Yeah, I’m bothered by gentrification and all, but I agree with Jody Rosen: The glorification of crime-ridden ’70s New York has gotten out of hand. Rosen slaps James Wolcott:
Evoking the possibility of a “second go-round of the 70s” this time with “those spiky glass buildings that have gone up in recent years … reflecting our own overreaching folly back at us with sterile mockery,” Wolcott concludes: “Really, I much prefer rubble.”
Oh, does he? Wolcott may have seen rubble on the front page of the Times when President Carter visited the South Bronx. But I doubt he had to step over any on his way to the art-house cinemas about which he waxes lyrical.
[…]
There is something gross about nostalgists aestheticizing squalor that they never really, fully experienced.
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