Deal with it. Today's NYC, for all the phony NY Times articles pretending rents are becoming affordable, is a trustafarian playground where greed is still very, very good. The affordable Mitchell-Lama apartment building I lived in for more than 20 years, built in the 'gritty' 1970s for middle-income tenants, was converted to luxury condos in the early 00s. A hospital I worked in has been torn down and replaced by luxury condos, and a high-priced hotel with spa and gym.

I'm sorry if it gives you a temper tantrum, honey bunnies, but the truth is that New York was grittier, it had more soul, it allowed middle class and working class people to live in Manhattan, it had a music scene that was rocking the nation, it had a vibrant comedy scene, it had an art scene that did not consist of bratty artistes looking to score a million for a painting, it had industry, and it wasn't run by scheming Wall Streeters and amoral realtors. Yet.

It wasn't glamorous, it wasn't sleek and chic, it wasn't a place where parents had a nervous breakdown trying to register their embryos for the right preschool. There were protests, there were demonstrations, their were liberation movements, there were man-in-the-street interviews, there were independent local television stations, there was a fairness doctrine, there were rules preventing media consolidation. Nasty men were not allowed to make millions of dollars swilling up the airwaves with divisive diatribes that were unanswered by rational debunking. There were many unfortunate things about New York - disco, for example - but the worst was yet to come. Homelessness started in earnest in the 1980s as state psychiatric hospitals closed down and SROs began gentrification.

You missed it. Too bad. It really was better.

Much of what you say rings true, however, having grown up in the city during the 70's I disagree it was "better" during: garbage strikes, pleas from the mayor to go out and shop (It's safe - look me and Adam Clayton Powell are walking down the street!), rampant violent crime, and the like. Yea, my mom could have purchased our 31st floor 2 br apt for $24,000 in 1975. Having the serendipity to catch Carlos Santana and Macglaughlin (sp?) jamming on a flatbed truck on Madison Ave on the way to a free concert in the park sure looks good through rose colored 20-20 hindsight as well. The issue I see is that the city has swung too far in the opposite direction fulfilling Robert Wagner's prohecy that Manhattan should become an enclave of the wealthy.

Regarding "there were man-in-the-street interviews", here is a true story: One Monday morning two friends had completed a weekend in a Harlem shooting gallery and were of course dead broke and completely smacked. Turning the corner near Rockefeller Center all of sudden a woman thrusts a microphone into their face, asks how they're enjoying the morning (inaudible slurring ensues) and then turns to the camera and announces, "Good Morning New York". Ah yes, those were the days :)

It was better? Please. Only a deluded fool in a decadent society would look back at a time of crime and decay with nostalgia.

Really, it was better because it was grittier and had more soul? Please. People have plenty of soul and grit today--you're just not hanging out with that crowd anymore because you're older.

And now it's just a trustafarian playground? You think there wasn't wealth in the 70s? You think it's old money but it's post 1970s? It's always been there--it was just better disguised.

I wish you could go back and poll those people living the day to day in the grit and crumbling cityscape of the 1970s. I doubt most would say that it was awesome and they wished it could stay that way--I"m guessing most were hoping for a day when services worked, when you wouldn't get mugged every other day, and when the city could be "sleek and chic" instead of gray and reeking of urine and premature death. I doubt most would say "Yes, things suck, but at least greedy people aren't making money!" What kind of fool would live in that environment and actual think it superior to the NYC of today? Oh, right, a product of the decadent west. Good grief.