The Ghosts Of Times Square

Throughout 70s and 80s the Times Square thrived as a haven for XXX theaters, go-go girls, pimps, whore houses, rent boys, hustlers, thieves, dealers, and lowlifes on the make.

Police and city authorities declared the area as DMZ for crime and sex and the 1977 debut of Show World across 42nd Street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal was the high-water mark for Times Square's Era of Errors.

Successive mayors attempted to clean up 42nd Street, but the Mafia-owned establishments relied on the Free Speech Amendment to protect their wicked fiefdom. Finally in 1995 Rudy Giuliani enacted in radical adult zoning laws and the Deuce's magnificent wickedness ended the following year with the closure of every XXX theaters and porno shops.

I happened to be walking on West 42nd Street on that rainy day in 1987.

Aficionados of perversity cried on the sidewalk, as the moving crews loaded their salacious merchandise onto trucks. Urban planners had rented spaces to major retailers and restaurants, including Disney. The disgruntled XXX patrons stood outside in tears chanting, "Fuck Mickey Mouse."

Later that evening a friend of mine lamented the disappearance of Times Square.

"NYC has been thrown into a blender and homogenized into a bland and boring urban pastiche. This city once had character and disparate neighborhoods. Now it's just numbingly the same wherever you go. I was driving around the city yesterday and occurred to me that downtown-uptown, west-east, it all looked the same now. Same store fronts, same hideous developer apartment buildings, same gourmet coffee, same gentrifications, same shame."

My friend wasn't speaking about egg creams and luncheonettes, although those hallowed institutions have been replaced by Starbucks and Burger King.

While Times Square's wickedness disappeared like the Wicked Witch of the West melting in the WIZARD OF OZ, we still retain our memories.

Divine Wickedness.

ps Fuck Guiliani.

Times Square Of Yore

Close to 300,000 people pass through Times Square every day. A good percentage are commuters heading to the Port Authority bus terminal and the rest are tourists, who come to gawk at the theaters' bright lights, shop at the name-brand stores, and dine at the chain restaurants.

Times Square wasn't always that safe for citizens.

Back in the 1970s the Bright White Way was dangerous for the guilty as well as the innocent.

From THE END OF MAYBE by Peter Nolan Smith

Here are the first two paragraphs of Chapter 3 from that book about a failed punk band.

Thirty-one shopping days remained until Christmas, yet not a single wreath adorned the porno shops, strip clubs, or X-rated theaters above 42nd Street and any Santa Claus, real or fake, steered clear of Times Square, where hapless victims were robbed, cheated, murdered or worse without any interference from the Law, for the 'Deuce' had been designated a free-for-all red-light district by NYC officials in hopes of containing the city's rampant sex and drug traffic. Standing in front of the Haymarket Bar Johnny Darling bore silent witness to the overwhelming failure of the politicians? social experiment.

All along the Minnesota Strip suburban tricks hijacked teenage runaways straight off a bus from the Midwest and slick hustlers struck cowboy poses on the street corners, while dope-hungry muggers trailed unsuspecting hicks down dark streets. The action should have tapered off before Thanksgiving, except the players on the Strip were dedicated to acting naughty and not the least bit nice. Tonight was no exception.

Last year I walked from the Hudson River ferry landing and saw this HOTEL CLOSED at 360 West 42nd Street.

It was a last memento of those times.

There can't be many left in this city other than in my memories.

They are good ones.

The Lost Treasures of New York

A friend of mine was lamenting about the lost treasures of New York. "NYC has been thrown into a blender and homogenized into a bland and boring urban pastiche. This city once had character and disparate neighborhoods. Now it's just numbingly the same wherever you go. I was driving around the city yesterday and occurred to me that downtown-uptown, west-east, it all looked the same now. Same store fronts, same hideous developer apartment buildings, same gourmet coffee, same gentrifications, same same....shame." I know how he feels, for I was in Times Square the day Guiliani closed the XXX shops on 42nd Street. Their patrons stood outside in tears chanting, "Fuck Mickey Mouse." Really. But I think that my friend was speaking about egg creams and luncheonettes. Vanished without a trace. All of it for Starbucks.