thanks subby, but charles already told me so...

By "farking hipsters", you mean the 58-year-old guy who took the photographs.

It looks like a hell hole, yeah.

At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I'd love to visit the 70s and 80s NYC. Grindhouses on 42nd, video arcades... Town had soul

/At least from pics that I've seen and descriptions I've read
//Not a hipster
///Love old school video games, exploitation flicks, and hair metal

That 2nd to last picture looks like south of Market in San Francisco now!

Everything I know about New York in the 80's I learned from "The Warriors" and "Fort Apache The Bronx", Paul Newman version.

GarbageDay: At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I'd love to visit the 70s and 80s NYC. Grindhouses on 42nd, video arcades... Town had soul

/At least from pics that I've seen and descriptions I've read
//Not a hipster
///Love old school video games, exploitation flicks, and hair metal

Do you also love heroin, AIDS, and syphilis? Cuz that's pretty much how it worked.

Also known as Albany in the early 2000s.

God, I had this awful encounter with a hipster last week. I was camping in the woods, and I accidentally left the cooler out all night. About 3:00 I wake up to hear some rustling outside of my tent, and there I saw it; a gigantic, furry 800 pound hipster was biting at the cooler like it was a candy bar or something. I panicked, but then I remembered what my old boy scout troop leader used to tell me to do whenever I saw a hipster; just play dead. And so I did that, and the damn hipster came up to me, sniffed me for a second, and then left the camp grounds. It was honestly the scariest thing to happen to me in my entire life.

The_Sponge: [i22.photobucket.com image 319x148]

Dead body with its feet pointing skyward?



It's the invention of "Planking" right there. It took another 25 years or so to catch on and destroy humanity.

meddleRPI: heroin, AIDS, and syphilis?

you forgot crack, getting mugged, fake weed and a few others

Moved to the East Village in 1986 and never left. It's changed a lot, and I've enjoyed all of it. The run is over, though. As late as a couple years ago there were virtually no chain restaurants. Now there are a dozen Subway sandwich shops, an IHOP, soon getting the second 7-11 in the neighborhood. Hate to be "that guy" but it really is over, the neighborhood is disappearing. At least the weird, fun, creative parts of it. At this point it might as well be the parts of the Upper East Side east of third avenue. Boring shiat. Gotta figure out the next great place to live, but it was lots of fun around here.

Thats the worst golf course I have ever seen.

Every town has its rough spots, and they move over the years. Here in Chicago we have Englewood, which I understand was at least a little posh some decades ago, and now it's the murder capital. Before World War II, the area around North Michigan wasn't the Magnificent Mile but Towertown, and was basically full of hipsters. Cabrini-Green, which was atrocious not all that long ago, is gone and signs point to gentrification...basically River North creeping up and/or Old Town creeping over. The Loop is now considered a fairly nice place to live, when it was formerly considered suitable only for the homeless and Franciscan friars.

It seems that New Yorkers always point to Times Square as the example. I think that the concern comes from the red light district being turned into that one tourist trap area that every city of much size at all has, the one with the hokey gift shops but at least there's a nice view and maybe a theatre or two to make the occasional trip worth it. Here we have Navy Pier, which was to a great extent disused before its redevelopment, and is easily enough avoided if you want to...they're even getting ready to build a flyover so that the lakefront bike trail won't come as close to it. I may be wrong, but I don't ever think it was one of the top places to go to get hookers.

Jonathan Hohensee: God, I had this awful encounter with a hipster last week. I was camping in the woods, and I accidentally left the cooler out all night. About 3:00 I wake up to hear some rustling outside of my tent, and there I saw it; a gigantic, furry 800 pound hipster was biting at the cooler like it was a candy bar or something. I panicked, but then I remembered what my old boy scout troop leader used to tell me to do whenever I saw a hipster; just play dead. And so I did that, and the damn hipster came up to me, sniffed me for a second, and then left the camp grounds. It was honestly the scariest thing to happen to me in my entire life.

He was probably just looking for PBR or gluten-free pasta from Whole Foods.
As long as you don't carry any of that with you, you're safe.

If anything, it's easier and safer to get drugs now than it was in 1980. Progress!

That is all.

Oh my goddess of Kirkegaard's toenails (I reject conventional norms of religion, you wouldn't understand), how can you not understand how ironic that is from a postmodern worldview? It's like my art history professor didn't say to me -- because if he said it, it would have come from a figure of authority and I'd have to inherently reject it -- but I know totally where he was coming from and what he might have said if he didn't want to force his perspective on mine and suppress my intellect and need to express myself because he had a copy of Mexico City blues on his deck when he would have said it (I didn't read any of Kerouac's other works, they were too mainstream), the urban decay of what was otherwise seen as the capitalism and imperialist center of the world is the perfect ironic deconstruction of a world denying its own humanity in favor of replacing that yearning chasm with base materalism and topical perspectives of reality that deny truth -- not that it exists, but if it did there'd totally be a chasm. I know you don't understand that, but trust me, I know what I'm talking about because I completely aced that women's studies class in which we discussed urbanization and how it impacted the nuclear family and women's roles in society without even trying by the way because god that professor was so unintellectually heteronormative and so easy to predict, and it is ironically stunning in both its honesty -- again not that it exists in a postmodern world in which reality is subjective, but again if it were possible, or capable of being known as it were, it absolutely would be -- and poignancy. If only the meatbags around me that can't even perceive the world for what it is above what they think it is could understand that. But isn't the fact they can't ironic and exactly what this photo says? It absolutely says that. You can't understand it, it speaks in photo.

So Bushwick hasn't changed?

I'll bet if you looked long enough you could take similar pictures today.

I see a link between freedom and disorganization.

Right now NY may be glossy, but step a little out of line and see what happens. Sure parts of it were a dump, but it was still an interesting city in marginal decline.

Just because money magazines may rank quality of life higher for specific criteria, does not make life better for everyone in that city.

Link (new window)Here is a much better look at NYC in the 70s

Um, Giuliani?

meddleRPI: Do you also love heroin, AIDS, and syphilis? Cuz that's pretty much how it worked. Also known as Albany in the early 2000s.

We used to call that the steamed ham combo.

This photographer shows us a New York that looks as if under siege. Clearly many New Yorkers thought they were above the law and trashed their environment. Glad to see that someone was out for justice.

Deadfeznt: thanks for cleaning up the city rudy

/too bad you went nuts

Wasn't Rudy

skinink: Everything I know about New York in the 80's I learned from

this

Hector Remarkable: Um, Giuliani?

He gets too much credit. Many cities gentrified over the last 20 years with the same inept leadership they always had. New York just had the most potential.

I used to go visit my friend that went to Columbia in the early 80's. Just on his block there were buildings filled entirely with empty wine bottles, rotten chickens in windows of "stores" that sold more drugs than food, and then there was the guy that ran screaming after me yelling "let me touch you white boy". On the plus side there were a lot of people that asked out for a "date" in times square. It was a scary place to be sure. Subways were a joy as well. I still want to thank the one guy that realized that I was in the process of getting lost and said- "Don't want to tell you what to do, but get off this train at the next stop, you won't like how it goes on the ones following it."

apachevoyeur: This photographer shows us a New York that looks as if under siege. Clearly many New Yorkers thought they were above the law and trashed their environment. Glad to see that someone was out for justice.

They were marked for death on deadly ground in dark territory.

I live in Brooklyn and like to laugh at hipsters as much as anyone (and moving here has really improved the life of someone who has a hobby of randomly judging people I see on the street), but can we try a little more finesse in headlines? "Something about New York, lol hipster" "Band that isn't some shiatty metal or hip hop group, lol hipster"

downtownkid: Moved to the East Village in 1986 and never left. It's changed a lot, and I've enjoyed all of it. The run is over, though. As late as a couple years ago there were virtually no chain restaurants. Now there are a dozen Subway sandwich shops, an IHOP, soon getting the second 7-11 in the neighborhood. Hate to be "that guy" but it really is over, the neighborhood is disappearing. At least the weird, fun, creative parts of it. At this point it might as well be the parts of the Upper East Side east of third avenue. Boring shiat. Gotta figure out the next great place to live, but it was lots of fun around here.

Im youngin, but I used to visit in early 2000s (yeah Im B&T but i know Ny) and honestly I can say its changed over the last 10 years rapidly. Pretty much all of manhatten is upscale now. I also remember when williamsburg was getting a rep from with all these new fangled "hipsters". Now their building multimillion dollar apts there. A friend of mine bought a condo there that overlooks the city skyline for a cool million, estimates it would probably sell for close to 10 now. Every year its a little bit different. At this rate in another 10 ears the whole of brooklyn and queens will be gentrified as well.

Hope you got rent control at least

But alas, now that photo's been published and what truth it would have had if truth existed and all its poignancy are going to be diluted by your society's mainstream groupthink paradigm, another somber betrayal of true art in favor of pandering to the lowest common denominator -- all of you. I weep for that photo, may its postmodern message be forever not deconstructed in the minds of people who can't understand it but only know it for its mainstream doldrum. I think I'll go weep silently for irony and beauty lost under the trampling feet of an uncaring proletariat in my microbrew I made out of ingredients I won't tell you about because then it won't be unique that I won't let you taste and listen to the dubstep remix I made of my freeform theremin and typewriter recordings.

downtownkid: Moved to the East Village in 1986 and never left. It's changed a lot, and I've enjoyed all of it. The run is over, though. As late as a couple years ago there were virtually no chain restaurants. Now there are a dozen Subway sandwich shops, an IHOP, soon getting the second 7-11 in the neighborhood. Hate to be "that guy" but it really is over, the neighborhood is disappearing. At least the weird, fun, creative parts of it. At this point it might as well be the parts of the Upper East Side east of third avenue. Boring shiat. Gotta figure out the next great place to live, but it was lots of fun around here.

I think that's what at the core of what is wrong with America in the 21st Century - unfettered capitalism and a lack of a social safety net has created a landscape in which a homogenized, one-size-fits all ideology eats up individualism. And, among other things, all of these stores are becoming the working base for kids just getting in the work force, and so instead of working for a mom-and-pop shop in which their bosses are some sort of people with agency and personality, they're working for an automated system in which they train based on the expectations of the lowest common denominator. And that's how these kids learn work skills first time out...it's not a sustainable system on any rung.

It's a bit narrow to focus on just first-time employment, but I think that if you focus on any other sector of life, you'd find a similar problem. I used to think that holding onto your neighborhood charm was some sort of privilege to only has a sentimental value, but the more I see neighborhoods and individuality getting eaten up out there, the more I see that it is vital for our country.

I mean, shiat, does the world really need one more CVS?

Well, "Gotham" does mean "Goat Town" after all.