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You like harping on this theme, but this has been going on for decades. If, as I suspect, you consider the '70's to be the zenith of NY pop culture, most of the people who drove that were probably out of town transplants, or even out of country immigrants.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Native-New-Yorker
Yes, New York is losing its culture. It's a bunch of hipsters who are moving here from the midwest on their mom and dads trust fund now.
I don't live in Manhattan so couldn't say, but when I do go into the city (everyday) I can tell Harlem from china town from NYU, from UES, UWS, hellskitchen, broadway, ktown, etc. easily apart so idk what you mean.
Basically, by going what you are saying, every part of Manhattan looks like one neighborhood. OK every part of Manhattan looks like Chinatown. I really do believe this a troll thread lulz
There isn't much we can do about it. Chains & tech companies have enslaved ppl to their products. They, or their patrons, don't care about how fun, funky and gritty a place once was before the corporations moved in. I'm not happy with it & this isn't a change that should be embraced or accepted.
If, as I suspect, you consider the '70's to be the zenith of NY pop culture,
I think most people view the 1970s as New York City's nadir, as least in the 20th century. The decade of the 1977 blackout and its mass lootings. The decade in which the city almost when bankrupt. The decade when the subways and Time Square were regarded as cesspools of crime. A decade in which the city was characterized as a concrete jungle in films like DEATH WISH and SERPICO.
I don't know about the city's 1970s pop culture. Studio 54? Big deal.
The decade when the subways and Time Square were regarded as cesspools of crime. A decade in which the city was characterized as a concrete jungle in films like DEATH WISH and SERPICO.
Or like BEAT STREET, THE WARRIORS, WILD STYLE, TAXI DRIVER, CROCODILE DUNDEE
I grew up in a basement apartment on the upper east side where my dad was the super of a prewar doorman building that was between Third and Lexington. West of Third Avenue was a magic land of wealth and privilege. East of Third was Yorkville, which still had a remnant of its old ethnic German and Hungarian neighborhood past. I haven't lived there in a few years, but I had to go to a doctor's visit on the upper east side a week ago and it was a little like being home. I'd like to say I felt like a little boy again, but it wouldn't be true. But I did remember how it felt to be a little boy there. The boy in the basement around all that old money west of Third Avenue and in our building itself, living by those museums and architecture and all that beauty and pretending that i was a part of it all. And the boy who'd go to Hungarian church east of Third, and the Hungarian butcher and other specialty shops with my mother, or Carl Schurz Park, and who'd hear Hungarian (and German) spoken by strangers in the streets east of Third a few times every week, the same Hungarian my family spoke in our home.
Well, all the Hungarian shops are gone, and I think there's only one German holdover, if it's even still there (Schaller and Weber on 86th). The boundary between the rich part of the neighborhood and what was the still slightly ethnic part is still there, but those ethnic streets are more home to young people recently out of college, from other places besides New York who came to live in their first apartment in Manhattan. The modest walkups are still there, but they're a fortune to rent in, now, too, for their close proximity to college bars. The Hungarian church, St. Stephen of Hungary, retains the name but probably doesn't have even one weekly service in Hungarian, anymore.
The money part of the upper east side, west of Third Avenue, remains much closer to what I remembered. The money's lasted, and hasn't been displaced. But I could no longer pretend to somehow be part of it, like I could as a boy. As I walked to and from the doctor's, seeing it all there only reminded me of just how far I am from that, and I guess just how far I always was, even as that dreamy boy in the basement. And the part of the neighborhood that I really was, the Hungarian and German remnant enclave, is gone forever.
Anyway, no other part of Manhattan could make me feel all that. Homogenized? I don't know. Depends where you're coming from, I guess.
Great post. I worked with some old school Yorkville Boys. Tough as nails bunch!
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