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20 years ago Times Sq was a barren waste land of human depravity. Shuttered stores & sex shops lined the entire area. I bought my fake ID in a store over there when I was 18. Say what you will about Guliani the begining of the NYC revival was when he re-wrote the occupany laws & forced the sex stores to close & relocate & got Disney to take a chance on opening a store in the area.
I remember when Disney did open. The store was the only one in the area. It was like a shining beacon of hope for commerece. I refer to those days as the good ol' days.
And please tell me some modern places today that are like TS 20 years ago.
Call me shady, but it sounds like a party to me! Better than the tourist trap it looks like today.
There are really no places today comparable to what the TS area was like in the 70's or 80's, but a similar kind of "Disney-fication" is threatening to happen in Coney Island. Go down there and take a good look befoire it's gone. To what extent it will end up is anyone's guess, but here's what's going on:
Long-time businesses on the Boardwalk were thrown out of their locations because their future plans didn't meet the 'vision' of the lanlord/city (they go hand in hand). Guess what's the first new business to replace the old, funky places that were there before? A "Checkers" (the hamburger chain).
Yeah - Coney Island, like the old TS, needs some changes, but must we wind up with a totally commercial, plastic, antiseptic environment?
20 years ago Times Sq was a barren waste land of human depravity. Shuttered stores & sex shops lined the entire area. I bought my fake ID in a store over there when I was 18. Say what you will about Guliani the begining of the NYC revival was when he re-wrote the occupany laws & forced the sex stores to close & relocate & got Disney to take a chance on opening a store in the area.
I remember when Disney did open. The store was the only one in the area. It was like a shining beacon of hope for commerece. I refer to those days as the good ol' days.
Guliani had nothing to do with most of the eradication of the sex stores in Times Square. Blame technology. The VCR, and later the Internet, pretty much made destoyed the porn places because with them everyone could watch porn in the privacy of their own home. Sex shops are now scattered around the city, however, and generally more low key because its mostly "take-out" so to speak.
THe only place I visited back then that reminded me a bit of Times Square was downtown Boston. Washington St, the main drag in their entertainment district was a seedy flesh-peddling s**t hole so bad it was known as The Combat Zone.
To go back a little further I have fond memories of the mid 1970s, being about 14 and bicycling down there with a pal so we could check out the hookers. They mostly ignored us (a 14-year-old isn't going to have any money, for one thing) but once in a while we'd get a teasing comment.
I think DVDs and the internet probably have done more to eliminate xxx theaters and sex shops and streetwalkers than anything else. The city's initiatives (starting under Koch and really took off under Giuliani) to clean the place up started it, but to keep it away, that's what I mean.
way more public socializing back then
than people not born then can imagine.
we didn't have internet, cell phones and
other distractions. all we had were phone
booths to call people when outside.
sounds weird, right?
Seedy, sex stores, gritty streets that probably had drug dealers, and to quote a video, "hookers in short rabbit jackets".
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