Serious question here.

Dude...you know that the New York of today is not the New York of the 70's and 80's right? Right? Taxi Driver's almost 40 years old. Violent crime's gone down and a lot of the locations in Taxi Driver are heavily gentrified. Do you have any sense of the real world outside of what you see in films?

Seid ihr das Essen? Nein, wir sind der Jaeger!

New York was much seedier in the 70s, as pointed out here. But I would also like to point out that the era's depictions of it wasn't universally negative either. Woody Allen has certainly had an ongoing love affair with the city, and other films like Superman: The Movie, Tootsie, Splash, etc. depicted it in rather appealing, romantic ways.

I grew up and currently reside in the New York suburbs. I only go into New York if I have a very good reason. It is a very expensive city and stressful to drive around.

I've never been to NYC so this is only a guess. But my GUESS is that it's similar to Las Vegas. Vegas used to be a lot more seedy & dangerous when it was run by gangsters instead of Disney. But it was a HELLUVA lot more fun and interesting. Probably the same with NYC before they cleaned it up and it got corporate (never a good thing).

I've lived in NYC my entire life. In the 70's and 80's, it was absolutely terrible. Crime everywhere. Normal people did not take the subways or go into parks at night. Everything smelled of urine. Bums would 'wash' your car window when you stopped for a traffic light. Responsible parents would not permit their children to go off the block or play outside unsupervised. There was no likability in it, at least for me. When Bernie Getz shot some kids attacking him, people understood.

Miraculously, Guliani somehow cleaned things up. The city turned into a tourist destination. 42nd Street became a Disney-fied corporate playground. Some people developed a nostalgia for the gritty old New York and I think those are the people you are referring to. But in reality, it was a horrible place.

Well, it's headed back in that direction now, so those people are getting their wish, I guess. The bums and the urine smell have returned. There are topless prostitutes walking around 42nd Street. Gangbangers can no longer be stopped and questioned. Quality of life crimes have been decriminalized. If you want to come here as a tourist, I'd do it soon as it's in a downward spiral again.

Are you kidding? Because - I'm resisting using the word "duh" - not all of New York is like this. Every big city in the US has slums and slimy areas, but most of them have many other things that people love. And New York is HUGE, it has 5 separate boroughs, all different. The borough of Manhattan alone has the Broadway theatre district, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, famous unique restaurants like the Russian Tea Room and Elaine's, museums like the MOMA and the Guggenheim, Lincoln Centre for the Arts, Chinatown, Times Square, Carnegie Hall, the United Nations Headquarters Building,Columbus Circle, to name just a few things.