The internet didn't create The Listicle, the Best Of List, or even the Let's Place A Random Number In This Headline List. That was all print. And in 1976 The New York Times printed a list titled 101 Things To Love About New York City—if it were a year later we'd assume this was a sponsored ad for the I ♥ NY campaign. Here's how it looked in print:

101reasonsnyc.jpg
See a larger version here

Scouting NY stumbled upon this treasure in the NY Times archives recently, and while some points are outdated ("Habitually fitting your thumbnail in the Y-cutout of a subway token") some of it is still pretty relevant! Here are a few you may relate or raise your eyebrow to:

  • "Being nostalgic about things in New York that never were so great."
  • "Hating Con Edison."
  • "New York's proximity to Montauk."
  • "How no one takes the top newspaper off the pile."
  • "Flipping the change tray in the plastic taxicab divider."
  • "Hating pigeons."
  • "The coldest wind in the world on 125th Street and 12th Avenue."
  • "Losing yourself in a crowd."
  • "Imagining New York without anyone in it."
  • "The Brooklyn Museum serving Nathan's hot dogs."
  • "Looking for a place you know on the dirty restaurant list."
  • "Bags of beer."
  • "Subway cars with public-address speakers that don't work."
  • "Johnny Carson is gone."!
  • "Chevy Chase isn't."
  • "The apostrophe missing from DONT WALK."
  • "Brooklyn Day." (Now every day in Brooklyn Day!)

Man, even lists were better back then... but let's not forget what point #1 insinuates: nostalgia is death. That said, visit our NYC in the 1970s archives here.