh in my mind today as it was almost fifty years ago.

Anyway, long story short, back then the writers and the blue collar guys socialized quite a bit. It wasn't unheard of for sports writers to go out drinking with ballplayers back then, either. And when my grandfather died everyone from Breslin to Dick Young showed up. Which speaks to your point because I'm told that Jimmy Breslin and Dick Young were the two most hated writers in the business back then.

You guys got me started on newspapering now. Thanks a lot! My first job in printing was at a newspaper and I still have ink under my fingernails.

Pizzaboy, those old Linotype machines were awesome. A truly remarkable sight was to see a seasoned vet operating one of these things - it was poetry in motion.

The late Chicago newspaper man, Mike Royko, use to hold court at The Billy Goat Tavern nearly every night after the next day's edition was put to bed. All kinds of other guys would join him until all hours.

The new generation of Royko's in Chicago include John Kass and Rick Kogan. Sorry for off topic but newspapers are my first love.

Awesome, just awesome. These things were the Apples of their day!