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Reply to "Farewell Charming Old New York: Part 2"

I remember my first day in town. Around 1976 or 7. Something like that. I was gonna get an apartment (never having been here before, except when I was 5 once for the World's Fair, I was totally naive about what getting an apartment would mean). First off I got a hotel room at a cheap place on West 57th. Can you imagine that? A cheap hotel on West 57th? There was a huge hole in the wall of the elevator. I was told it was an exit hole for a .45 slug from a currier robbery. The hole in the wall was where the bullet left the scene after passing through the currier.

As wild as it might seem, in just two days I found a one bedroom apartment for $300 a month on W. 45th Street between 8th and 9th. Two doors down was the 'Pleasure Seekers' Club'. A second storey business with brown butcher paper over all the windows. The most affluent people on the block were the ladies who worked the street. They appeared each day around 4:30 in the afternoon to hang out for a few minutes, share cigarettes and gossip, before strolling a couple blocks west towards the old bus terminal.

Cochise and Marvin were two quickly made friends, the local recreational substance providers, who would half the time send me on a fool's errand to meet them 'later' up at Columbus Circle.

West 45th was a great block then. Full of enterpreneurs from all levels of the major trades that made up Times Square. Despite the obvious harshness of the life, most the denizens I traded talk with in the neighborhood then had quite a light-hearted demeanor. Just hanging on the block was like being in a vivified, colorful story. Now all of your reminiscences here are the only thing left of that palette.

What a loss.

It is actually more perverse now when you think about it. The whole Rudiani campaign to suburbanmallify the zone so the suburbanites would feel at home, when actually those people come to TSquare for the cachet of its (now nearly totally erased) forbidden commerce.
Last edited by seven
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