The taming of the beast...



“In the ’80s we had crackheads, prostitutes, we got no help from anyone. We survived all that,” he said. “Now they just want us to go away.”

New York has undergone great change over the last decade, it’s gotten cleaner without a doubt and safer too as the declining murder rate seems to indicate.

Manhattan in particular is rapidly being homogenized, taking on many of the negative aspects of the rest of the country. Maybe, it’s an attempt to make the city more of a ‘fun park.’ It’s funny, in Vegas there is a New York, New York hotel which tries to capture a charm which may not even exist anymore.

In the last fifteen years, I’ve seen the flower district just about vanish, the fur district disappear, the meat district shrink to a paltry block or two. Working downtown, you can see the Fulton Fish Market is still in operation but, you have to wonder about how long it will stay where it is.

So many Manhattan commercial areas predate any residential development but, it seems whenever people begin settling in these neighborhoods, the new residents develop a case of the NIMBY’s and don’t want the commercial activity which preceded them to continue. Over the last few weeks I have been commiserating with my peers about the rapidly changing landscape of New York city. The lighting and restaurant district along the Bowery seems to be shrinking too, never in my wildest imaginings did I think the Bowery would be reclaimed but, it’s looking more and more like the rest of the city.

The original draw of the city was that it was a melting pot and a gateway to the world, I fear those days are gone and the city is becoming a pale shadow of what it was.