New York, NY Summer 1979 - bunch of pics.

i miss May 1979!

This one gets me the most.

(If you click on the pics and click again they blow up BIG)

Nice old storefront.

There should be a few older gays round here for whom this view is familiar.

Yes. I might have been in one of those photos.

When I think of the people who post on DL, I often think of people who were young back in the 70s living in gritty NYC or LA when it looked the way it does in those photos.

Can anyone here tell us

if the businesses featured in these pics are still there?

In some cases the buildings aren’t even still there.

R8 Can you point to the buildings that you know are no longer standing?

These are all gone. Site is now Bank of America Tower.

R10 Thank you.

So cool OP. I love this stuff. Especially 1960's 1970's Los Angeles..

Will post a current view below.

More or less current view of r13

Nice video of the old days.

corner shown in r3 today

Wow r16...thanks

I arrived in NYC in 1979. In my early 20s. On one hand it was a shithole but on the other hand I would go back there in a second. It was livable.

Notice the townhouse next door to the corner shop. In 1979, the front stoop had been removed and the entrance was relocated to the ground floor. Today, someone has restored the original parlor floor entrance and stairs.

The view in r4 hasn’t changed so much.

Carmine Street at R2, which runs between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in the West Village, has a townhouse that's currently for sale for $13 million. Bet it was a dump in 1979.

Spoke too soon. The corner shown in r20 today.

Btw, Joe’s Pizza, on the corner in r20, is still open in its second location down the block.

6th & 42nd nw corner 1979

Same corner today

The movie FAME was shot that summer.

[quote]corner shown in [R3] today

Looks like they fancied it up. Shame.

A lot of this was similar in 1989 when I moved to the Village. Hyper-Gentrification was subtle through the 90s then exploded into a gilded version by the aughts. Sex and the City marked the death knell.

But after 30 years, I still appreciate the architecture and scale. I miss the functionality of useful stores - delis, pizza, laundry - and the eclectic characters who could afford to get by via creative work (though there were also a significant number of old-school Italians which people forget). I loved the energy of the Village then. But things change. And every city has been affected by hyper-capitalism and global concentration of wealth.

[quote]Btw, Joe’s Pizza, on the corner in [R20], is still open in its second location down the block.

They moved into another pizza place - which was in fact the better of the two.

It was so great back then.

NYC was amazing back then. I would take the dirt and grit that it was for what it’s become.

It was livable. Anyone could survive. Now most can’t.

R18, me too. June of 1979, 24 years old, with $40.00. Lived in NYC until 2014, 33 years in Chelsea. Left with significantly more than $40.00, plus great memories of most of the time there.

It looks more....casual.

R33 that’s how it should be.

God, the cars were even uglier than I remember!

This one has me stumped. The cross street appears to be Church St which runs north (note One Way sign), but the street numbers are even which typically means we are looking south. The street numbers are low, so we are close to the beginning of the street.

Canal and West Broadway 1979

Same block recently

Those fucking green things they have under the scaffolds everywhere today - it's ridiculous

I remember The Canal Coffee Shop, it had a cool, funky edge to it. Amazingly good looking girl making the pancakes. Like a French New Wave movie star.

Canal used to be DOPE. Now it’s trash.

The Canal Coffee Shop = Dunkin' Donuts now = sad

Where's this?

Bleecker St. near Jones, 1979

Fuck, I hate what NYC has become.

233 Bleecker

and now - roughly >

I miss Pier 45! oops wrong thread

A shame that we don't have pictures of Merchant Marine cock in the mix. LOL

Oh to go back and snap up some properties. Can you image how cheap they were?

Block shown in r44 (Bleecker near Jones) recently. Ottomnelli’s has moved from corner.

R43, I don't know, but I want that crazy red Thunderbird.

Bleecker St and 7th Ave 1979

Same corner today. The Greenwich Village Historic District prevents radical change.

[quote][R43], I don't know, but I want that crazy red Thunderbird.

This is now >

Rocco’s then

Rocco's was always overrated - those shit Italian pastries tasted like dirt.

Rocco’s now

They should have left it alone.

No, R47. That is the former site of Bleecker Bob’s Records. The vegetable store is part of Grom.

What was that old Italian bakery on Bleecker that sold the Italian bread everyone thought was so great? It wasn't.

^sorry, Bleecker St Records . Bleecker Bob’s was elsewhere.

I miss it too. And my youth. But Christ the rides were awful.

Joe’s Dairy

I realize many of you were in your youth when these photos were taken and as a result look back st this time period with nostalgia, but this really wasn’t a good time to be anything than a straight, white male.

Now a gelato bar

Thanks for the awakening. Or is that awokening?

Well that's true R65. But NYC had flavah back then, and it wasn't so bad to be gay in the city.

It was a good time to be gay in NYC.

NYC always looks so dumpy to me. Sad, drab brick with fire escapes.

It was a great, fabulous, splendiferous time to be gay in Greenwich Village.

R65 You could not be more wrong. It was a great time to be gay in NYC. It was a wonderful time, but what these pictures don't show is the crushing crime, the murder statistics, they don't tell the mugging story that everyone had. I loved it in so many ways but I could not wait to get out and left for Europe.

Most everyone was white, or white-adjacent.

Are there still burglar alarm shops?

R73 What? Manhattan was Blacker then.

R73 by mid 70s whites were fleeing NYC for the suburbs.

By late 70s whites were The minority.

Crime rates are back on the rise. Murder was at a 10% rise in 2018 from 2017 and it will get worse as more whites push poor minorities onto the streets.

In 1979 did everyone speak with cynical humor like Rhoda?

No R78 some did. Not everyone is the same.

R77 Gentrification and tougher policing is what made the city safer.

Yes, sadly all of the buildings in the 70s photos have been torn down. Here’s what they all look like now.

Gentrification didn’t make the city better. Over the top Policing did. Gentrification put blacks on the street and then they do what they have to do to survive.

History will repeat itself and remind you all how evil you are in thinking killing minorities is good.

R82 Obviously you weren't around back then. Gentrification and tougher policing made the city safer. That's a fact.

82 replies.

The racebaiter is a little late.

Attributing the decline in ny crime rates to any one or few things isn’t a full picture. Arrests under the “broken windows” policy might have contributed but there were a lot of other factors, such as changing drug use habits and the economy at large. The country, and especially the city, experienced a strong decrease in unemployment starting in the early 90s that had a strong effect on crime rates.

By the way violent crime in America is still higher than in most European countries.

Gentrification never lowers crime rates. Only for a bit then the rates skyrocket.

[quote]Most everyone was white, or white-adjacent.

Have you been to Manhattan lately? It's whitey-white now. So are certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

R86 Some examples?

[quote]By the way violent crime in America is still higher than in most European countries.

Well gee I wonder why! Whatever could be the reason?

The jewel in America's crown.

R89 not race as there are a lot of blacks and Middle Eastern in Europe now. And there blacks are treated better and as equals compared to here and strive more.

R88 do your own research or take a statistics course that doesn’t make up numbers.

Um...the most likely cause of the drop in crime - that happened in most cities in the United States within a few years? Abortion.

Moved to NYC in 1997, there were still some vestiges of the old back then. Now it kind of sucks and I can sort of see myself somewhere else. Never thought that would ever happen.

R94 a lot of people feel that way. And not just cause of prices but NYC feels generic now, like any other city. Almost feels suburban now.

R96 Dear God. I can’t. So ignorant and cause you CHOOSE to be.

R93, there's a causational link between dropping crime rates and the removal of lead from gasoline. No one can point to that as a reason, but the link is there.

[quote]Dear God. I can’t.

You’re damn right you can’t, because it’s not true.

Blacks are very oppressed in this country.

Lead in gasoline was a big one, but the crime rate has started to increase again because of all the women guilt-ed into keeping their babies in the late 90s and 00s.

Death Wish era New York City.

Abortion and leaded gas! And strawberries!

My first impression of these photos is how casual and laid-back everybody looked. Quite a contrast from the NYC of today.

R104 everyone is a poser now.

No one can AFFORD to be casual in NYC today.

God yes r105. And so insecure about their status because there's always someone with more money and a better job. I like the relaxed vibe in these pictures, and others I've seen of NYC back them. Maybe I'm totally off-base as to what the reality was, because I wasn't around back then, but it looked like a nice time to be young in the city.

Loved those pictures. Take me home!

R107 it was. Was crime higher than now? Yes. But it wasn’t all bad. Many lived and survived to tell their stories, on here. Most of these bitches crying about crime rates never even had anything done to them 🙄🙄🙄

R109 I had 3 muggings. Fortunately nothing too serious but still, it sure wasn't pleasant. And the crime satistics are what they are. The city had to change and it has, not all of the changes are positive but street crime today is nothing compared to back then.

R110 yet... it’s bound to get bad again. What goes up must come down.

I don’t miss the garbage.

There’s still garbage everywhere.

1960s photos

I love historical photos of NYC!

Yup. Black men getting beat up by cops. Disgusting.

Looks like today...

Cars were large and gas was cheap.

i miss 1979. i was 7 years old and loved it.

Yes, well most of us liked being seven.

I remember One Fifth Avenue a building overlooking Washington Square Park was selling one bedroom coops for $15,000. I had the money and was considering buying it but I was young and afraid to make a commitment. That apt recently sold for over $1million.

My father wouldn't co-sign a loan for me to buy one in 1975 or so, r120. "Everyone's LEAVING New York, kiddo. You'll never get your money out."

Everyone will leave NYC again one day.

Looks filthy and grimy. I would've run for the hills if I was forced to live there back then. And don't forget, HIV was already circulating big time in NYC in 1979 among an unaware gay population. Sad looking at these pics knowing nobody knew the devastation that would start 2-3 years later.

I remember SF before the first dot-com boom had many working class areas that were "gentrified" and then the bust came and the one scruffy but viable neighborhoods, like SOMA, became slums.

It's happened again, and now there is shit all over the streets.

R123 it’s still filthy. 🙄

R124 that’s what I’m saying. What goes up comes down.

NYC May be getting super gentrified but to think that will keep crime down in the long run... come on. Crime last year was up over 10% and it’s higher than it’s been in years. Notice how as more low income people get pushed on the streets, the more crimes are committed?

These people don’t use common sense.

Did they pay a living wage back then?

R127 everywhere did.

Minimum wage back then was equivalent to $24 in 2019.

That’s what minimum wage should be at.

Summer of 79 would have been when Friedkin was filming CRUISING in NYC. That time period looks so sexy and enticing to me, yet extremely dangerous, because AIDS was just beginning.

HIV started spreading rapidly around 1976, coinciding with all the national and worldwide travel to NYC for the bicentennial celebration. By 1979, a lot of guys were already infected. All of those extras in the bar scenes in Cruising were probably infected and would die within the next few years.

r130 = Randy Shilts

Hardly, R128. Minimum wage in NYC in 1979 was $2.90 which would be $10.15 in 2019 dollars.

It wasn't liveable then, and it's not livable now. Even with your overly inflated calculation, you can't live on $24 an hour in NYC today.

The rentboys were much cheaper in 1979. That we can all agree on.

R120, R121: I was recently discussing real estate mistakes with my mother, and reminded her of when my parents inherited $25,000 from my Great Uncle in about 1980. He'd done quite well for himself and left his two kids over $1 million, and spread a quarter million between all the nieces and nephews, of which my father was one. They took 15-year-old me to look at a condominium in a nearby ski resort which was a newly built two bedroom unit, massive by today's standards (about 2,000 square feet with two master suites and indoor parking for 2 cars), for $22,000. I begged them to buy this condo. Of course they said it was only so that I could live there and ski all winter, which was true, but I told them that skiing was going to be huge and they could easily double their money in only a few years. The ski resort was new, and it was coming off a period of time when it wasn't that popular; my father said that he thought the condo would decrease in value and they'd end up giving it away. That unit sold for a little over $2 million the last time it changed hands in 2016.

He invested the money in some company that went bust a few years later and lost every dime.

With the way minimum wage was going up it should have been at around $22-$24 in 2019. It wasn’t worth that but it should have gone up to that by now.

In the 80s they started slowing down the rate of increase and it stuck at the same amounts for years at a time. It used to go up yearly.

I would have GIVEN ANYTHING to meet ARNALDO SANTANA who was playing in CRUISING (summer 1979) (R129)/(R130)...

R135 - in the 80s general inflation slowed dramatically, hence why increases didn’t occur as frequently. But they should make the minimum wage $50 or even $100 an hour - then all our economic problems will be solved!!

Did anyone say that much r137? We said $22-$24 an hour

The city was built by many more people then. Now by a few developers.

Are YOU a New Yorker, R139?

You sound like one,.

[quote]I realize many of you were in your youth when these photos were taken and as a result look back st this time period with nostalgia, but this really wasn’t a good time to be anything than a straight, white male.

Nothing has changed.

I remember first coming to the city. I cried when I learned there was an Au Bon Pain in midtown. I said these are my people, they have class. I have found my tribe.

R52-That is NOT a Thunderbird. It's a 1977-1979 Mercury Cougar XR-7.

Yes r140

R143, I stand corrected. Thanks!

Crazy days!

Was it the crime, or the unrelenting loss and mourning that made you leave, R72? I’d attended one too many depressing memorials before giving up.

Damm Miss R143 knows her shit!

A pic I took in '79.

I was there Christmas and New Years of 1976/77. Loved it. Stayed with my cousin in the Village. I remember the roasted chestnut stands.

Nyc looked a scene from the warriors movie. Graffti and crime ridden subways.