14 Amazing Portraits Of New Yorkers In The Bad Old 1980s

Back in the days of "Quarter Waters, Cabbage Patch Kids, 10 cent Now&Later, Jingles, Bonton's ,hot summer days with every Hydrant blasting, The Subway Smell, ( You Know What I Mean) The "Whine" of the bus as it sped by and the black sut  cloud that came out the back , Going school shopping for them five outfits that everybody in your school rocked with pride . High Top Fades, The "S-Curl" , Waves, Them Skinny Jeans, House Parties were cats dressed nice . Brings back some of the good memories of the past .

Fuck hipstamatic.

It is amazing how proudly physically unattractive New Yorkers were.  Couldn't he have found some decent-looking people to photograph?

#6 the pedestrain crossing figures look obese.

Who knew there were Hillbillies in New York?

I've never been to NYC, but that's exactly the way I picture it in my mind.

They remind me of snapshots just stuck in the bottom of an old shoebox, dragged out and scanned. I don't remember it that grungy, but I was in my teens/20s in the 80s.  But this is either trying too hard, or the stuff you do to kill the end of a roll so you can mail it off to Mystic.

i don't kno if anybody said this already, but big fat up's to the gaseteria my nigga

NYC back then was like a Fellini movie.  After the damage inflicted by Koch, Giuliani and Bloomberg, it's morphed into a mediocre daytime drama.

Though it wasnt as nice as today, the people were real characters. The trains were filthy and the underpass under Astor place was totally tagged and smelled awful.

Those were the days!  These are the days!  New York, New York it's one helluva of a fuckin town!!!

3rd pic:  This looks like something out of the Appalachia in the 60-70s - NYC kids don't look and dress like that.....

awesome to see the old Gaseteria on Houston Street in the background of that last photo.

some nice photos... but you do realize that just because it's a picture of a person, that doesn't automatically make it a portrait, right?

I keep thinking the 80's were not that long ago. Hey remember the 90's? Now THAT was when New York was a thing with stuff... not like NOW with the stuff we have now!

#8 and #10 is something out of a Bruce Davidson album.  Amazing.

Bravo for Gothamist!  Steven's work in capturing the era is nothing short of brilliant!  Thank you for recognizing this amazing photographer and archivist.  I have been a huge fan of Steven's stuff for years now and I am so happy to see it getting out there!  Thank you for doing this!!!  He deserves to be recognized!!!
Tim Schreier
New York, NY

The Real New York City as I remember it..

i suppose then new york before you were even born was even more "real"?

I suppose SO....

Bad old days? Get the fuck out of here...

New York in the 1980s was a GREAT place to live.  Nothing like the freakshow in the photos above.  I'm sure if you look hard enough, you could photograph a bunch of freaks in NYC today, and post an article about bad old 2012. Why all the hatin' on the '80s?  Jealous you weren't there?

I grew up here in the 80s and it was a great place to live, even if some transplant thinks otherwise. That's not to say the crime and dirty subway cars was something to be proud of, but it was what it was and I have fond memories of that period.

Last one is Jack Nicholson in Ironweed.

I miss pre-Giuliani NYC (not to even fucking mention Bloomberg.)

You miss getting mugged and riding on dirty trains? Reading about and looking at pictures of how it was pre-Giuliani and living here during Koch/Dinkins are two very different things. Go back to Portland, please.

The doors on the #1 train would open between stations, dropping people out and there were track fires all the time. Manhole covers blowing up into the air- BOOM! fire and smoke and sparks with 300 pounds of steel flying up, then down?...shit was dangerous. Don't forget the kid who commandeered the buses, driving around collecting fares, on his mission 'cause he just had to.

I've been here all of my life. Living and working in  the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn at various times over 50 years. A persistent and very mythical opinion about those "bad" decades, is that every woman got raped, every man got mugged, filth was absolutely everywhere, everyone had a gun or drugs or both and any memory to the contrary is simply wrong. Yet myself and millions of others can recall good lives, decent people and fun trouble free places.
This notion that all of it was just bad or dangerous most of the time for everyone and that anyone who left did so because it was horrible, is about as disingenuous and misleading as it gets.
Granted it had some awful things and places about it, but this erroneous insistence that comparison to better times is the only way to truly understand it, always seems to come down to the idea that life in a city like New York can be neatly condensed into a single interpretation and only one interpretation is correct.
I guess I'm rare in having the good fortune of having good stories about experiences here more so than bad ones. I can site some pretty awful things that happened to friends and family members, but this jaded and essentially ax-grinding distaste of which some folks seem to have about the entire city at that time is just the height of ridiculous.
You could live in New York City for a thousand years but that doesn't make you a New Yorker. Making a better life for yourself which helps make a better city does. I'm proud to be a New Yorker and proud of this city "bad" years and good.

i was born in 1985 (in CT), so i wasn't here then.  i only want to say that pretty much all nostalgic comparisons (of people and of places) are almost always useless, masturbatory exercises.

people have always been the same, throughout all of recorded history.  And if people were the same, life was the same.  i can imagine how much easier my parents may have had things (i.e. competition, economics, relaxed rules, slower-paced lifestyles, etc.), but the truth is, not only were their lives just as hectic for them as mine is for me, but they think that I have it easier (i.e. communications, technology, 'safety,' the benefit of their experience, etc.).

No one had, or has, it easier.  people still nitpick about stupid shit, and they always have; cops are, and always were, assholes.  the scenario has always been maleable, and 2000's NYC is in a different shape than 1980's NYC, but it's just the same old shit in a different burning bag.

It's always been that way.  all throughout history.  we're not special, and neither were you.

(that said i understand and appreciate your sentiment more so than the other guy's - i.e. i'd say that NY is worse now than it was then before i'd say that NY is better now than it was then [but i'd rather say it's the same])

No shit. It's not like it was WWII-bad in NYC. But it was bad compared to what it is now. My beef is with ppl that did NOT live here and yet somehow "miss" pre-Giuliani NYC.

I miss 'pre-Giuliani' NY very much. For one thing, despite the bad, there wasn't a zeal to crack down on every last ounce of whatever displeased some moron in the city council. Case in point: Folks who have been locked up for riding bikes on the sidewalk, not recklessly mind you, but delivery folks cruising to park next to their businesses. 1600 people arrested or fined for feet up on subway seats, nearly all on mostly empty cars. Summonses issued to women for breastfeeding in public. All thanks to this wonderful notion of "zero tolerance."
Prior to this idiocy, cops were allowed to use common sense discretion and often did. Now we live in time and a town where the slightest upset to some jackass (usually n o t native to the city) can use 311 like a social blackjack on neighbors. And some people think this is just great. I like a clean city. I also like a safe city, but there i s such a thing as too far. As I pointed out elsewhere on this site, the nature of a city like New York necessarily means having to put up with some things one might not like. This is the way we insure one can be that "crazy" or "different" person no one likes, but who does no one harm and u s e d to have rights just the same. Part of New York's character is about "change" it's true, but this d o e s n' t mean that every last bit of social minutia must be treated like an expendable quality. I think in this sense the city's actually become worse.

# 12. Great picture of a young Colin Meloy.

Uncanny!

Pic # 6 - Frank DeFazio yelling at the young troublemakers?

that guy looks like i feel.
-you know which one.