Manhattan Diary 26-29/12/2022
In which I pretend I'm a tall Woody Allen or something
(Note: Diary entries are loosely structured and completely off the cuff. They are not intended to be tightly-written essays.)
Two of the most quintessential New Yorkers to me are Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese. Born within seven years of one another, these two legendary directors are also the products of the Ellis Island cohort of immigrants who made it to the USA between 1892 and 1924 (Woody’s parents were immigrants from today’s Austria and Lithuania while Martin’s grandparents on both sides made the trek from Sicily). Furthermore, they both made two of the most New York City movies ever: MANHATTAN (1979) and TAXI DRIVER (1976).
Both of these movies take place on the same ground, scenes often sharing the same city blocks, but living in totally different worlds. Where MANHATTAN concerns itself with the segregated lives of the intellectual and cultural elites of New York City, TAXI DRIVER instead focuses on the dregs of society; its pimps, its prostitutes, its drug dealers, and the psychos that sprang forth from the seedy neighbourhoods that the former group did their best to avoid and ignore. Both of these movies are masterpieces, and both are set in their own little worlds, ones that are influenced by rapid social change, including the societal breakdown that coloured 1970s NYC.
However powerful movies were back then, they could not compare to the titan that was television in the 1980s. VCRs were only beginning to be sold that decade, so access to movies was not as simple as it would become later thanks to Blockbuster. Music made the leap from radio to television thanks to the music video (and MTV). The internet was still in the future. For a late Gen X kid like me, that meant that a lot of my free time when it was too dark outside to play was filled up with television.
Cable TV was only beginning to grow in popularity then, and it wasn’t universally available. That meant that most of us were hostage to the three main US networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), and whatever local programming we could get thanks to our geographic location. This narrowed our viewing choice, but the paradox was that larger numbers of people watched the same thing, creating communities around certain shows that are rendered all but impossible today due to our present ‘tyranny of choice’.
Television in the 80s meant either Los Angeles or New York City, unless it was an outlier or if it was local programming. Allow me to explain: I am probably suffering from selection bias, but most shows from that decade seem to have been set in either NYC or SoCal. Even the late night shows all had backdrops of Southern California or the NY skyline. Being the only images available of these places, they had an outsized influence on how I imagined they were. These TV shows (and movies, and a book or two) are what formed my mental image. New York City to me was NIGHT COURT, TAXI, DIFF’RENT STROKES, WELCOME BACK KOTTER, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, BARNEY MILLER, THE JEFFERSONS, and ALL IN THE FAMILY. But it was also TAXI DRIVER, MANHATTAN, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, GHOSTBUSTERS, TRADING PLACES, NIGHT SHIFT, EASY MONEY, THE LONELY GUY, SPLASH, and THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE. The sheer amount of film and television set in The Big Apple made one feel like they already knew what life was like in the city without ever once setting foot there.
Totally exotic, yet seemingly knowable, New York beckoned us kids from the burbs with promises of adventure. As the 80s progressed, it also promised us something new: Hip Hop. As the New Wave scene (and synthpop) were distant geographically and dying anyway, New York provided an escape from the horrors of increasingly shit Hair Metal that dominated much of the mid to late 80s on radio and on TV. Los Angeles had nothing to offer in comparison; this was an NYC thing and NYC alone.
Field Trips
Pre-teen me made my first pilgrimage to the Big Bagel during Easter of 1988. My family and I went to visit our cousins in Greenwich, Connecticut, and my grandfather’s cousin took us into Manhattan where we went up the Empire State Building and took in the views on the Observation Deck. Basic tourist shit, but I loved it. This was an iconic building right in the middle of the city that served as the nerve centre of the free world. All I remember from that day was the constant movement of people in all directions, the honking horns, and the tremendous amount of noise generated by everything that was going on.
Three days later I somehow managed to convince my mother that I could go by myself to Grand Central Station by train in the early morning and be back by 7pm for dinner at my cousins’ house. This was my first taste of real freedom, and I set out to take in as much as I could in that short window of time. I made my way over to Times Square where I saw the tail end of sleazy New York (2,244 murders that year compared to only 558 in 2019), the hookers, the peep shows, the guys selling you fake everything on the street. I wandered in and out of record shops, buying six hip hop albums (including Ultramagnetic MCs’ debut CRITICAL BEATDOWN) while taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of a city that appeared to me just like I had always imagined it. The accents were the same as they were on TV, the people were loud and rude, teens dressed in the most “out there” clothes, black guys wandered around with ghettoblasters blasting tracks from The Juice Crew, Run DMC, etc. What I remembered most of all was the energy! It was infectious and invigorating. This really was the centre of the world.