In 1984 and 1985 I used to take the train to Grand Central Station from Springfield MA and walk to the Port Authority Bus station to catch a bus to Blair Academy in northern New Jersey. The Port Authority Bus station was a slime hole then. Aggressive drug dealers, junkies, winos. Homeless people lined the walls, literally. It was impossible to lean against a wall there. I watched a couple of cops trying to roust a drunk who was sleeping in the middle of the floor of the bus station. They stepped on his fingers and he gathered them under his belly, but still remained passed out. Then they got a dog to come over and bark at him. This triggered his reptile brain to get him up on his hands and knees and head for the exit. You could buy beer in New York no matter how old you were. The Blair students used to buy big cans of Foster's Lager for the bus trip.
Times square was also a hell hole back then. So was Grand Central station. In the bathroom there, dozens of men leaned against the walls to watch you pee. It was like, "why don't you all go somewhere else and watch each other pee? "
It is all different now. NYC is cleaned up, on the surface anyway. I would eat off the sidewalk at Times square. There was a place to lean against the wall in the bathroom at Grand Central Station. There was no one trying to sell me pot at Port Authority or on the steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Quality of life policing has really made a noticable difference.
9:09:06 AM 
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