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New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg

Amazon.com Price:  $19.16 (as of 02/05/2019 20:52 PST- Details)

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Description

New York City in the 1970s used to be the setting for Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, and Saturday Night Fever, the nightmare playground for Son of Sam and The Warriors, the proving grounds for graffiti, punk, hip-hop, and all manner of other public spectacle. Musicians, artists, and writers could subsist even in Manhattan, at the same time as immigrants from internationally were reinventing the city in their own image. Others, bored stiff with crime, filth and frustration, simply split.

Fast-forward three decades and today New York can appear a glamorous metropolis, with real estate prices soaring higher than its skyscrapers. But is this fresh-scrubbed, affluent city in reality an improvement on its grittier––and more affordable––predecessor? Taking us back to the streets where eccentricity and anomie were pervasive, New York Calling unlocks life in the unpolished Apple, where, it seemed, anything could happen. All five boroughs­­––the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island––comprising hundreds of neighborhoods and the interlaced worlds of politics, crime, drugs, sex, and mischief, are explored with a love of the city unclouded by romance yet undimmed by cynicism.

Acclaimed historian Marshall Berman and journalist Brian Berger gather here a stellar group of writers and photographers who combine their energies to weave a rich tale of struggle, excitement, and wonder. John Strausbaugh explains how Uptown has taken over Downtown, as Tom Robbins examines the mayors and would-be mayors who have presided over the transformation. Margaret Morton chronicles the homeless, at the same time as Robert Atkins offers a personal view of the city’s gay culture and the devastating have an effect on of aids. Anthony Haden-Guest and John Yau offer insiders’ views of the New York art world, at the same time as Brandon Stosuy and Allen Lowe recount their discoveries of the local rock and jazz scenes. Armond White and Leonard Greene approach African-American culture and civil rights from perspectives ceaselessly marginalized in so-known as polite conversation.

Day-to-day life in New York has its dramatic moments too. Luc Sante gives us glimpses of a city forever on the grift, Jean Thilmany and Philip Dray share secrets of Gotham’s ethnic enclaves, Richard Meltzer walks, Jim Knipfel rides the subways, and Robert Sietsema criss-crosses the city, indefatigably tasting everything from giant Nigerian tree snails to Fujianese turtles.

It’s a long way from old Brooklyn to the new Times Square. But New York Calling reminds us of what has changed––and what’s been lost ––along the way.
 

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