Death, Destruction, And Debt: 41 Photos Of Life In 1970s New York
Reeling from a decade of social turmoil, in the 1970s New York fell into a deep tailspin provoked by the flight of the middle class to the suburbs and a nationwide economic recession that hit New York’s industrial sector especially hard.
Combined with substantial cuts in law enforcement and citywide unemployment topping ten percent, crime and financial crisis became the dominant themes of the decade. In just five years from 1969 to 1974, the city lost over 500,000 manufacturing jobs, which resulted in over one million households being dependent on welfare by 1975. In almost the same span, rapes and burglaries tripled, car thefts and felony assaults doubled, and murders went from 681 to 1690 a year.
Depopulation and arson also had pronounced effects on the city: Abandoned blocks dotted the landscape, creating vast areas absent of urban cohesion and life itself. Today, we look at 41 poignant photos that capture a New York City on the brink of implosion:
Now home to luxury loft apartments and media agencies, the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO was largely uninhabited for most of the 1970s
Once the borough of choice for the middle class, the Bronx bore the full brunt of 1970s white flight. Over the course of the decade, the Bronx lost over 30 percent of its population.
New York City became the capital of adult stores with Times Square as its epicenter.
While the towers grew, much of the city burned. Landlords who could no longer afford to maintain their buildings would occasionally burn them down to collect insurance money
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at 69th and Broadway. It was a real community: local hardware, little restaurants, artsy theater. Philharmonic in the Park for free. Off-broadway for basically free. Dizzy Gillespie nearly free in the Village - little jazz clubs. Entertainment was deep, cultural and cheap if you wanted to take advantage of it.
It was possible to live pretty well on little if you were young and didn't need orchestra seats and penthouses and a car 
LOVED Led Zeppelin from the first time I heard them 
I picked RC up good, and they didn't mind me listening to rock 'n roll, although grandma did call the long-hairs "bloody riff raff"
yeah, '71 - I remember it well
but don't let that get in your way.
However is was President Carter in 1979 that waived most of the controls on oil and gas prices to make more fuel available.
I remember the odd even days and I remember gas stations turning me away as their gas was for their customers.
fun times
including the birth of rap.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1080761/
http://vimeo.com/34429641
Disclaimer: The filmmaker is an old friend. In fact, he interviewed me for one of his other docos.
I was thinking, those guys do not look very tough
It's a classic.
Watch the Warriors.
He had such a short stay in the film.
It's a '57 Fury, not a '58, but still...
