Hello, Just quite interested to know if anyone lived in New York during the period where the film was set or has any information on what New York was like at the time?
thanks
Andy
I lived in Manhattan in Hell's Kitchen, then still ungentrified, so I was close to the Times Square area, and yes, it was as seedy as it's shown in the movie. And crime was rampant.
shareIn the 1970s, New York City was pretty much a mess. Crime - violent crime - was a specialty. Betsy's saying near the beginning of the film that one reason she was working in the presidential campaign for the Palatine character was that he supported "mandatory welfare". That off-hand comment told you what you needed to know about the City's condition.
Ritzy areas of the city were side-by-side to the dregs of society.
E pluribus unum
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Times Square was basically a dump well into the 1990's, not all too different from the images in Taxi Driver. However, urban blight was hardly unique to NYC, other major cities in the US (Washington DC) were probably in even worse shape when it comes to violent crime, especially drug-trade related.
Interestingly, Martin Scorsese gave an interview where he basically felt nostalgic for Times Square's seedy, run-down past. He said that with recent gentrification and a crackdown on crime, some of its unique character was lost along the way. You get the impression that Scorsese finds something aesthetically appealing about seediness and urban blight, something that can be sensed in the visuals of Taxi Driver, where there's something about even the most disgusting street scenes that draws the viewer in.
I moved to NYC in 1973, after I got out of the army, and to me this movie is like a documentary. The Times Square area (and Hell's Kitchen, where I still live) was exactly like it's shown in the movie. After dark, we used to walk down the center of the side streets between 8th & 10th Avenues, rather than on the sidewalks, because it gave you a slight headstart when the muggers would come at you from the shadows. There were wolfpacks of muggers that would attack commuters in the Port Authority Bus Terminal during the day. We had about 1,600 murders in the city the year I arrived (it got worse, peaking at 2,245 in 1990); last year, we had 328. There was so much graffiti covering the subway car windows, unless you were sitting by a door you had no idea what station you were at. It was a mess here.
shareSpeaking of wolfpacks, one of the things I remember, that almost no one comments about, is that it was like Manhattan was under the thumb of a veritable occupying army of ghetto "youths." Not just muggers (who preyed as much, if not more, on Black neighborhoods), but kids harassing Caucasians just for the hell of it or to get back at "the Man."
shareI'd like to add some perspective on the previous posts. I grew up here, entered high school in the Bronx in 1969, left the city but commuted to work there from 1984 to 1988, and finally moved back to the Bronx in 1999 (long story about that).
New York resists quick generalizations. Times Square and West Midtown have been rebuilt and restructured and are entirely different from the 1970s. Residential "gentrification" has moved into neighborhoods like Harlem and Williamburg, Brooklyn. On the other hand, many neighborhoods in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn - and perhaps Staten Island - are poorer than they were thirty or forty years ago.
A difference is that back then the population was dropping and some neighborhoods were beset by housing abandonment. Now the population seems to be zooming upwards. Crime has dropped dramatically but affordable housing is becoming very hard to find.
I remember most street crime - muggings/robberies - was done by individuals or pairs of people. "Wolfpacks:" not so much. They were around I suppose, but I'm straining to remember ever seeing or hearing about them. I was familiar then with much of Manhattan, including West Harlem and Washington Heights, and many areas of the Bronx.
Interestingly, Martin Scorsese gave an interview where he basically felt nostalgic for Times Square's seedy, run-down past. He said that with recent gentrification and a crackdown on crime, some of its unique character was lost along the way. You get the impression that Scorsese finds something aesthetically appealing about seediness and urban blight, something that can be sensed in the visuals of Taxi Driver, where there's something about even the most disgusting street scenes that draws the viewer in.
The '70s was the Decay Era of New York.
shareIt says something about New York in the 70s, certainly, but it also says something about TB's mind. All he can see is the scum and he becomes swallowed up by it. People generally see what they want to see and/or what they've been conditioned to see. There's always been more to New York, much more to it, but if you are poor and mentally ill you stop seeing the good stuff not least because much of it has nothing to do with your life. You don't have the money or the lifestyle for it to be accessible to you.
I think from the beginning TB has positive impulses. It's healthy to be repulsed by the sleaze and slime around him, that makes sense, it's also healthy to want to help Iris. But his mental and emotional issues and possibly his poverty and lack of education render him impotent, he can't fathom a way of transcending his these things. Someone well-adjusted would find a socially appropriate way of dealing with it but he only can see deeply anti-social ways of dealing with things.
"It says something about New York in the 70s, certainly, but it also says something about TB's mind. All he can see is the scum and he becomes swallowed up by it. People generally see what they want to see and/or what they've been conditioned to see. There's always been more to New York, much more to it, but if you are poor and mentally ill you stop seeing the good stuff not least because much of it has nothing to do with your life. You don't have the money or the lifestyle for it to be accessible to you."
May be true for a lot of people, but it wasn't true for me in the 1970s. I lived in Hell's Kitchen, then a rundown but basically safe neighborhood, and next door to Times Square/42nd Street area, then in all its sleazy "glory." My apartment wasn't much better than Travis' apartment, and my income was probably a lot lower. (For one thing I could never have afforded the armory Travis purchased from Easy Andy, and that's not even counting the money he spent on ammunition, practicing at that shooting range regularly as he did.) But I had a generally good time. One of the things I loved about Manhattan in the 1970s was that there were places that were still affordable to the proles, and it was just enjoyable being a part of it . . . New York, New York!
Did you see A Most Violent Year (2014)? If so, what did you make of it?
shareInterestingly enough, it was the legalization of abortion that eventually led to the crime going down in NYC. It's detailed in the book Freakonomics, quite an interesting read.
"You keep him in here, and make sure HE doesn't leave!"
The first time I visited NY city was in the late '70s. I was 15 years old on a school field trip. Yeah - it was really that gritty - at least in some areas. In hindsight I'm surprised they let us wander around Times Square a bit before seeing a play.
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