How Bad was New York City during the crack epidemic? (Red Hook: middle-class, neighborhood)
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Nice throwback video. See how gentrification in Hell's Kitchen got rid of those crackheads and ghetto people you see on the video? For you non-believers, you can thank gentrification for the 180 degree transformation. Now apply the same gentrification concept to other current ghetto neighborhoods and you will get the same great results. Cleaner, safe and ghetto-free neighborhoods.
Hope now all you gentrification haters can stop ranting about how evil gentrification is. It isn't.
I don't get the sense that people want things to be the way they were from a crime/safety perspective. Like my earlier post said, depending upon what you were exposed to, the times were different for everyone.
My only wish would be for housing to be as affordable as it was back then.
While I understand your desire to have the same affordable housing like back then, the harsh reality is that if you want to keep the trash out, you must make it unaffordable for them so they can leave and go elsewhere. That is really the only way and I support that. There is a premium for living in a safe and low crime area.
The criminal culture is the youth culture. Youths do all sorts of crazy and insane things in their youths. This "Gingerfication" is just outter towners who wants to be apart of NYC, especailly after 9/11, and especially after the non-heterosexual marraige law. Then of course the niave college students, and finally the desperate go-getters ( from Americana land ).
Their was no "Crack epidemic" or "AIDS epidemic" during the 1980's. The 1980's was when people of color ( non-europeans ), and women had money in their pockets. It was when the world was perfect and balance.
What you see in the video is the leftovers from the 1960's. Imagine the protest on Wall Street, but instead of people fighting for civil rights, they are fighting for their paychecks. You people need to watch what measurements the US goverment took to keep non-european people down, during the 1960's. They blamed the entire failure youth culture ( europeans ), on drugs, and then they used that to arrest and throw people in jail. If drugs was legal, people would be using it moderatly. Instead they turned it into a taboo, that people mess around with at least one point in their lives. I mean great lets look at images of Americans ( non-europeans ), in the late 1980's instead of ( europeans ) in the 1980's.
Everything was good in the 1980's but if you had nothing, and not even next to nothing you were trying to have normality. Who has nothing? Children, and the next people who have nothing? non-european people. That is the flat fact, about anything anti-1980's. It is just like right now. You have nothing, then your going to be unhappy and living in a parnoia about your neighborhood.
RARE footage of the West Bronx in the 80's from about (1:41 to 4:12).
Most of the footage was shot in Morris Heights, first he was on Sedgwick ave, then on Undercliff, and from about 2:49 to 3:45 he was on University ave from about the Cross Bronx up to Tremont. The last few seconds of Herc dricing was on E Fordham rd from Morris ave to Creston.
Look at how messed up Morris Heights was. Everybody focuses on Mott Haven and Morrisania, but fails to recognize some other areas that where hit hard. This is the only footage of non-south Bronx decay that I have seen.
I grew up in the Bronx (not the south Bronx)
I still remember seeing needles in the school yard and my dads car getting broken into and crackheads stealing loose change and one time a bag of pretzles
You used to see people who had signs in their window saying "no radio" because they were sick and tired of their cars getting broken into
Im 29, and can remember the trains being riddled with graffiti
I also remember Yankee games being empty because the neighborhood was so bad (although they did suck too)
My dads car also got broken into when we went to games
Sometimes he would give a bum a beer to keep an eye on his car and nobody would break in
it is interesting seeing how ny was when i was a kid
some neighborhoods i recognize and its amazing how different they look
others were so bad back then i dont even recognize them now
and wow i forgot about squeegee men
also pretty sad seeing these people saying they could quit whebever they want who were probably dead within 5 years of the video
how did all these dopers and crackheads get to Hell's Kitchen Park which sits at 10th Avenue between 47th and 48th streets? where did they come from? it's 2 long avenues away from the nearest subway station(the 8th Avenue IND), it always struck me as being in the middle of a wilderness. were these the ones who hung around Restaurant Row (in the summer of 1988 W 46th street between 8th and 9th was overrun with crackheads and the Guardian Angels were often stirring up a lot of controversy)?
back in the 80's and prior, was the area around the park a hooker and junkie haven?
in fact, now that I'm on this topic, what was W 48th street between 8th and 9th like at that time? i'm curious cause my brother and wife stayed at the Belvedere Hotel which is on that block and i wonder how the hotel and block fared at that time(I also frequent the Olympic Restaurant on 8th Avenue between 48th and 49th when i am in midtown so i get curious)
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Hells Kitchen Park in 1988
