Friday, January 15, 2016

Photo Album of the Apocalyptic Wasteland that was NYC in the 1980s

Yup, this is the way it was.

There were some beautiful interiors---actually some pretty spectacular ones, but the NYC government controlled public sectors were a war zone.

I am amazed to see young women in their 20s and 30s, now, walk Manhattan streets alone very late at night, presumably coming home from waitress jobs and the like. You never saw that in the 1980s, it was too dangerous.

The Howard Johnson's in the pics was located in Times Square. I ate there once, I remember you had to pay in advance before they delivered the food, too many were ordering, eating and running out without paying the bill.

Pics here.


-RW

6 comments:

  1. Anybody got a response to this comment from Jolly Roger on bottom of that page?

    "I was born in NYC, and lived there from 1962 to 2008. (46 yrs) What you're calling an "apocalyptic wasteland" was home to millions of us, who LIKED it there until a few thousand yuppies moved in (in the 80s.. the author is probably one of them) and started complaining to the police about everything they saw rather than going the f&%k back where they came from.

    What you're seeing in the pictures is FREEDOM. What destroyed the life, energy, and creativity of NYC is the Nazi police state funded by some of the borrowed money that's presently crashing the economy.

    I had to leave NYC because everything that was fun and nice about the place was destroyed by stinking out-of-towners, who longed for their protected life in suburbia, and insisted it be replicated in NYC by a million pigs breaking everyone's chops.

    You didn't fix an "apocalyptic wasteland". You destroyed the world's center of art, creativity, and freedom, by displacing millions of people and imposing your will upon them, against their will, and I hope your yuppie head rolls down the dirtiest street NYC has."

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    1. There was an "oh my gawd, there's a bum peeing in the street in NYC" post on RW's Target Liberty site a while back. http://www.targetliberty(dot)com/2015/07/the-latest-trend-in-nyc.html

      As I commented then, NYC was more free and fun back in the day when it was more dangerous. It is a GD police state now and I will never go back for any reason. A number of the "libertarians" on this site were spouting the usual blather about libertarian utopias but the real, final, answer was to "call the skullcrackers (cops) for a disappearance." It was an enlightening thread. They sound like the people in this guy's comment.

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    2. Agreed, what's the big deal. The state's monopoly on law and order tragically forces us to choose between its flavor of sterile, orderly, authoritarian living or dirty, messy, freer living. I value freedom enough that I'd choose the latter. At minimum, the option should exist. Those wanting more rules and cleaner sidewalks can move to San Francisco or Singapore.

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  2. I was thinking about formulating one. He has a point, I've seen it in Chicago. It's a sterilization and a uniformity. The change has a lot of good points but it attracted people who don't tolerate people who live different than themselves. I don't think he is referring to the ruins, decay, and wreckage, and such as freedom but rather that those conditions kept the busybodies, the meddlers, the authoritarians away. It kept out the people who take the fun out of life.

    The first people who come into a decayed area and start fixing the physical plant are usually people who want to keep the freedom but make things nice. Something attracted them but living in a decayed neighborhood is a big price to pay, so they start to fix it. But once it looks nice and has become relatively safe it attracts the meddlers and busybodies and such. Companies move in to fix more as demand to live there increases. But the freedom goes away as the newcomers demand everyone else conform to their desired way of life.

    I'll guess even Jolly Rodger prefers the fixed infrastructure, it's the people it attracted he can't stand.

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  3. The movie "Wolfen" depicted the ruin that was the South Bronx at the time. IIRC the combination of rent control and the inflation of the 70s made it more lucrative for owners to torch their building than to maintain them. Parts of the city ended up looking like Vienna in "The Third Man."

    Oh yeah, and the 14-year-old in me wants that Trans Am!

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  4. Compared to today I am always struck by how slim people were then. Today so many people are either diabetic or pre-diabetic. What has happened in the past 40 years?

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