New York, a Hell of A Town

Sometimes, I wonder how much I’ve idealized my childhood in New York City. The longer your memory grows, the more you tend to forget the bad bits and only recall the sunny, bright moments, until your memories are fragments of half-remembered stories, daydreams and, at best, fuzzy recollections of what really happened. Intellectually, I know New York City during the 80s was not a friendly place. It wasn’t a nice place. We are still in the midst of a deep fiscal crisis. The city’s decaying infrastructure was falling apart and no one seemed to care. It was at great risk to your personal safety if you dared to venture out on the subway system in the wee hours of the morning. You knew exactly who your neighborhood drug dealers were and where they lived. Growing up in the city meant you were raised to be just a touch paranoid. Possible danger was around every corner and it was out to get you.

Yet, for all that was wrong with this city, and there was a long list, New York in the 1980s was a canvas of stunning contradictions. As I’ve grown older, I tend to forget that my playground was full of broken bottles and discarded drug paraphernalia, evidence of what our school yard was used for under the cover of darkness. I can remember being fascinated by the subway graffiti. My mother constantly admonished the criminals who would dare destroy public property with their “disgusting” art, but I always saw it was something beautiful, a canvas of rainbows riding high above or well below the city.

For all the improvements our city has made in the past few decades (believe me, the New York of 1977 and 2007 are two completely different animals), I sometimes find myself longing for that New York, the one that was a bit edgy, a bit dangerous, a bit dark. The city that was so devoid of hope that President Ford told us to drop dead, but, again, I think my memories of how it was back then are not actually how it was back then.

All this brings me to a point. I swear, I have one. VH1 re-aired one of the RockDocs from earlier in the summer that tries to answer the question, why was 1977 such an important year in New York City history? NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell was a mind trip. This was the New York of my youth, the New York where no one dared venture into Times Square after 9 p.m., the New York that was two parts grit, one part insanity, and where that sense of hopeless sparked a cultural revolution. As someone once said, there is no greater inspiration in art than desperation and if no one has ever said that, they should have.

As the show’s official website puts it:

This two-part, two-hour documentary tells the story of one of the most astonishing pop culture years in American history. New York City had fallen in decay and chaos. There were not enough jobs, not enough money, not enough police, not enough schools, and not enough social services. There was a city wide black out with major looting, there was a serial killer on the loose, and the Bronx was burning.

Yet out of the chaos, emerged one of the most creative times any city has ever encountered. Hip Hop was emerging from the South Bronx, punk music was emerging from the Lower Eastside, and disco was emerging from Queens and midtown Manhattan. Elaborate, finely crafted graffiti art decorated the subway cars. Break-dancers danced in the streets. There was a huge sexual liberation with sex clubs and a burgeoning porn industry. In the beginning of the year, the world was not paying attention, and most of this activity existed in its own underground bubble. Yet by the end of 1977 all of this artistic expression was about to become part of mainstream America and would remain popular for generations to come. Maybe it would never again be this independent expression, not invented for money or fame, but the need to rebel against the mayhem around them. Maybe it would go on to be commercialized and sterilized for massive consumption. Maybe it would never again be this unique.

My favorite moment of the documentary was former New York Daily News columist Jimmy Breslin lamenting about the wholesome transformation the Times Square area has undergone over the past decade. There should be hookers on all the street corners. Breslin’s wife counters, “you don’t even know what a hooker looks like.”

Here is another one of my favorite segments about the 1977 blackout. To all of my newly arrived immigrants to this fair city, just remember this if you feel the need to complain about how “dangerous” the surrounding area to your $2,000 dollar a month, one bedroom apartment in the corner of Astoria is…. you don’t even know dangerous, so stop complaining!