When did Manhattan peak

Whenever you were 28 there.

Probably right after WWII to the early 1950s.

I lived through what IMHO was the other peak 1975 to 1979. The city as a mess but the influx of young people, the affordability, the creativity, the sex, the gay environment....it all came together. It was a wonderful, magical time.

2000

Actually let me make that 1975 to 1982...until AIDS broke out.

(R1 does have a point though.)

2025

Yeah when I was 28. I was an ivy educated ex-model with a big cock and a glamorous job I loved, plus exciting friends from uptown and downtown, rich and poor, party people and serious people. I had endless energy as did the city, and I felt almost anything I wanted was possible.

pre-AIDS.

Not in the very early 70s, it was filthy then.

1998-2000

1966

1949

1821

In the Year 2525!

September 10, 2001.

The mid 80's I was still young and good looking. I lived in Brooklyn and had a car. On Friday nights, I'd drive into city and meet my friends, parking was no issue. We'd meet at Boy Bar and then make the rounds to the Bar and Uncle Charlie's. We'd hit other bars too. I remember driving down 5th Ave to downtown at 3 am to the Brooklyn Bridge with no other cars going 70 MPH with the lights of all the skyscrapers around me. I remember meeting really nice and cool guys and going back to their places in Soho and the East Village. TBH Martin Scorsese's movie After Hours captures that era perfectly. I can still see and feel it in my mind's eye.

R14 best me to it.

Never been the same.

R15 - parking was no issue? Bullshit.

1996-2001

[quote] Whenever you were 28 there.

Ooh, sounds kind of too late.

But seriously, IIRC, Fran Liebowitz said it was the 1970s.

‘86 and ‘87. I was hot, grad student at Columbia and worked out at the West Side Y. The Upper West Side was gentrifying but still far from being totally gentrified. I remember all those apartments I had sex in that still had something of a “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” vibe to them. Probably full of rich families today. Back then the UWS was so gay.

You were hot at the pastrami counter at Zabar’s…nowhere else

I moved to the city in 1977. The years prior to the AIDS pandemic were crazy, ecstatic, and liberatory. I’m thankful to have lived through them and thankful to have survived them.

I was so disappointed when I was there in 1970. The subway cars were covered in graffiti inside and out. The sidewalks were littered with trash and newspapers. I lived in Boston at the time which was pristine in comparison.

I went to school in Boston in 1972. It’s a tiny city, no comparison in anyway to NYC. Everything closed at 1AM, even on weekends. Shitty areas, same garbage. The Combat Zone was quaint in comparison to Times Square.

The Combat Zone was fun! —for a 16 year old who’d ride the bus down from Andover, looking for video booth glory holes. Found them!

1890s

Talking with Elder-Elder Gays about Manhattan in the '60s is quite a trip. Crime wasn't so bad compared to 70s/80s/early 90s, gay life was flourishing semi underground, and the cost of living was so much lower. It does make me wish I could have experienced it.

Brooklyn in the late Obama years '12-'15 was quite a happening gay/queer scene for 20 somethings. Copious art/film happenings, good parties, club scenes, and then Prep/Truvada came out and oh my stars there was so much fucking. And rent hadn't yet gone sky high like it is today. I was on the periphery of their world and had aged out of it and just gotten married, but it was a vicarious delight to be near/around.

1969 to 1981. Sexually I was busier than Bill Russell. A dozen years of bliss.

Then the music stopped on July 3, 1981. I’ve written about it before because it was the day the New York Times reported the first cases of what came to be known as AIDS. I met my boyfriend that night in the Mineshaft, he took me home to Brooklyn, and we’ve been together ever since.

New York was crumbling in the 70s and early 80s which in its way was wonderful: cheap rent meant lots of creative people, most of them young and a whole lot of ‘em gay.

Oh, and whoever upthread said there was no parking? I never paid for nightime parking in NYC and always parked, it seemed, right outside the bar. I can remember a crowd outside Keller’s admiring my new Volvo which I would park anywhere - never got a scratch on it, either.

[quote] Whenever you were 28 there.

Sweet, I got 9/11. 2001 was good before that though!

Post WW2/early 50s and the 70s/early 80s seem to me to have been the most interesting periods (I wasn't alive during any if these fwiw).

I was 28 in 2008 and no, it was boring then.

Mid to late 1990s. The introduction of the cocktail, Wigstock, Stonewall 25, President Clinton, and lots of prosperity.

I wasn't even young by the. I turned 40 in 1995. And it was great!

Also, the late 1800's/early 1900's. When Old New York was New.

The 80's were also an exciting time. The Nelson Sullivan videos on youtube show as much. But it was sadly brought down by Aids. Exciting but not so happy times.

The cocktail is slightly older

Whenever you came of age and of course was living in Manhattan.

Are any 28-year-olds, minus those with trust funds, able to live in Manhattan anymore? It just so crazy expensive now.

Yes.

If you have roommates people still prioritize living in Manhattan in their 20s I bet. There's 3bd/2brs in the East Village or Hells Kitchen or UES for $5500... $1833 per person.

No matter when you move to NyC people tell you it was so much better when they first moved there.

For me it was 1978 to 1982. First started exploring the West Village bars and my sexuality. I was 17 in 1978 and it was just fun, interesting and erotic. I remember walking down Christopher one Friday June evening thinking life doesn't get any better than this. It was just one big beautiful parade of happy, attractive people.

1982 - 1992 was very depressing, a mess. The city was fun again from 1992 to 2001. It was clean, safe HIV was less of a concern. There was a vibrancy again.

80s thru mid 90s, IF you lived there.

Otherwise, tourists have nothing to compare it to, hence see no difference.

We have discussed this before! I romanticize the NY before I got there. My era was better than now but not the best one. The peak might be 1979 or 1980 with Studio 54 and Max's Kansas City. Other peaks as well like the Greenwich village scene of the 60s. I'd personally be interested in around 1985 for the art scene. Warhol is still alive (-2/22/87), the party AIDS killed dies around 1987. The 4 pillars of hiphop (deejaying, rapping, graffiti painting and break dancing) reach a early level of popular interest: Breakin' came out in 1984 for instance. Manhattan (1979), My Dinner w/Andre (1981), Desperately Seeking Susan and After Hours(1985). The petty crime was out of control and the AIDS crisis. The incredible and heartbreaking moments of bravery of ACT UP formed in 1987. AIDS reaches peak death in 92. Giuliani takes office Jan.1 1994. 1990s is still real but Manhattan is post peak with Giuliani sorry. A new kind of Brooklyn emerges 1995-2008 (approx?) and you have some fun of electroclash and something postdated now as "indie sleaze". Maybe the game truly ends 2005-2008.

I could put peak NYC to 1978-1987 as the most exciting and interesting if also dangerous! Someone might be able to sell me on the 70s.

I'm old. There's a 22 year old drag queen in Bushwick living on the DeKalb Av L stop Right Now who goes to Happyfun Hideaway on weekends and Bushwig at Knockdown Center who thinks they've arrived in the center of the world.

1982 until 1995 was just a really sad, depressing time because of HIV. It really felt like plague years. Everyone seemed so afraid of having it or getting it or of friends getting it. I'll never forget walking past The Monster one cold night and an older guy (30s) who obviously had AIDS was looking in the window from the corner of his eye as he slowly walked with such sadness and and almost longing.

R45, you reminded me of a strong feeling that popped out of me in late March 2020, walking in my Brooklyn neighborhood with the whole city all suddenly shut down and scared -- and thinking "Yep. NOW the straights know what it's like."

I think the internet rise in 2000's stopped everything culturally. People could see and experience things online. People stayed at home more - got NetFlix instead of going to movies or Blockbuster.

The 90's stock market 2nd boom, along with the proliferation of spreadsheets, created the 'squeeze every penny you can out of everything for profit' mentality that ruined housing, fashion, arts, entertainment. It pushed to look to keep that money-train going, which caused that housing debacle.

With the internet, then people spent more time at home - then there was a shift to everything to make your home better. HGTV started - Martha Stewart had already primed the pump with her magazines and show. People renovated their homes in major ways in the 2000's and that has just continued.

It feels like we're on a treadmill of sameness the past 20 years with slight improvements on technology we already had. Everything feels so damned corporate and money-obsessed.

I visited NYC last weekend for the 1st time in many years and I was still charmed. So much activity around the clock with an air of glamour & importance. People were quite friendly. I’m sure it’s not the “best” time NY has ever had but it still has a lot to offer that you don’t find anywhere else.

I’m hoping to go next year for the first time in 25 years!

R48 is right. It's still a great place. It's still fun to visit and be in. Not sure anymore how much you can't find anywhere else but people still move there to make a mark and make an impression.

For me from the original production of Company to right before AIDS.

But I would have most liked to have known NY in the 20s or from '45 through the 50s.

I was stationed in New Jersey in the army in 1963 going to a school. On weekends we would go to Manhattan to have fun.

I loved the place. One time a guy tried to pick me up while watching a movie as I was 20 years old.

I had a top secret clearance back then and it was against policy to be gay. I ran the possibily of going to jail if caught. So, I ignored the guy.

Aw for the good ole days.

2010-2020 certainly wasn’t it. A decade bereft of excitement.

In my past life when I was heiress Nancy Cunard hoovering the pendulous cocks of the fine gentleman of the Harlem Renaissance.

1623.

The year before the fucking Dutch stole our island.

R55 - what about all those beads you wanted again?

You enjoying those bracelets and necklaces?

I love it that a couple of you aren't afraid to admit your whorish ways back in the day.

Those of us who’re around to remember it, R57. Because too many of us from back then aren’t here now.

It’s not that they had a higher whore score, either.

[Quote] [R15] - parking was no issue? Bullshit.

Actually, R17 I lived in NY from 1988-2006 and in the 80s and 90s parking was a hellavu easier before CitiBike racks took up many parking spaces and more recently outdoor dining sheds. During the time I lived in the city many outdoor parking lots were lost to development.

1999. When I was 28, a vigorous ass pirate, and Bill Clinton was a pussy pirate.

I apologize, R58. I was just joking around, but thanks for bringing me back to reality. Again, I'm sorry.

90s had AIDS AND Meth.

Surprised that age 28 seems to be the magic number for many.

By 28, I was already kind of jaded and more worried about finances (how I was going to make a living). (I was working in restaurants and knew it couldn't last forever.)

Everything wasn't better when you were younger.

Everything was better because you were younger.

Well at 28 I looked and felt fantastic. I was still young feeling (admittedly, the young feeling lasted into my late 40s!) But unlike 21, I knew how to better manage employment, grad schools, deans, bosses, subordinates, all colleagues, potential employers, landlords, salespeople, service people, friends, lovers, boyfriends, parents, and family, etc. My sexual repertoire was good and growing, as was my French, finally. I knew much more about the art world, music, clubbing, high culture, low culture, travel, food, and my personal interests.

No one asked for your LinkdIn profile.

To R17. I'd drive into Manhattan and find street parking in the West Village on a side street after 6pm. I'd leave my car there and then walk or take the subway or a taxi to get around and meet my friends. My car was always there waiting for me to drive home with the windows open and the radio blasting. Sometimes, I'd even have company. Once met a great guy in the East Village and we drove out to Rockaway Beach and made out in the sand at 2AM. Then I drove him back to East 3rd Street with no traffic and I drove back to Brooklyn very happy. Was a great night that you can't replicate today.

When Aaron Burr shot and ikilled that straight-passing faggot!

Around 400 million years ago, give or take. Maybe some of the Elder Gays will share some of their cruising stories amongst the peaks.

Culturally, the 20s and into the 30s would have been great fun...as long as you had a bit of money once the Depression started.

Then post war in the late 40s through the 50s...again, very culturally rich.

The 60s started getting funky and sexy and dangerous but...also fun.

The 70s were gritty but to be young and gay then would have been hot.

80s...AIDS was a buzzkill. The rise of the Yuppie class. New York started getting gentrified.

90s up to now. Gentrification killed everything.

When Rosario Candela made the terrace the height of New York sophistication.

1980s NYC was still coming out of the financial almost bankruptcy crisis, definitely NOT gentrified.

R41 here, the 80s have come up a few times. 82-92 were really the dark years for me, the city, and a lot of people I'm sure. The city was filthy, dysfunctional (subways covered in and out with graffiti, often taken out of service, no AC), violent ( I was mugged twice, once at gunpoint, harassed several times, for being White not gay), lots of people sick and dying (a 24 year old roommate, who was also mugged in broad daylight, and a few friends), shuttered storefronts and empty streets at night, often a sense of fear, death and danger everywhere. If this hadn't been my hometown with family and friends, I might have moved.

Speaking from a younger perspective, in which we know New York as corporate, walled-off, and pretty quaint in comparison to today’s global metropolises like Seoul and Singapore, it’s wild how hung up on ‘70 New York nostalgia people are.

^^^You had to be there.

R72 which is why I said, STARTED to get gentrified. The process started happening in the mid 80s as the stock market boomed and the Boomer Yuppies started taking over.

It's when the Trump Era began.

No it didn’t, R76. NOTHING like that had started in the 80s.

When they crossed 14th Street into Alphabet City, gentrification had begun.

And the music died.

Sorry, r77. The yuppies started taking over the UWS in the late '70s, even. By the early '80s, you could hardly get off the IRT at 72nd Street without hearing two or three Ivies namedropped.

R77 Seems unaware of a whole genre of fiction that started in the 80s detailing the yuppification of Manhattan...or, even SPY Magazine. Or, Vanity Fair for that matter.

Manhattan has always been fearfully ugly, though. You'd think a place with such close European connections would have better architecture.

NYC nightlife turned a page in June of 2001 when Twilo closed because a med student overdosed and died. It limped along after awhile, but before this, there was a full club ecosystem of huge clubs and smaller bars all over the city every night of the week. Meth also reared it’s ugly head, you had Manhunt, and cruising online for sex started (though no cellphones yet).

The investors lost tens of millions of dollars, at the time Twilo was a premiere club, had spawned another in Miami, and attracting the drug crown with A list DJs was suddenly not a great business model. They instead chose bottle service, effectively curbing the drug scene.

9/11 was a nail n the coffin to pretty much any ragtag club downtown, and the city was in mourning a full year afterwards.

Nightlife is always a marginal business. Look at Jean-Paul Guthier and his Limelight clubs; or the COPA (Fort Lauderdale and fucking FLINT, MICHIGAN).

Gauthier

The UWS does not embody the entire city of New York, not by a very long shot.

R81, honestly, that is one of the most bizarre comments I've read in a long time.

The entire thread is pretty much nuts if you ask me.

R87 Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to be on this thread?

How did Peter Gatien become Jean-Paul Gaultier?

Molly!

Meth!

Coke!

[quote] Manhattan has always been fearfully ugly,

I have new eyes for some of Manhattan's visual appeals having been away for a while. Washington Sq. Park and Madison Sq. Park are all 19th century elegance and lush in summer. The brownstones of the UWS or UES? The West Village is always charming. There's some beautiful buildings in the financial district.

We’ll have Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too…

It’s lovely walking through the zoo…

It’s very fancy on old Delancey Street you know

The subway charms us so when balmy breezes blow to and fro…

[italic]The great big city's a wondrous toy

Made for a boy and boy.

We turned Manhattan

Into the isle of joy.[/italic]