Travel Back to NYC in the 1970s

The 70's was a great time to live in New York City. The great music venues and clubs showcasing all sorts of music, great old movie palaces showing an amazing era of film, the sex, affordability, culture. Box seats at a Mets game $4. Yes there was crime but I was never a victim of it. If you grew up on the streets you had street smarts. Today there's nothing but high cost and mediocrity. Anyone over 40 who prefers 2009 to the 70's didn't grow up here or lived a sheltered life.

Actually $180 was pretty cheap for 1977 for something downtown (Lower east side and Hell's Kitchen might have been cheaper, but you wouldn't have wanted to live there). Chelsea wasn't a great neighborhood, but it was better than many others. I did see a one bedroom on 17th St going for $235 early 1978, and it was more than I could afford. I knew people who lived in apartments that went for $85 - $125, but they'd usually been there for a while. I had a girlfriend who lived on Rivington off the Bowery who paid $92 a month, the place was pretty big too, but it was a nightmare coming home at night.

"You know of a studio in Chelsea for $600 a month today? Yeah, I didn't think so."

chelsea in 2009 = chelsea in 1977

riiiiiight

some of you people are seriously stuck in the past.

move to bed stuy

I wasn't even born yet. All I know is that I've read that the 70's were the birth and death of a lot of American cities. For New York, it was the birth of the modern NYC people live in today. For places like Detroit, it was the beginning of the end.

An interesting book on the time is called "the Bronx is Burning" which juxtaposes the Steinbrenner's Yankees (whom he had just bought) and the start of a new Yankee era against the crime and urban blight that characterised NYC in the late 1970s. The success of the Yankees in 77 was a harbinger of the successes the city was to achieve in the 80s' and 90s while it shed its remnants of old new york at the same time.

When people say "it was so much better back then" they probably forget that they are the same people who got jobs at Goldman Sachs in the 80s and helped kill off what made new york unique.

Which, I should add is not necessarily a bad thing. The horror stories of that city in the 70s what with the crime and rapes and murders is appalling.

Dude, you live in Chicago NOW. What's the difference?

p.s., I do hope there are some...

Amazing photos to be sure, but Allan Tannenbaum's circa-1998-style web site needs a serious overhaul. You shouldn't judge a picture by it's frame, but still..

A fantastic book. I've enjoyed it since I got it about five years ago. Glad it's being republished.

Interesting that a 70s hooker makes what girls wear today look like the real whores.

Hmm, I find it impressive how a hooker appears flattered as her picture is taken, as opposed to one who comes at you with her arms flailing and her heels coming off...

this is actually a re-release of a book that was printed a few years ago.

this book is filled with not just fascinating photos but also vivid descriptions of a much romanticized time in nyc that i was not around to experience.

highly recommended to have in your collection if you are at all interested in the rich history of this fabulous city!

the only thing new about this book is the cover art though.

$180 for a studio in the late 70's? inflation calc tells me thats 600 bucks a month which doesnt seem that cheap. I live in brookyn and pay 700 bucks in a share situation. Im not buying this the 70's were cheaper shit.

You know of a studio in Chelsea for $600 a month today? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Hey, I was at that free Jefferson Starship show in the park...I was definitely not a fan of them but Elliot Murphy opened and he was incredible.

Used to see Sid and Nancy on 23rd St all the time, I lived on 20th and 8th in a studio that cost $180 a month (I took home maybe $125 a week).

And speaking of 23rd St, anyone remember Defunkt playing regularly at Squat Theatre down the block from Scotty's pizza?

As bad as the subway got, I don't think there was a subway strike in the 70s (there was one in 1966 and one in 1980), the first one I was too young, the second I had to walk to midtown from Brooklyn every day.

I think nostalgia isn't about the bad stuff, its about remembering the good times. I definitely had a lot of good times. The 80s were definitely worse.

You are right, there was one in 1966 and the next one was in 1980. Don't mind spiritof76, he always gets his facts screwed up. He spends most of his time reading trash novels to his dog.

Snoopy, welcome to the club.

You are not the first to mock Spirit. Spirit supplies little info and less humor to this blog. His main m.o. is castigating others. He is a bitter. I am prepared to receive his venom. Then I shall say a prayer for his tortured soul.

Let it fly, spirit.

And what a lovely club it is. Have you ordered your new, white hoods yet?

We got him going men. Lets keep the pressure on.

And no we don't wear white hoods, we are just curious who these perps might be so we can look out for them. And try to get some stats on crime and criminals.

group hug everybody!

Stick to racist claptrap, you 60-year-old unemployable cretin. It's the only thing you're good at and I suspect you're angry at blacks because they took away all your job opportunities at McDonalds. Why don't you talk to NannyState, who brought up that stuff earlier in the thread? That's what I thought. You reveal everything about yourself everytime you put fingers to keyboard. What was it somebody wrote here once? "Snoopy, you're like a baboon, but less clever." And somebody else wrote, "Geez, and here I thought Snoopy was just your run of the mill instigating troll. Turns out he's a white power asshole?"

LOL but since you brought me into this, while your troll war with Snoopy is entertaining, it pales in comparison to the one between Eastman and Nanheyangrouchuan over at Shanghaiist. That, dear friends, is a troll war for the ages.

Well, except that it's not a troll war. I don't make up anything. Everything I bring up was originally written by Snoopy himself right here on Gothamist. He complained that nobody will offer him a job, although he makes soooo much from his investments, more in a week than I make in a year! He's obviously still unemployed, since he posts comments all day long. He complains about minorities and especially blacks, including a very long racist diatribe that earned him that second comment from Rocknrope. He waxed nostalgic about the 50s when he grew up, giving out his age. So all I'm doing is throwing his writings back in his face. But he can't go a day without making things up. By his own scribblings, I'm 15 (yet somehow remember the 70s) or I work for NYPD or I'm a firefighter or I work at a fast food joint, etc. It doesn't take a Teflon suit for all these laughable claims to slide off. You can't tell me that his arguing style complete with baseless insults isn't reminiscent of someone whose mental development is seriously arrested.

Do you have anything negative to say about me that I should worry about? Snot nosed Punk! With your attitude you will be lucky to live out your teen years.

Ha ha. Actually I think the strike was in early 1980, so that's pretty close to the 70s I guess.

I just took a look at the photos on Allan Tannenbaum's website, and there are certainly plenty of photos of burnt out buildings in the South Bronx (and Bushwick and the Lower East Side)

Allan is still taking those great type of pictures. Saw him recently capturing a police raid of illegal Senegalese peddlers observing passively with a mixture of dismay and ennui as the cops dumped their Louis Vuitton-knockoffs into an NYPD van on Canal Street.

Guess he is getting ready for the sequel.

How about some photos of the south Bronx from that period? It looked a lot like Dresden just after the war.

id rather have the internet.

"The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70’s"

#10

are you talking to me? how could you possibly know what time and place i did or didn't live through?

and, i don't know what you consider 'quaint' but sid vicious in a body bag or the queens on the pier hardly seem that way to me.

ah, don't you love being nostalgic about a time and place that you actually didn't live through, especially since it looks so much better and quaint b&w photos!!

These pictures are like some rich Park Avenue person's view of the 70s.

Where's the picture of people having to step over the vomit and feces of a drug addict? Where's the picture of the gangs terrorizing the subways? Where's the picture of the bums harrassing everyone in the Theater District?

You know how people always just remember the good stuff? I remember the strikes, transit shutdowns, blackouts, stratospheric murder rates, tenement fires, filthy streets with bums sleeping under a pile of newspapers and rotting infrastructure. And I remember going out to the suburbs where all the shiny new stuff was being built and wondering if the city would even make it to 1990. But yeah, those were the best of times.

I only remember one transit strike in the 70s. One garbage strike. One blackout. Were there more? I had a great time. Not sure if the memories are worth $30 to me, though.

Stay in the paperback section the books are a lot cheaper.

i could look at photos of the city during that era all day - it's amazing to think how different it was without really being that long ago.

Great shots! Just amazing! Good post Jen.

Worthy of a permanent gallery on Gothamist, INMHO.

Man those are some of the best photos that I've seen from that era. Lots of grittyness and fun. Who's with me for another Smoke-in?

The book? This is 5 years old news. WTF?

Ill take that real New York over the current fake one anytime. People believed in something other than shopping and eating, and did something about it (even tho it may have been crazy at the time....) I miss it.

Ah the good old days, when the city was a little edgy and the government wasn't regulating when you could or could not take a piss.

One pill makes you larger

And the other makes you small

bikers, boobs, and bands...a lot of awesomeness in there!