Glimpses of the long-gone cool decaying seediness lost 42nd Street

boing
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I think some of these photos are from 89, and some are a few years later, in91.

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I don’t even think that it’s nostalgia for their own youth, even. I saw quite a bit of this in Memphis when I lived there; there was a constant complaint about how Beale Street wasn’t “authentic” any more. In fact, the pawn shops and whorehouses and gambling dens of Memphis had simply moved from Beale to other neighborhoods–the kinds of neighborhoods that the largely white middle-class tourists who flock to Beale wouldn’t set foot in or even drive through after dark–and the African-Americans who used to listen to the blues now prefer hip hop, but good luck getting the roots music fans to listen to that, even after Three 6 Mafia won an Oscar. People who wonder where the Times Square hookers in hot pants went to might stop to consider that they, too, were decimated by the AIDS epidemic.

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‘oh yeah, I remember that’ is fun but I sure wouldn’t want it back like that.

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O HOJOS WHERE DID YOU GO?

I kept meaning to get to the HoJos before it closed.

I did not.

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I have similar memories, slogging up to NY from DC to hit up record shops for albums, and passing through TS on our way uptown and downtown. It was all there; the raving religious nutjobs, guys selling dubbed cassette tapes, and lots and lots of terrible porn theaters. When you compare it to the tourist mecca TS is today. . .you yearn for the uniqueness of the old TS, but definitely not the realities that came with it.

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OtherMichael - Honestly? If you want the real experience, find a Waffle House that still allows smoking, and you would be most of the way there. Otherwise, it was a Hojo’s. Nothin’ special.

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You made me find this - the last hours of the Times Square HoJos.

And other Big Apple HoJos.

 

 

Waffle House. AS IF.

You also “made” me find this back, which I haven’t heard (outside of memories in my head) since collitch:

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Some are almost certainly from 1989 – one shot features prominent ads for Star Trek V and Batman, which were both released in the middle of that year. Another theater features RoboCop 2, which came out in 1990 – but that might’ve been a second-run hanger-on in '91.

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unescorted ladies = prostitutes.

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agree. in the same period, downtown DC was similar, with numerous outlets of “doc johnson’s marital aids” stores and porn theaters. hookers on 14th street. nothing ‘cool’ about it. chronologically happened to coincide with some ‘cool’ things, like the old 9:30 club, but the vast majority (99+%) of the storefronts were resolutely seedy, non-cool dumps.

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Not sure why this is considered seedy. I can find plenty of placeslike this in any big city. Unless ‘seedy’ alludes to the sex shops and cinemas, though in that case semen-y would be more apt :stuck_out_tongue:

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Magician on duty! Now that’s a sign I’d like to see these days :smile:

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I went to Hojo’s once a year or two before it closed. The food sucked and the atmosphere was shockingly character-less. But OH the drink prices!

I also remember going to see Beauty and the Beast on Broadway with my family when it first opened, which Wikipedia tells me was 1994. The marquee next door promoting a film called Anal Invaders V (or something like that) was quite a contrast with Disney’s first foray on the Great White Way.

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Ye Olde Times Square was known for years for porn, whores, drugs, thieves and being run down is why.

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There are probably still places like this in NYC, although they may have moved to the outer boroughs. The point is that Times Square is now very different from the way it was 20-40 years ago.

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