According to David Brooks this morning, the Upper West Side in the '70s was (h/t Atrios) an urban hellhole.
Bobo bases his view on an article by Norman Podhoretz (J-Pod's Dad, N-Pod). Well, let me tell you guys:
I lived there then and still live there (as you might guess from my screen name), and Bobo and J-Pod are just looking for an excuse to bash hippies. As David says:
The crime wave killed off the hippie movement. The hippies celebrated disorder, mayhem and the whole Dionysian personal agenda.
No, David -- there were not marauding hippies rampaging down Columbus and up Amsterdam. They were peacefully smoking weed on the Sheep Meadow.
And you know who restored Central Park? The original bleeding heart, liberal weenie Mayor, John Lindsay!
And Isaac Bashevis Singer and I were not dodging bullets when we walked down 72nd St. (not together unfortunately) to have cheese blintzes at the Famous Dairy Restaurant.
And I wasn't mugged once when using my book of 10 for $12.50 movie tickets at the Embassy 72nd St. theater.
But of course, all of this nonsense is to perpetuate the right wing myth that the '60s and '70s were a sewer of immorality that caused all of our problems for the next forty years.
It enables them to ignore the increasingly inequitable economic policies of those forty years of Nixon, Reagan and Bush.
Nice try, guys.
I knew the Upper West Side in the '70s.
The Upper West Side in the '70s was a friend of mine.
Bobo and J-Pod -- You don't really belong on the Upper West Side.