What was NYC like in the early 2000s?

[Anonymous]

Guiliani was and is a notorious racist. The fact is crime started to go down based upon the community policing initiatives that Dunkin’s started. Crime went down across the United States.

NYC is not confined to Manhattan. This time period is when Brooklyn began to overtake Manhattan as being the cooler cousin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Guiliani was and is a notorious racist. The fact is crime started to go down based upon the community policing initiatives that Dunkin’s started. Crime went down across the United States.

NYC is not confined to Manhattan. This time period is when Brooklyn began to overtake Manhattan as being the cooler cousin.

Its when Brooklyn started to become more financially viable than Manhattan.

[Anonymous]

Manhattanites secretly hoped for a crime wave that would frighten all the safe-feeling suburbanites now taking up good tables back whence they came.

Upper West Siders who sincerely believed they were the East Side's edgy cousin were beginning to get personally offended by new popularity of Brooklyn.

Everyone quickly realized the gawkers down at the WTC site were out of town tourists with no interest in the rest of NY.

Chelsea's energy was on 6th and 7th and 8th Avenues, not further west. So called NoMad was dead. The Upper East Side was exactly the same.

Donald Trump was a tacky local joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Manhattanites secretly hoped for a crime wave that would frighten all the safe-feeling suburbanites now taking up good tables back whence they came.

Upper West Siders who sincerely believed they were the East Side's edgy cousin were beginning to get personally offended by new popularity of Brooklyn.

Everyone quickly realized the gawkers down at the WTC site were out of town tourists with no interest in the rest of NY.

Chelsea's energy was on 6th and 7th and 8th Avenues, not further west. So called NoMad was dead. The Upper East Side was exactly the same.

Donald Trump was a tacky local joke.

]
You don't really know NYC, clearly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Manhattanites secretly hoped for a crime wave that would frighten all the safe-feeling suburbanites now taking up good tables back whence they came.

Upper West Siders who sincerely believed they were the East Side's edgy cousin were beginning to get personally offended by new popularity of Brooklyn.

Everyone quickly realized the gawkers down at the WTC site were out of town tourists with no interest in the rest of NY.

Chelsea's energy was on 6th and 7th and 8th Avenues, not further west. So called NoMad was dead. The Upper East Side was exactly the same.

Donald Trump was a tacky local joke.

]
You don't really know NYC, clearly.

+1

Thought I was having a stroke reading a bunch of random words strung together with no meaning or bearing on reality.

[Anonymous]

I liked Tin Lizzie’s
Bowery bar

[Anonymous]

Are you writing a novel set in that time?

[Anonymous]

Loved it. So much fun. Lived in a tiny studio on the LES and my rent was $695!!

Went out to tiny bars like Sapphire, Ruby's, Max Fish and Den of Thieves. Shopped at flea markets and thrift stores. Had a large group of diverse and interesting friends. Used to bike around everywhere (I worked in Chelsea).

Eating at Veselka, late nights at Tim Cafe, Empire Diner, Lox Around the Clock.

My best friend lived in the studio two floors below me.

There was no buzzer or intercom. When people wanted to visit me they'd stand in the street and shout my name. I'd throw a sock out the window with a spare key safety-pinned to it.

Sigh.

[Anonymous]

Was in college 1998-2002 and came to NYC often to visit slightly older friends working there. Spent one summer as an intern. A few comments.

NYC was rapidly recovering from the massive crime problems of the 1970s-80s. Giuiliani gets much of the credit. Murders and petty crime fell by huge factors. Giuliani wasn't popular among certain demographics but those same demographics were causing most of the murder and crime. WWYD.

At the same time, NYC hadn't quite become the playground for the very rich it is now. There was still a fair amount of grittiness that appealed to kids fresh out of 1990s suburbia. It was a much more relaxed, freer and laid back place. Remember smoking! Actual cigarettes! At pool halls and bars! The nanny state that started to emerge under Bloomberg and now pretty much runs NYC today wasn't there yet. Notwithstanding 9-11, much of that reviving NYC remained constant through the next decade.

I don't find NYC as interesting these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agreed felt very safe. I lived there when I graduated college in 2002. I never felt like I would get mugged or anything and um definitely made some poor laid night decisions.

Same and same. I don't know if I felt super safe because it was safe or because I was young and felt invulnerable. But I too made some poor laid night decisions. They were definitely fun, though!

I was in grad school in NYC in the late 90s, stayed until 2002. I am one of the only people I knew from that time who left after 9/11, but I got so freaked out - they found anthrax in the building where I worked, then that plane came crashing down in Queens. We had bomb scares on the subway. I was already kind of an emotional mess at the time, but it just got to be too much for me. I should have gone to therapy - instead, I just left and moved somewhere quiet and warm.

I wonder if young people still feel safe, the way I did. It was so fun being young there, then. I hope they're having a good time, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Loved it. So much fun. Lived in a tiny studio on the LES and my rent was $695!!

Went out to tiny bars like Sapphire, Ruby's, Max Fish and Den of Thieves. Shopped at flea markets and thrift stores. Had a large group of diverse and interesting friends. Used to bike around everywhere (I worked in Chelsea).

Eating at Veselka, late nights at Tim Cafe, Empire Diner, Lox Around the Clock.

My best friend lived in the studio two floors below me.

There was no buzzer or intercom. When people wanted to visit me they'd stand in the street and shout my name. I'd throw a sock out the window with a spare key safety-pinned to it.

Sigh.

I shared a duplex near Columbia for $600.

[Anonymous]

I was in my teens, and t didn't feel safe. At all.

[Anonymous]

It was the days of two feet on the ground, hardworking, enterprising people from all over without a buck in their pocket could go there and live their dreams. You could find cheap drinks at places in Soho and hole in the wall restaurants out of a Billy Joel song. Not everyone who lived in the village was a trustfunder who's Dad worked on Wall Street, actually most of them weren't at all. Vibrant neighborhoods that had personality and hadn't been overtaken by corporations and instagram didn't blow up every authentic place with a soul.
Now it's a miserable Mecca of the very rich and very poor...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


It was the days of two feet on the ground, hardworking, enterprising people from all over without a buck in their pocket could go there and live their dreams. You could find cheap drinks at places in Soho and hole in the wall restaurants out of a Billy Joel song. Not everyone who lived in the village was a trustfunder who's Dad worked on Wall Street, actually most of them weren't at all. Vibrant neighborhoods that had personality and hadn't been overtaken by corporations and instagram didn't blow up every authentic place with a soul.
Now it's a miserable Mecca of the very rich and very poor...

+1

This.

NYC used to be a place where people took creative risks. People would move there to be in a place where others were doing that.

Creative types have moved to the Hudson Valley and elsewhere. They haven't been able to afford NYC for a while.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Loved it. So much fun. Lived in a tiny studio on the LES and my rent was $695!!

Went out to tiny bars like Sapphire, Ruby's, Max Fish and Den of Thieves. Shopped at flea markets and thrift stores. Had a large group of diverse and interesting friends. Used to bike around everywhere (I worked in Chelsea).

Eating at Veselka, late nights at Tim Cafe, Empire Diner, Lox Around the Clock.

My best friend lived in the studio two floors below me.

There was no buzzer or intercom. When people wanted to visit me they'd stand in the street and shout my name. I'd throw a sock out the window with a spare key safety-pinned to it.

Sigh.

Oh Veselka!