c'mon..isn't this just a really really sad discussion? When your parents had this talk about how much better the old days were, you just rolled your eyes. Now the 27+ year old crowd is doing the same thing (couldn't you at least wait until thirty-something?). you people have become OLD-- or perhaps it's just resentenment that the times have passed you by and you don't want to get out of the way for the younger, lamer, richer generation.

(incidentally, why is being wealthy and creative mutually exclusive? how many broadway wannabes would sell half their soul to make gobs of money in a retarded hollywood sitcom?)

The "old" New York that most people seem to be lamenting these days never really died - that is to say the one that allowed a certain amount of heady, libertine freedom and provided all sorts of visual stimuli. It just moved around to different neighborhoods, venues, and means of expression - just like it always has.

What has changed is that you can now go out on the town with a 40 oz. or a spray paint can (if that's your game) and not need to worry (so much) about your safety as before. Doesn't seem like such a bad deal to me.

Retrospect is a wonderful thing, huh?

Wow, a friend told me to check this out and this thread is actually more level-headed than I though it would be... not just a "transplants suck vs. suck it up whiner" bitch fest. Lot of good stuff. I forget who said that cities reinvent themselves every 20 years, but as a 27 year old Upper West Side native (bye bye, claremont stables) I think I'm seeing that point. Plus this is an argument that's definitely been picking up steam the past 5 years or so and I think we're hitting a saturation mark.

But MY point IS, reasonable minds may differ and self-analyze til doomsday but, hello people, CONEY ISLAND! There's a Romantic-with-a-bigR part of me that feels like if they really tear this place down, the city dies. Yeah, things change, but even your great grandfather probably remembers paying a wooden nickle for the hansom cab to luna park! And I think it's very Interesting (with an insunuating I) that such a big deal was made about preserving the high line, which is a cool relic, vs. the non-outcry being raised over Astroland, which is a living, fully functioning institution. Yes, thinking about this actually keeps me awake at night (and I usually sleep really well.)

It obviously depends what you're here for, but I think if I wasn't born here and if I weren't living rent free with my parents (shaddup! there are circumstances) I'd go somewhere else, and that makes me sad. Some people place a high value on Prada flagship stores, Arcade Fire and truffle oil. Never been me. Now I'm done because I've made it a personal policy to enjoy what's good, avoid what annoys me and NOT rant about "old days" in public... I agree with Tony Sopprano, "back in the day is the lowest form of conversation."

PS- Marc Ribot's essay on jambands.com is an interesting read on a similar theme... is culture a commodity, and when should it be protectively subsidized?

Oh, and the one thing I forgot... while they were waxing nostalgic for their favorit eras, my father and grandfather HATED the city the way it was in the 70s and 80s. Much more so than how we all feel now. What goes around, comes around, I guess.

More cliches after the break...

You know what's funny? Right after I wrote the above post (#20 on your scorecard), it was like I heard the ghost of my father saying "That's nothing, I remember Manion's Bar on Fordham Road which had the first TV on the block and we could watch Giants games, the Valentine Theater where you could go to movies for a buck, the little candy store on Decatur Ave where the guy sold condoms under the counter, running from the Fordham Daggers..." and then my grandfather saying "That's nothing, I remember when we first moved up to the Bronx there was nothing but trees and Italians, the way we liked it..."

My point (and I do have one) is that this conversation has been going on forever. And while it feels very, very real to the people having it (because I really do miss CBGB's and Tower Records and Unique and the Bottom Line and the Lions Head and Claremont Stables), in the grand scheme of things, as they say, the more things change...

The city will go on, and the bitchin' will go on... only in New York, kids, only in New York.

While I don't wish there was more crime (I actually have been mugged here -at gunpoint no less- and it wasn't particularly cool), the fading of distinctions between the neighborhoods is a real loss for the city. In less than ten years we lost the fish market, the flower district, most of the antique/flea market district, meat packing...

Bloomberg's greatest failure is not pushing some kind of zoning laws to help preserve the character of New York City's neighborhoods and allowing national chain corporations to homogenize the city.

It's foolish to think that the only thing that distinguishes/d New York City was its crime or its natives.

"Many old timers are part of the problem.

Big deal. You went to Max's. You saw some bands, drank some drinks and barfed in the bathroom back in the day. You really contributed, man."

As if it's that simple. Not everyone can own a bar or knows how to curate gallery shows.

Lots of people get off their asses and contribute and then get priced out of their neighborhoods.

Gee, I sure miss the old days.

Ever since they did all that research into all those nasty diseases, it took the fun out of sitting in somebody else's bodily fluids every time you get on the subway and forced them to clean up everything.

Killjoys!

I think this article, and this discussion, misses many points. The article, because it appears to be solely about the Upper West Side in the 80's, and this discussion, because it's solely about New York in the 80's and 70's. I'm sure that says more about the age range of Gothamist readers than it does about anything else. But that era of our city was just a blip. An interesting, often creative blip, but a blip nonetheless. There have been many eras of New York. To whomever commented that we're the first generation to talk about "the good old days" - there's a clip in "New York: A Documentary Film" of Ed Koch reminiscing; he mentions that while running for mayor in the 70's, a woman came up to him and asked him to "make it like it was in the good old days". People always talk that line. I'm researching a book set a century ago in NY, and I have to say, studying the history of the city really throws it all into perspective in a way that fluff editorial never will.

For better or worse, this is still one of the coolest towns in the US (there are others). And here's the other thing - if you grow up here, it makes you incapable of functioning elsewhere for very long. As far as Paris, well...it gets more like New York all the time, in terms of people living at a faster and faster pace, knocking you over in the subway, tiny apartments, exorbitant rents (all my friends are moving to Tours) and such. The people are generally far better looking and the Metro is so much cooler than our subway system. But what I always miss about New York when I'm there is how visually distinct the different neighborhoods of NY are - you don't get that there. The architecture is nearly the same everywhere you go. It's lovely, but after a while the eye just goes blank.

What I miss is not the crime or some kind of fantasy of "edginess", but the room for people to be interesting. That doesn't really exist here anymore. And that's where I think other cities have us beat. We'll always be a unique place, but will we ever have that space for the weird, the low-rent, or the off-center again?

Azuma - man, yeah, that was a cool place! Almost forgot about it.

Many old timers are part of the problem.

Big deal. You went to Max's. You saw some bands, drank some drinks and barfed in the bathroom back in the day. You really contributed, man.

What bands were you in?

What bars did you run?

What galleries did you curate?

What parties did you throw?

None, none and none.

These old timers are just whiners. THEY are the reason why NYC died. They didn't care about issues back when they could've done something about it. Blame the transplants? New York started sucking BEFORE most of the transplants even arrived.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you were here when NYC was "cool" and you were also here to witness it slip into drudgery, why didn't you get off your $400-a-month-rent-stabilized-asses and contribute to the community, back when you could've been helpful? If you didn't do anything, then shut up and get out of the way. Some people here are trying to pick up the pitiful pieces YOU geriatric, boring, ungrateful fucks have left behind. WE'RE now paying for your laziness.

A lot of responders are missing the point.

The old NYC is NOT about the crime or dirt, it's about more than that. People don't miss the 'bad' city, they miss the parts that made the city unique.

And one theory of why those unique things existed, is because it used to take a tougher/more unique type of person to manage to live here, unlike now where people can just buy their way in.

Yes, Gothamist, by it's very nature is part of the 'New' New York, but the 'New' New York is here to stay for the time being, and so it IS New York. If that makes any sense.

I think what a lot of native NYers- particularly lower-middle-class ones- are resentful about is that we stayed through the years when things were really hard in the city and people were abandoning it in droves, in the 70s and 80s. We lived through the most difficult time, economically, in its entire history- the only period in which it wasn't growing but losing population. And we're being priced out now that times are sunnier.

I grew up a 3rd-generation Bronxite in the 70s and 80s, which was often challenging to say the least. But my family stayed in the city because we loved it. We lived with what was hard about it because we valued what was good about it. My cousins whose families ran away to the suburbs during that time, and who wouldn't come and visit us in the city because they were afraid, are now the ones the city is catering to, they're the ones coming in and buying up the overpriced apartments with SUV-sized parking in the basement of the building while my family of lifetime New Yorkers is wondering if we'll be able to stay- my 70 year old parents will be pushed out of the Stuy Town they were on a waiting list for for 10 years to get into and have lived in for 15 years, my brother and his family will never be able to move from their place in the Bronx without leaving the city, and I'm leaving the country rather than live anywhere in it but the city that I still love but which often doesn't seem to love me or its other children anymore.

I don't miss the junkies or the crackheads or the empty lots filled with burning rubble in the South Bronx. I love the fact that the parks are now safe and beautiful, that the streets are safe. But they shouldn't only be safe for the wealthy- when the average one-bedroom apt in Manhattan costs a million dollars, and anything a family can reasonably live in much more than that, who are going to be the next generation of people growing up here?

Anyone who misses the old new york merely has to visit beautiful 3rd Ave. in Sunset Park.

They all moved back to Bensonhurst or Howard Beach!

or Jersey.

As an actual 30+ year old born, raised and still living in Brooklyn, I can honestly say I miss the old days. It is nowhere nearly as bad or crime-infested as has been portrayed. All I remember is going to public school with the same friends from K to 12th grade, actually being able to run and play on the sidewalks. Heck, if the worst thing that happened was being flashed by a perv on the B line, then I can live with that.

All that considered, I totally agree that NY caters more to newcomers and couldn't give a shit to hanging on to true NYers.

FYI to all non-natives- not all Brooklynites have accents. So please stop asking me why I don't have one!

"....that all the crime was committed by white people. Those were the days. You'd see white rapists, robbers, flashers. man those days are long gone. Remember seeing white bums on bowery? what the hell happened?"

They all moved back to Bensonhurst or Howard Beach!

Most people here seem to have hit the nail on the head, but I think that one of the biggest problems with nyc is the fact that every 2-bit hipster starts a crappy blog about new york and/or takes lame photos of urban decay and graffiti and calls it "edgy".

Sorry Gothamist, but you are part of the problem.

That pretty much sums it up.

- Native New Yorker who grew up in the real edgy NYC during the 80s.

What #43 said. It doesn't matter where you are talking about, people are ALWAYS going to romanticize the "good old days" and go on and on about how "everything sucks" now. Our kids will do the same thing when they are thirty, their kids will do the same thing, etc. I say just make the best out of what you have now instead of griping and looking backwards into the past.

And not every person who is new to this city is a hipster asshole.

What #43 said. It doesn't matter where you are talking about, people are ALWAYS going to romanticize the "good old days" and go on and on about how "everything sucks" now. Our kids will do the same thing when they are thirty, their kids will do the same thing, etc. I say just make the best out of what you have now instead of griping and looking backwards into the past.

And not every person who is new to this city is a hipster asshole.