In certain respects, New York in the 1970s was a much different place than it is today. Long before the Disney-fication of Times Square and the gentrification of many neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs, the city was a dangerous place to live. Yet, its transit offerings were robust enough that even Sesame Street celebrated them. In the latest video making the rounds, the narrator acknowledges as much: “New York is one of the few places where you can get around without a car.”
This 90-second clip is a gem of a time capsule. It focuses on the various ways in which city denizens can get around town without a personal car, and the part on the subway is, obviously, my favorite. We complain a lot about the current state of the city’s public transit system, and while those complaints certainly are valid, it’s easy to lose sight of far we’ve gone.
As the woman taking about the subways says in the video, 35 years ago, the subways were crummy. “You get pushed; you get shoved,” she said. “Sometimes you get mugged in the subway during the daylight. I remember when public transit was the pride of New York. What happened?”
Of course, as some things change, the more they stay the same. “New York is almost broke,” one woman says. “You know why? Because too much money is going to the suburbs. They’re killing us.”
5 comments
1970s New York: the city in which I grew up. I prefer the city we have now.
i second that emotion.
I therd it.
I fourth it. The only people who have any nostalgia for those bad old times were people who didn’t live through them: kids growing up in some dull fly-over state – or, maybe, people not even born yet. The city really sucked back then.
I can’t believe the taxi driver is wearing a suit and tie.
The only thing I feel nostalgic about from those times is the accent. *Real* New Yawk.