Brutal New York - 1965/95

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=402544

by px • 15 years ago

215 74 15 years ago

AlexMuir• 15 years ago

Three years ago people would read that and feel glad that those areas have improved. Today I read it and feel sad that we are inevitably heading back into similar days.

klbarry• 15 years ago

Really? What signs do you see in NYC of heading back to those days? I live pretty fearlessly in most places, and I used to take the subway late, late at night all the time. The only dangerous places are really some parts of the Bronx.

evgen• 15 years ago

FWIW, this recent recession is currently considered an anomaly because crime rates did not go up. When the economy slowed down everyone braced for a spike in the various crime rates that seems to inevitably follow such an event, and they waited...and waited...

sudonim2• 15 years ago

I have a friend who is a petite white girl with blonde hair. She lives in the bronx and takes the subway home late at night. When I asked her about feeling unsafe, she said that no one harasses her and she hasn't been mugged.

matsur• 15 years ago

While fiscal issues and a good dose of gov't ineptitude are obvious, I see nothing pointing to a fall back into the abyss NYC was in ~20 yrs ago. What do you think has changed in the past 3 years that leads you to this conclusion? The gentrification of Brooklyn?

b_emery3• 15 years ago

As a side note here's an interesting article about how technology has affected prostitution in NYC: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_sextrade/all/1

cletus3• 15 years ago

I don't see it that way at all. Disclaimer: I say this as someone from Australia who has only lived in NYC for a matter of months.

I see the fate of NYC--at least Manhattan--as being very much like that of Paris. Paris is now basically an enclave for the wealthy (in the 20 arrondisements). The people who keep the city that way live somewhere else. Singles come to the city and live in expensive cramped apartments for the Paris life.

You see the same thing happen increasingly in Manhattan.

Up until the 1960s there was (and still is) a view for NYC being for all the people, not just the rich. For this reason you have programs like rent control/stabilization so "key workers" (as they'd be called in London, which faces similar issues) can afford to live there. Up until the 1960s, NYC had a very socialist mentality. Education for NYC residents was free at NYU.

In the 1970s the golden goose that paid for all this died. Crime rose. The middle class moved to the suburbs. The tax base dropped and industry (NYC had a heavy port industry up to this point) went elsewhere, creating unemployment.

In the 70s, NYC almost went bankrupt until it was bailed out by union pension funds and ultimately the Federal government.

Starting in the late 70s with Koch and then with Guiliani the city, from my understanding, radically changed. This was due to a combination of economic change as well as a change in policing and other policies.

I think it would be fair to say that NYC--particularly Manhattan--is now largely gentrified. Where there were race riots in Alphabet City in the 80s and you'd only go to Avenue D at your own peril, now they have a Whole Foods.

Even in the 90s Times Square was the butt of many jokes from the likes of David Letterman and I can remember his standup bits often talking about the hookers in Times Square. It was up until the 80s and 90s a red light district. Now? It's basically Disneyified.

Some complain about this change, either saying the NYC has lost its grit and charm (probably true) and that NYC is no longer for all people (also possibly true), but NYC has an important constraint: the available land is limited. As the city grows, this will inevitably go up. Of course it can go down if the city is abandoned, much like parts of Baltimore have been and NYC was in the 70s and 80s.

So I see NYC as becoming America's Paris--possibly Monte Carlo. This shift if anything is hugely responsible for drops in crime. The sad fact is that crime doesn't travel far. Move the poor people elsewhere and the crime goes with them. It's why the Bronx, which has had much crime and poverty, can still have rich enclaves like Riverdale just a few miles from a ghetto.

There are huge advantages to urbanization. I don't see this trend diminishing. As people tend to move to cities, New York will grow. While it grows (or at least doesn't shrink), it will become increasingly gentrified.

This says nothing about the state of poverty in the US. You cannot take the state of NY as a barometer for that, good or bad.

warfangle• 15 years ago

"I think it would be fair to say that NYC--particularly Manhattan--is now largely gentrified. Where there were race riots in Alphabet City in the 80s and you'd only go to Avenue D at your own peril, now they have a Whole Foods."

Additional tidbit. Where once (late 90s early 00's) there were bodies dropping weekly in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a block away there is a brand new 24 hour organic grocer: http://bushwickbk.com/2011/02/03/after-long-wait-hana-grocer...

b_emery3• 15 years ago

The decrease in crime in NYC over the lase few decades is just remarkable. I remember reading about the problems of AIDS and crack, and just thinking there was no hope. I would have never thought it could turn around like it did. Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" had some pretty good evidence that crime can be thought of as an epidemic. I'd love to read more on the subject if anyone has suggestions.

Tichy• 15 years ago

I think in Freakonomics a study is cited that claims what actually curbed the rise of crime was a change in abortion laws (rather than the "no broken windows" theory). Not sure if that was one of the things in Freakonomics that was later shown to be false, though.

primodemus• 15 years ago

yes it has been disputed. See: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113314261192407815-HL...

and http://www.economist.com/node/5246700?story_id=5246700

drawkbox• 15 years ago

Here's the murder graph from 1920 to present. Amazingly bad spike from 65-95.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYC_murders.PNG

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

I'd vaguely expect the rise in ATMs to be a factor.

The ability to exist with a minimum of cash would tend to make casual theft much less appealing.

kiddo2• 15 years ago

Maybe, but I doubt it. In fact, an outdoor ATM is probably an appealing location in which to rob someone. And now we have ipods, iphones, laptops, etc that almost everyone is carrying. Casual theft is still appealing and there's much to be stolen.

kiddo2• 15 years ago

You might want to read Jane Jacobs "The Death and Life of Great American Cities".

maxklein• 15 years ago

The U.S has come a long way since then. I wonder what happened to all those drug addicted people - where do they live now?

kloncks2• 15 years ago

There are still significant parts of New York City where these sights are common.

[edit] By "these sights", I am responding to the question on where "Drug Addicted People" go. "These sights" = "Drug Addicted People" not the specific content of these pictures.

catshirt• 15 years ago

care to elaborate? new york city is fascinating.

chrisaycock• 15 years ago

I live in New York and I've never seen anything as gruesome as this photos.

quinndupont2• 15 years ago

That's not true. American economic disparity is at its worst point since the 1930s. It made a slight recovery in the 1980s, but has been slipping ever since.

The rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer. This is not unique to New York city.

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

no, the rich and poor are getting richer. it's just that the rich are getting rich faster.

cletus3• 15 years ago

This depends on your timescale.

The fact is, if you're going to be poor or work a menial job there is no better time in history to be that way than now. The standard of living amongst even the poorest in the developed world is better than that of the richest just a century or two ago. Life expectancy, literacy, access to technology and financial freedom are unparalleled.

Does that mean the gap between rich and poor isn't widening? No it doesn't. But rather than focus on the disparity between the poor and the mega-rich, why not just examine the circumstances of the poor? Who really cares if there are more billionaires than ever (a function largely of inflation)?

What's more, society is far less classist than it has ever been. Throughout history you've had the aristocratic classes. If you weren't born to them, too bad (with very few exceptions). Now? Some of America's richest people were born to nothing (Gates, Page, Brin, Buffett, etc).

There are certainly advantages to being born to parents who are better off than poor: better access to education, the fact that the right choices made by parents tend to be repeated by their children and so on.

So maybe we should have less hand-wringing about how badly the poor have it in the developed world and look at a real problem like how badly the poor have it in the developing world where diseases than are for us either extinct or simply nuisances routinely kill and many can't even get access to clean drinking water.

mschwar99• 15 years ago

I don't know about New York, but in DC gentrification is pushing many of the urban poor to the older suburbs like Prince George's County in Maryland.

As the process continues it might be that some of the first suburban areas built in the 50s and 60s become the new "inner cities." Transportation costs serve as a pressure to drive people back into re-developed spots in the city and next lowest cost of living are many of these first suburbs that haven't seen development and investment keep up with the times.

Duff4• 15 years ago

That process started happening in NYC decades ago, depending on how you define suburb. Suburbs are awful places to be poor, as you need to be able to maintain a car to get by.

Parts of Nassau county and even Westchester (ie. Southside of Mount Vernon) have been rough for a long time. Ditto any of the cities in North Jersey, which have been swallowed up and discarded by the greater New York metropolis.

peterwwillis• 15 years ago

Portraits of the 16 people killed last month in PGC: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...

petercooper2• 15 years ago

This has already happened in a significant way in many European cities (often fuelled by downtown destruction during or post WW2). The suburbs of St Denis, Sarcelles and Aubervilliers in Paris are good examples or the manufactured suburb of Thamesmead in London.

watchandwait2• 15 years ago

A lot of the physical decay in New York in the 1970s was the result of rent control, which led to abandoned buildings as landlords could not operate the buildings at a profit. At one point the city owned 70% of Harlem.

danbmil992• 15 years ago

Blaming the state of affairs in NYC in the 70's on rent control is simplistic in the extreme. Rent control (and rent stabilization) are questionable policies for sure, but they were around since WWII, and every tenement owner was aware of the state of the rent roll when they bought the apartment buildings (so the ramifications were built into the price).

The truth is that a confluence of bad policy and economic conditions converged to create the mess our cities were in during that time. Some cities (Detroit, Baltimore?) have yet to recover.

jorgem• 15 years ago

Well we do have over 2M people in jail in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

Jun8• 15 years ago

I read the book excerpt that is linked (http://www.american-pictures.com/english/book/book-9.htm) an it's fascinating!

Dn_Ab2• 15 years ago

1965ish. This is where, when Hip Hop was born. Probably a lot of you turn your nose down* at this angry crime glorifying inferior 'form of noise'. But look at the conditions of these kids and what they had to work with, is it any surprise that they would be so pissed?

Now look at today, not so many years after and against large odds; those kids have created an international culture with music, dance, stories, poetry - a veritable complex art form that touches the lives of hundreds of millions of people all over the world and gives, gave hope to those who had nothing else. This, at least is something that a community of hackers and entrepreneurs can appreciate. That is the true message of hip hop that has been lost by the bastardizing filteration process of media and people not so intimately connected to its origins - including descendants of the visionaries, who despoil the art and see it as only a means to get rich quick and stack up on some biches. Damned Entropy.

It speaks something of both the human ability to persevere and the unique aspects of the U.S. where people in such adverse coordinates can still go on to create. such great things.

I was a teeny bit hurt (not offended) by the Cr48 warning agains't exposure to rap.

yes i am aware that rap, heck music is a subset of hip hop

self.StepOfSoapBox()

potatolicious• 15 years ago

Hear hear. For those who haven't had a lot of exposure to rap, I highly encourage you to explore the early roots of rap and hip-hop; you will find that much of it is extremely socially conscious, in ways more authentic and more compelling than long, drawn-out exposes and journal reports.

And then mainstream rap took a dive off a cliff into meaningless misogyny, bling, and euphemisms involving skeet shooting.

noinput• 15 years ago

Rap today is a mashup of old lyrics, over-engineered (and unnecessary) beats and a sad use of Autotune. I used to DJ for years and couldn't stand where the music was going, but the classics are considered classic for a reason, in my book at least.

Listening to, and I mean really listening to the lyrics of true rappers that started and built the movement up is inspiring. Much of it is the obvious "Hoes & Cash", but there is almost always a reason they bring it up. It was either about what they strived to get to, or the rewards of their hustle and struggle to break out of the streets they grew up on. It truly is a unique form of expression that very few other music forms can touch.

bsiemon• 15 years ago

You might like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deltron_3030.

nickpinkston• 15 years ago

Totally - maybe a good transition would be NerdCore rap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerdcore_hip_hop

blhack• 15 years ago

If anybody is interested in learning about the roots of hip hop (more specifically of DJ culture), this is an excellent documentary on it:

http://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Afrika-Bambaataa/dp/B00006AL1G...

jamesbritt2• 15 years ago

Also well worth watching, both for the hip hop history and a study of New York showing its best and worst:

"NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1080761/

When I first heard about this project I was positive it would be a VH1 suckfest, but when I saw it was stunned. It's really good, quite accurate. Those were wild times in New York.

jamesbritt2• 15 years ago

    1965ish. This is where, when Hip Hop was born.

1965-ish? How do figure that? I always had it pegged as the mid '70s, South Bronx.

Dn_Ab2• 15 years ago

You're right that it was formed by the 70's but my emphasis is in the early undefined formative stages. Its true that by the mid 70s the movement had already organized itself into an early form of what we know as hip hop. But prior, in the late 1960s nascent movements were occurring that would eventually coalesce into the hip hop community by the mid to late 1970s.

scrame• 15 years ago

> I was a teeny bit hurt (not offended) by the Cr48 warning against exposure to rap.

I agree, though I was a bit offended. I made a (downvoted) comment that I didn't get the joke on the original article, even though I understood that it was "peppered" with humor. Honestly, being exposed to hip-hop was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Duff4• 15 years ago

My family moved away from NYC in the late 80's because they couldn't afford to send us to the Catholic school, and the middle school that I was going to be sent to had some issues with violence. Violence like kids burning up cars with molotov cocktails.

ilamont• 15 years ago

I visited NYC on a regular basis from 1987 to 1990, to see friends in Brooklyn, NYU and northern NJ. It seems hard to imagine now, but I95 had abandoned, jacked cars on the shoulder, right in the middle of the city. At some grim housing estate visible from one of the train or aboveground subway lines, I remember seeing thick trail of garbage a hundred feet long covering a wide stairway going down an adjoining hillside to another street. Lots of people sleeping rough in Penn Station, and aggressive panhandling. Natives warned me not to take the subway past a certain time.

Despite this environment -- or because of it -- there was also a lot of interesting cultural activity taking place in the city. Someone mentioned hip-hop originated there; it was also where American punk rock got off the ground, not to mention all kinds of art and theater activity. The food then, as is now, was excellent.

VladRussian• 15 years ago

very familiar pictures - that was depiction of life of working people in the US in the Soviet media when i was a child.

arihelgason• 15 years ago

Apparently the KGB tried to recruit the photographer, Jacob Holdt. He then tried to stop his book being used for propaganda. That probably didn't stop it from happening, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Holdt

javanix• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, places like these still exist.

Read 'The Corner' by David Simon (creator of The Wire and Treme) if you're interested in a more modern take on the ghetto.

Take home message: the war on drugs in its current form is not working and the side effects are places like this, completely cut off from normal society, almost completely out of reach outside of an economic revival (like happened in Harlem).

flip2• 15 years ago

http://gurlgoestoafrica.tumblr.com/

The author needs to read this and get a life. Stop focusing on the downsides and actually do some work. It's as though people want to entirely forget the past and merely see the present.

This post is, entirely, ignorant and racist.

flip2• 15 years ago

Furthermore, shame on HN for taking on the liberal agenda and feeling pity. It's one thing to point out a problem. But to point out a problem without offering a solution? This is pathetic. For the first time, I am embarrassed to be part of this community. Way to be objective like the logical type we aspire to be guys! You've really let me down by even allowing this to reach the front page. This does not help me write code better... in any way. You have exploited HN by posting, and REALLY? upvoting this kind of bullshit.

mikecane• 15 years ago

I find it odd that this link has gained such traction. Months ago I posted a link to Holdt's original American Pictures site and it sunk like a stone. I'm sure this has happened to other people here too. No figuring out what will or won't pop.

rlmw• 15 years ago

For some reason when I clicked this link, I assumed it would be picture of brutialist architecture [0]. Interesting photos nonetheless.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture

godber• 15 years ago

Later in that thread there are links to other threads that include pictures of Harlem in recent times:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=404013

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=405109

Brutal New York - 1965/95

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