[ghaff]

I don't know how actively dangerous Times Square was but for it and 42nd Street "gritty" is a pretty good description. You see remnants of it at e.g. the Port Authority, aka one of the world's worst bus stations. Being there late at night was... interesting (as I once was). For a lot of people who knew NYC in that era, the "Disneyfication" isn't the worst thing that could have happened.

[decafninja]

My dad commuted to his office somewhere in Midtown Manhattan in the 1980s. One day I was rummaging through his briefcase and found a steel baton. I asked him what it was for and he said it was to protect himself from the bad guys.

As a kid I distinctly remember being somewhat afraid whenever my family had reason to go into NYC from our home in NJ.

I know he's controversial, but that fear subsided at some point during Guiliani's term. Yes I know today he seems to have become a total crazy loon, but I highly respected him as mayor for making large swathes of NYC feel safer. And yes, I know some people loathe him even for his tenureship as mayor.

[ghaff]

I was visiting NYC a fair bit in the late 80s-00s and even worked there for a summer. But, while my friends there would roll their eyes a bit at "the proctor's" recorded messages in taxi cabs about buckling your seatbelt and things like that, in general they seemed to mostly think that Disneyfication was better than what preceded it. While I'm sure things were never as bad as they were in my younger imagination, there were a lot of places I would not have been comfortable walking, especially at night.