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.
shareFor everyone, a very handy home video, shot by Charlie Ahearn from 1981-83, shows Times Square in all its glory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn4SNjazkyY
It's quite long, and filled with mayhem, most notably at 9:45 and ff.
Personal experiences, Manhattan, 1981
-On the subway one guy with a knife came in one door and like all the transit cops in the world came in the other, guns drawn, yelling at the guy to exit but he hung on for dear life to the pole. All of us, sitting on the ride home from school or work, looked up then back to our books or newspapers.
-At work was a murder robbery.
-Weirdly, with all the crime, we still felt safe out at any hour of the night walking home from clubs.
-Many of the local markets had robberies. Two I know the workers were shot and killed even after giving up cash.
-I gave a guy a ride, and he started smoking crack and asked if I was a cop.
-Some of the subway passages are labyrinth mazes. Occasionally muggers hid there. One gate I passed through regularly had a robbery murder the previous evening. (Subways were especially dangerous, we learned to ride where the operators were stationed whenever possible.
-Lots of muggings. Most of my friends, myself included, had been mugged by threat of knife, guns, or brass knuckles. Muggers usually in pairs or more.
-Lots of break-ins, apartment and cars.
Just a few of my experiences, I have a lot of stories I left out like beatings and general mayhem.
Ed Koch was mayor of New York City through the 1980s, followed by David Dinkins, both Democrat politicians. What do you expect from liberals, LOL?
shareWell, appyy (h), the Democrats are the ones who began cleaning it up.
Or do you not even understand YOUR OWN words?
Anyway, my Dad was a NYC cabbie in the 70's. He was held up at gunpoint 3 or 4 times.
No, it was Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, starting in 1994, then followed by Michael Bloomberg, a former Democrat turned Republican, who totally cleaned up New York City.
Before Ed Koch and Dinkins, New York City was still under the mayorship of a corrupt Democrat called Abraham David "Abe" Beame in the 1970s. Please study your history and don't let blind partisanship cloud your judgment. Democrats had ruled New York City non-stop since 1946, LOL. I feel sorry for your dad. He should blame the corrupt Democrat mayor at that time. Under the Democrat mayor Beame, New York City went into bankruptcy during the time of your dad's accident, a disgrace for a metropolis for the first time ever.
"No, it was Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, starting in 1994, then followed by Michael Bloomberg, a former Democrat turned Republican, who totally cleaned up New York City."
Wrong.. It was Bill Clinton that got the US economy going in the 90's and caused major cities like NYC to rebuild with the middle class growing and having new buying power.
Rudy basically did quality of life stuff like throw homeless people in jail and force all the porn places in times sq to shut down and make it look like a corporate hodgepodge.
Jesus would support Universal Health Care
middle class shrunk under Clinton
shareIt was Bill Clinton that got the US economy going in the 90's and caused major cities like NYC to rebuild with the middle class growing and having new buying power.
I'm not sure that you have much reason to identify me as being partisan towards either side. You have some suggestion that I'm a democrat, but you should also pay attention to what you write. Your timeline suggests that the improvement came during a time where Koch and Dinkins were in office.
Giuliani was actually quite a good mayor. He did very well. He is an awful person (I find it hard to hear people suggest otherwise) and he was quite moderate. He was just a self-important, judgmental and hateful personality, and that clouded the perception of his time in office. Tho we should be grateful for the fact that he was never elected to the Presidency. But he's okay with it all. He just spends his time with loonies on Fox News.
New York was terrible, tho blaming that solely on the Democrats in office is a bit crazy. Corruption goes back a long time and it precedes the two-party era. Also, as you said, NYC is a metropolis..no, it is the Metropolis.
Also, let's not get too far ahead. Giuliani did not come in and clean it up in one fell swoop. The City was already going in an upward direction.
Giuliani gets (and of course, takes) too much credit. Dinkins was the first to dramatically increase police recruiting and presence in the city, but people ignore that because many Jewish voters are angry at him for the Crown Heights riot. Koch did play a role in helping to clean up the subways of the graffiti. But like another person said, as the economy improved in the 90's during the Clinton years, many urban cities (including NY) got better.
I personally think Bloomerg was the best mayor in the history of New York. Sadly, the current one is going to lead a downward spiral for the city.
"This year I'm voting Republican. The Democrats left a bad taste in my mouth."
-Monica Lewinsky
You have it backwards. Giuliani was not a Democrat.
shareI wonder if questions like these are asked for the actual curiosity to be satisfied or rather so one can sit back to watch many people espouse on their memories and opinions on such things.
I was young enough to enjoy the Transformers but old enough to remember the garbage and process the hell with juvenile anger. In short, it wasn't a nice place and I'm talking all the boros. It's a tourist attraction now and you can't get mad at that considering you could have gotten your face cut open over having a nicer jacket than someone else.
It was a dangerous place to be, especially if you were a woman or a smaller guy or even a bigger guy alone in the wrong place. Take peoples word for it, out on the street the 80's were a much crazier time in general compared to today. Violent crime is way down all over the U.S. compared to back then, yet the times are economically much harder today. The news covers the crime way more today, so we hear about things more, but random assaults and armed robberies were very normal in all the major cities back then. Not even to mention the fact that drinking and driving was rampant pretty much everywhere in those days. Cocaine was also huge in the 80's, and it's worst form crack among many of the really hurting people, (Crack creates machine like theft bots because it's so addictive.). Corruption was also much more prominent simply because almost all crimes were much easier to get away with back then, and also people in general were not nearly as informed as people are today. Honestly corruption is still pretty massive today I'd say. It was certainly much easier to feel alone against the world back then, and many people still feel that today I know, but it's not nearly as common. It was easier to feel like you had to survive rather than live in the 80's. Today everything is so regulated and eyes are on everything. Today you go to a concert and if you try to move closer to the stage security will be in your face. Back in the 80's, many hard rock and punk concerts resembled riots much more than they resembled anything else, not the dinner theater like atmosphere as it is today. It was a whole different ballgame back then. Security moved out of your way at concerts because they were under manned and afraid of the crowds. Concert security didn't mess with you much in the 80's or else they'd likely get their asses kicked. Today things are overly secure with regulations so that this kind of thing no longer happens. More security, more cameras, and the result, much less hooliganism. Back then many people didn't think twice about breaking the law, today you have little choice unless you want a surefire pass to a cell. Only very minor laws are broken all that much today, much different in the 80's however. In the major cities, theft and violent assaults were rampant in those days, and no city was crazier than NY I'm sure,(The biggest of them all.). Though Detroit and LA, (And perhaps a few others.) often rivaled it to some degree.
My body's a cage, it's been used and abused...and I...LIKE IT!! [Evil2]
Fantastic post, TheAnimalMother.
Central Park muggings and people jumping the tolls on the Subway. That was NYC in the 80's.
Going out for a normal routine could get you killed. I will never forget reading about a high school kid who dropped off his prom date at her home and as he was walking to his home, a gang confronted and killed him.
Then, due to a phone not working at home, a man went down to the street to make a call on a pay phone and was killed.
From my personal experience, life in NYC changed a lot especially during the 80's. Beginning of that decade, yep, terrible. The city was in obvious decay, and you could see that even in Manhattan. It was really omnipresent. Grime and crime. You had to be careful driving because of all those humongous potholes (seriously, that was incredible! You even had to be careful to _walk_! Hitting one of those either by car or on foot, you'd really end up hurt). You could see all those steam clouds emitted from broken underground pipes. Made for pretty pics and background of some Hollywood flicks. You walked along 42nd St, you'd end up being offered any kind of drugs at least a couple times - and I mean in broad daylight, walking as far as possible in the street, not close to the entrances. There was the electronics heaven, lots of little stores selling cameras, walkmen, all those Japanese gadgets. I believe it was on or around 38th St. Some of those stores had been robbed so often, you had ring to be let in through massive metal fences. Taking the subway at night? You simply wouldn't want to do that. Oh, that reminds me, you always carried some mug money - guess I haven't done that anywhere in the world anymore since at least a decade.
But during the second half of the 80's, Ed Koch did manage to improve the situation. I don't care about the political discussion that has already started here, but there was certainly some progress to be seen already.
It has been many, many years since I read it, but I recall Tom Wolfe's novel 'Bonfire of the Vanities' really catching the situation in NYC at the beginning of the 80's pretty well. Not the film, though. Read the book, if you want to get additional insight.
Manhattan may have been bad in the 70's, but Brooklyn was awful in the 80's. I was dating a girl from Mill Basin 82-85, and when I would visit her parents would take us out to nice restaurants, many of which my future father-in-law would note, had been the site of mob hits in recent years. My future brother-in-law came home one night beat to crap from a gang that had worked him over with baseball bats.
When I started grad school in '88, my girlfriend and I were coming back from the movies when we saw a guy get capped at Utica and Avenue J. Two guys pulled up behind the car across from us at the intersection. Passenger gets out, walks up to the other car and empties a revolver into the guy's head at point-blank range. Everyone scatters, and within 15 seconds there's just us and the guy who got blown away...and then he drives away, covered in blood, holding his head. I later heard from the detectives handling the case--who were totally blasé about the whole thing--that the guy lived. Said the shooter had a mask on, which he didn't.
That was my introduction to Brooklyn in the 80's. I lived with my head on a swivel the two years I lived in Flatbush. Luckily, I'm a big guy and never had any trouble, but I was real careful.
I lived in West SOHO in the early 80's, which I think was the low point. Although my politics are radically different from Giuliani, the 'broken windows' policy was on the mark. The subway (a system every other city would KILL for) literally -stank-. It was reaching the point where even 'Bohemians' didn't want to go out a lot. Tourism was almost non-existent.
Fast forward to the 90's and it was like night and day. I would visit and see people in my old neighbourhood out 24/7 with new restaurants and shops -everywhere-. Manhattan was -back-... well, until 9/11, but that's a whole other type of fear.