As a youngster, the 80's signifies transformers, the Cold War, Reagan's Star Wars program, and the movie Wall Street. How bad was New York City during the 1980s? I understand that the crack epidemic made the situation worse but the way that period is described today, you would think it was close to hell on earth, where rape, murder, and corruption was part of daily life.
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I don't want to press you if you don't want to write about it, but could you otherwise provide some examples or personal experience.
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Great post!
shareI went with the intention of living there in 1982, and lasted three weeks. While making a pay phone call in the middle of the afternoon, I observed a guy across the street with a face and gait that were a parody of an old-school villian. He doused a potted shrub in front of a restaurant with gasoline and set it afire. At night, packs of psychos you never saw in the day would emerge at half-hour intervals, each scarier than the one that preceded it. I never crossed between avenues down the long east-west streets after dark, unless tagging behind a group of six or more relatively sane-looking people. When friends went their separate ways, the common valedictory they said to one another was "Be safe." Dope was sold in plain view of the cops. When fear became paralyzing, I'd duck into the vestibule of an apartment building to toke up and put on a 500-yard stare. Everything was expensive. If you had the money to take a cab everywhere and live a couple rungs up from the bottom, maybe it wasn't so bad. But Manhattan was still rife with native New Yorkers, and they were RUDE, at best. There were stripped-down stolen cars abandoned all over the place, and whores stood in the middle of the street soliciting business. The morning after I got robbed in Times Square, I was hightailing it for home. Finally went back 24 years later. I stepped out of the train station in fight-or-flight combat mode, ready for anything. Of course NYC had changed radically, and I was soon walking around with my 12-year-old son at 4:30 a.m. without a care in the world. Can't speak for the outer boroughs, but Manhattan was transformed.
shareI grew up in Brooklyn and was 11 in 1981. Things were very bad. My brother and I were with some neighborhood kids one Saturday afternoon riding our bikes. Two thugs jumped us and stole my brother's brand new bike in broad daylight. My father scoured the neighborhood in his car looking for the thieves, but it never occurred to him to call 911. There was just no point. That same year there was a triple homicide in the building we lived in. It was a love triangle gone bad. A jilted lover killed his ex girlfriend and her new guy, and then offed himself. It didn't make the local news.
shareSounds more like a double homicide and a suicide.
shareThat might be an over statement when you consider urban squaller in third world countries.
However, I grew up in the NY area and worked in Manhattan in the mid '80s. The city truly deteriorated to an alarming degree and there was great pessimism that it could ever be reversed. The elite consensus was that the city had grown to be ungovernable.
I fear that this generation of New Yorker does not realize how far the city has come since the bleak days and does not understand that the progess was not just an accident of history, but very deliberate policies of Bloomberg and Giulliani
I was born in the house my father built
As a person from a place where bad things tend to prevail these days, i can't help asking: how could a single man, albeit a mayor, change a system as rotten and ungovernable as described in this thread? What was the force that managed to turn the course of history in NYC? And why couldn't it show itself earlier?
shareBroken windows theory played a large part in turning it around:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
I lived in NYC from '82 to '89. It was not that bad. I heard from people who were there, that from 1970 to 1981 was bad.
shareI lived there in the 2000s and I can tell you that N.Y is a very safe and clean city. Also , like ur fellow poster , I was not there at that time but I remember older NY residents telling me stories. You see, in the 80's N.Y city was dirty. Not only street dirty but also corruption wise. You could not go out at night and feel safe. the streets were full of gang members, thieves and prostitutes. Plus the dirty cops. It was a nightmare. The result : the highest rate of crime in the country(robbery, murders and rape)
Somehow as administrations changed each new elected mayors decided to put a stop to all that. And things started to get better over the years. That's how we came to the N.Y.C we have today .
I remember going to NY in summer of 86 was 5 years old, and didn't seem dirty to me and I never saw no gang members when going to Wendys- my dad said the 70's/early 80's was bad for that not mid-late 80's-I mean look at Wall Street film streets were not that dirty
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oh your talking bout some of the other Boroughs you never made that clear before lol, Yea seen Warriors classic film but Manhattan +Brooklyn look like 2 different states! Beastie boys my cousin she used to love them[still does]. What other parts apart from Manhattan were good in NYC Migilicuty11
shareI remember going to NY in summer of 86 was 5 years old, and didn't seem dirty to me and I never saw no gang members when going to Wendys- my dad said the 70's/early 80's was bad for that not mid-late 80's
I was there in the mid-'80s and, yeah, Manhattan at least wasn't too bad anymore.
But in the '70s and very-early'80s, the city was apparently teetering on the verge of collapse.
Oh cool what part of the mid 80's, like me in 86 or before? but yea mid 70's-early 80'sit was but after that it was fine so I'm glad it got it's act together! where you from PrometheusTree64
It is all because of Guiliani. Dinkins was useless. Now NYC has another useless mayor ih DeBlasio and the crime is rising once again.
share1981 was the most violent year in NYC history-I visited in 1982.
1990 was the worst year for NY statistically.
2001 stats usually don't include the 9/11 attacks, otherwise that would be the worst.
Yes, a lot of people don't know that US gun murder peaked in 1993 and has plunged 65% to 1/3 the level today. In fact it is the lowest in US history.
social surveys find most people literally invert the trend and think it is up due to 24/7 coverage of any shooting
I wasn't there, but from what I've read... yeah, it was pretty bad.
Ted Nugent called, he wants his shirt back.
Well, if I am not mistaken New York used to hold the unfortunate title of murder capital of the US for quite a few years in a row. It was a place beset by corruption, racial tensions, a clear and pronounced wealth gap, staggering crime rates, urban decay and poverty, the crack and AIDS epidemics etc. The city was near bankrupcy and only the intervention of the Federal and State governments kept the city solvent and above water.
Here is an article and some images that are quite poignant and kind of illustrate the environment the movie delves into;
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-used-to-be-a-terrifying-p lace-photos-2013-7?op=1
"Today is the tomorrow I was so worried about yesterday"--Anthony Hopkins
It was bad I'm sure, but most exaggerate it so much they make it seem like it was Gotham city!...with no batman
shareVisited there in the '70s as a kid, seemed pretty cool! Of course I was like 13, so the crime, corruption, etc. didn't really register with me. Did all the touristy stuff, but I do remember my parents being SUPER cautious and protective of me and my brother. Then I moved there for school and had my apartment (in Manhattan) burglarized twice in 6 months (second time the guy broke in while I was sleeping and threatened to blow my head off)...Other than that, I never had problems. As far as filthiness, I visited a friend in Philadelphia back then and that city was WAY dirtier than NYC.
shareI read a theory that one of the reasons for the end of the great crime wave, is the legalization of abortion.
A lot of kids who would have grown up to become criminality statistics, quite simply where never born because they got aborted before they got the chance to grow up in the conditions that create criminals
Born in '78, raised in Manhattan. Moved away for good in 2010 and have only been home sporadically ever since. I miss the old NY, I miss my city. And lemme tell you: I'm not the only one.
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it was like gotham from what i'm being told
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