I am in New York. I try to visit this great city every now and then, although as it happens I have not been here since 2000. Besides the fact that the skyline of this city has been defiled since then, it is still the same place, although it seems to get richer and cleaner every time I visit.
My first trip here was in 1991. I was 22 years old at the time, and before I went I remember my mother being slightly scared for me. At that point New York had a reputation for being a somewhat rough and dangerous place. It had perhaps deserved that reputation in the 1970s, but by 1991 it was not especially fair. When I walked the streets of Manhattan I quickly discovered that New York was a fabulous city, but my first experience was an odd one. I arrived at Newark Airport, collected my luggage and headed for the bus stop outside. However, my progress was impeded by the fact that the dead body of a large black man was lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of one of the escalators. There were policemen standing nearby, preventing other people from coming too close.
I do not know how this man died. My best guess is that he simply fell while on the escalator and hit his head. Howevever, my mind was filled with visions of airport shootouts. The thought “What is this place, and what the fuck am I doing here?” went through my mind. I cowered a little.
I then got the bus into Manhattan, found the hostel where I was staying, and had a great time. The city was a litttle grimy, and there were one or two rough neighbourhoods, but it was in truth a magnificent place.
Since then the city has got a lot richer and more gentrified, and (at least in Manhattan) the rough neighborhoods do not seem quite so rough as before. On Saturday I wandered into Hell’s Kitchen, famous for being a tough location, recorded in bad movies such as this one.
But of course its proximity to the important locations of midtown means that a certain amount of gentrification may have taken place. That or the long time residents have taken a liking for politically correct lettuce leaves.
Having roughed such a dangerous place, I retired to a nearby restaurant, where I had some Provencale food washed down with an excellent premier cru Burgundy. (Although the food was excellent, the restaurant felt nothing like France. Everything about it was obviously New York, from the size of the portions to the accents to the volume of the diners to the decor). Okay, at that point I got the “kitchen” part. Hell was still eluding me.
If you go a long way uptown, then yes, some places are not quite as gentrified as this. But they are perfectly fine, and in terms of safety New York feels these days more like Tokyo than the dangerous, feared place that people in foreign countries had heard terrible stories about during my childhood.
One word, Michael: Giuliani
I also felt safer in New York than I did in other cities – eg London. But NYC still has a high crime rate. Nicholas Stix and occasionally the local press have reported on the pressure that is put on police officers to produce lower crime figures often involving fudging the numbers or downgrading felonies to less serious sounding offences.
Reading this reminded me of my only visit to New York back in 1979 when I was in my early 20’s. The first night I stayed in the Waldorf Astoria which was very nice, but I spent most of my stay there asleep, it being night time. My second night was spent in the Port Authority Bus Station building on 8th Avenue, which is fine until about midnight when the PA police move you on. You have a choice, either leave the building or go down to the bus platform. I decided on the latter. It’s not very comfortable down there, and ones companions obviously come from a rich variety of backgrounds. Anyway it made for a much more memorable night than my stay at the Waldorf Astoria as I remained awake the whole night.
“It that point New York had a reputation for being a somewhat rough and dangerous place.” In 1991, New York deserved its reputation. It was also a very dirty place. The city was a perfect example of what happens when the left runs a city.
Then Giullani, a Republican was elected and then followed by another Republican. Today, New York City is a new city-clean and relatively crime free. It has the lowest crime rate of any major city in the world.
Always ready to welcome a Samizdatist to La Grande Pomme.
Get my number from Dale and maybe we can have a drink.
I doubt New York has a lower crime rate than Tokyo, but even so part of its bad reputation doesn’t apply to tourists. The crime rate is reported for all 5 boroughs and most tourists only visit Manhattan, which is by far the safest of them.
Which hostel did you stay at in NY Michael? I worked at the Banana Bungalow, 77th and Broadway in the Hotel Belleclaire for nearly a year before I escaped the inevitable justice for overstaying my 3 month tourist visa.
It’s not there any more, but Jazz On The Park took over their business.
New York City is a desperately underdeveloped market for budget travellers. At the time I worked there there were under 1300 hostel beds available in the entire city, including 850 at the YHA in Harlem. In comparison London and Sydney have somewhere in the realm of 50,000.
That was 1998 though, not sure what the situation is now.
I’m just back from a couple of weeks there. I had my sister over on her first trip to NY ever. As expected, she was very pleasantly surprised – despite the woeful rain for most of the time she was there – and even admitted she’d probably never had made the trip if I hadn’t taken the initiative.
Granted, it’s very hard to know what to expect with NY, the place is so completely and truly unique. But many overseas, especially in those supposedly well-informed places across Europe, are just plain clueless, fed on aging movies and negative perceptions. Which could also be why many of us foreigners are bound to fall in love with the place: we come in with such low expectations we’re bound to be mesmerized.
And this is sometimes a good occasion to point out to the bemused first-time visitor that if, in this age of information at our fingertips, they can be this clueless about the actual shape, size and flavor of one of the most famous cities in the world, how could they possibly assume to soundly understand and grasp U.S. or world politics or economics when their usual source of information – or is that perception – can’t even do a semi-honest half-ass job at preparing them as mere tourists ?
Much of this thread could be a metaphor for the U.S. as a whole. Here in Canada, where the majority of the population lives within a couple of hours of the U.S. by road, most people seem to believe in a cartoon version of the U.S. instead of the real thing.
Now that I think of it, a lot of people in Manhattan do, too!
Tedd, absolutely. I find Manhattan both humbling by its scale and energizing. But while the pride of its residents is largely deserved, the intellectual superiority complex affected by some of the locals could be quite grating if it wasn’t also so amusing to us outsiders. I guess I just can’t take people seriously when they can be so condescending about things they obviously have no clue about. (Hearing the rest of America repeatedly referred to as ‘suburbia’ by someone who never got out of Queens in almost a decade except to see Montana and New Hampshire was an especially good one)
But it’s a logical consequence of the self-contained nature of the place. You can simply live there without getting out. That’s the great thing about it. It’s also the trap. It’s a vast urban, human zoo. Tickets for sale at the midtown tunnel.
Gentlemen, Giuiliani is not god.
1) The crime rate was going down at least starting 36 months before Giuiliani took over and turned Manhattan into Disneyland. It’s not completely clear what his policies did to continue the reduction. I think Giuilani had the good fortune to preside over NY during an economic boom, that’s all.
2) See how many seconds you can walk through the more touristed areas of Manhattan without seeing a cop. Placing a cop every 20 feet or so will indeed make tourists feel safer, but that’s not necessarily the best way to live.
Fiona, Giuliani tends strongly towards totalitarianism including a court win, on behalf of the US, that Jean-Claude Duvalier, Haiti dictator carried out no political oppression!
However, remember he was a law and order US Attorney for the southern district of New York prior to being mayor. He was already well known for cleaning up the city long before he was mayor.
But, to a less extreme degree the entire nation had been improving. Graph.(Link)
I’ve heard a theory that the crime drop (which was nationwide, not just NYC) was a side effect of legal abortion. What once would have been abandoned, nihilist kids just never got born.
BTW, Manhattan is nifty. When I was there it felt like a concrete forest. Not just buildings plonked down randomly, but alive. And I remember the view from the top of the WTC. Sunset turns all the buildings beige-pink.
I thought the US-wide crime decrease was largely down to falling rates of crack-cocaine usage…?
Hey, you are in my neighborhood. Welcome! Hope you enjoy your stay. Been here fifteen years and the changes have been amazing. I do recall throughout his two terms Guilini was declared Hilter by the insane moonbattery up until the day after 9/11, since the moonbats no longer had Guiliani to hitlerize they projected their insanity towards Bush.
Guilini Disneyifed Manhattan? Broadway needed money because they couldn’t sell enough $100 tickets for all the crappy plays they were producing so they hired their friend Michael Eisner the The Lion King to save their dying days. That said, Broadway is a scammer industry. The tourists get hammered in ticket prices while half the NYer’s fill up the the seats with by paying for next-to-nothing almost freebie tickets when showing their ‘I’m in the acting business’ cards. (I was in the NY Theater biz for years until I awoke to the reality I was working with insanely selfish people whose only theaterical consideration was whether or not they were hip and cool enough to get into one of those VIP nightclubs…you know ‘hey looky at me I’m with Puffy D’ mentality. Some way to live in NYC)
About Crime Rates. Wow, so now females have the voodoo power to determine whether ‘a clumb of cells’ will become criminals? (Ms. Eve’s been writing about the wrong end of the vagina) Margaret Sanger’s theory that abortion ends crime and proverty is stupid. (Careful subscribing to her theory because she is also a known racist) Maybe the crime rate went down because Justice began putting criminals in jail?
The first time I went to Newark airport I went out to the car hire desk and there was a gang banger type guy fighting with the staff at the next desk over. I took a luxury car instead of the convertable as I just wanted to get out of there since I wanted to avoid any gun battle should the cops eventually turn up.
I’ve also been shoot at whilst driving near to Newark, and I’ve had shooting occur very close-by when I was in a deserted parking-lot in south New Jersey, needless to say I’m not a fan of New Jersey.
I’ve heard a theory that the crime drop (which was nationwide, not just NYC) was a side effect of legal abortion. What once would have been abandoned, nihilist kids just never got born.
All else equal, crime rates rise and fall with the percentage of young people. US crime rates fell when a high percentage was followed by a lower percentage.
“All else equal,” is a pretty big qualifier there D Anghelone.
Our respective trends in crime couldn’t have anything to do with our respective trends in criminalizing self defense, could it?
Our respective trends in crime couldn’t have anything to do with our respective trends in criminalizing self defense, could it?
Respective trends? Not sure what you mean. My first 53 years were as an NYC resident. I now live some distance north of there.
In terms of weapons ownership, self-defense has long been criminalized in NYC. For non-entities like me, that is. But crime has risen and fallen in NYC irrespective of Sullivan* and his spawn.
I think your argument (and mine) works better in terms of what the crime rate would be at any given time. Trends, ceteris paribus, are a different thing.
* “The passage of New York state’s Sullivan Law in 1911, enacted after an assassination attempt on New York Mayor William Gaynor, prompted the NRA’s first written criticism of gun control. A key component of the Sullivan Law was the issuance of a police permit before an individual could purchase a handgun.”
Hmmmph. That quote is from an anti-gun website. Looks like good info, though.
http://www.vpc.org/nrainfo/chapter1.html
The idea that the improvements in New York city are merely the result of broader national trends is easily refuted by comparing New York to other American cities. In the late 60’s through the late 80’s, New York had a significantly higher crime rate than other cities. In the 90’s up to today it has had significantly less. There is nothing unique about the demographics or economic history of New York to explain the changes in the crime rate.
What happened in New York is that the middle-class rebelled against the Leftist elitist who ran the city into the ground. No single politician turned the city around rather it was many people, working at different levels of government who abandoned grandiose theories in favor of pragmatic problem solving. The city stopped being an academic laboratory and start functioning as a working city.
Many US cities still suffer from the malaise and paralyses that almost killed New York. New Orleans would be prominent example. When a cities polity views crime as a systemic defect that cannot be effected save by sweeping changes in the overall society, they stop believing that they can affect crime-rates by local and short-time frame methods. They essentially give up, crime explodes, the local economy collapses and the city depopulates.
No argument with your general contention.
The idea that the improvements in New York city are merely the result of broader national trends…
Haven’t seen that argument.
There is nothing unique about the demographics or economic history of New York to explain the changes in the crime rate.
The demographics of NYC are not unique? Not within comprehension would be more like it.
Economic history not unique? Again, beyond comprehension.
What happened in New York is that the middle-class rebelled against the Leftist elitist who ran the city into the ground.
The middle-class were leftist and were the white-flighters who left for the burbs. They remained leftist. Go figure.
Many US cities still suffer from the malaise and paralyses that almost killed New York. New Orleans would be prominent example.
New Orleans is probably worse than NYC has ever been. New York is a Byzantine storm of countervailing forces.
Michael: either email me or ring Perry and get my mobile number. I can show you the low places :-^