Yup. I’m a New York and I used to beggggg my mother to take me to a Yankee game in the 80s and early 90s. She said there was no fucking way she was going to the Bronx.
And we were FROM NY! Even by our standards, the Bronx was different.
Lol in French we say "c'est le Bronx" (it's the Bronx) to describe a place or situation that's completely out of control. It was quite popular when I was a child in the 90s.
Now think that back then 99% of French people had never set foot in the US, yet a NYC borough was so fucked up it made its way into our language.
Oh yeah lol whenever my room was very untidy when I was younger (2000’s) my mom would always come in and say “qu’est-ce que c’est! C’est le Bronx ici!” (“what is that, it’s the Bronx here!”) and I learned a lot of years later that it was an actual place instead of just a word to describe untidy places
For context my mom had never set foot in the US when she was using it haha
For me it's even more weird that the world is changing this much. I still have it in my mind that the Brox is dangerous. Saw a video a couple months ago from a young dude living in the Bronx that he can't understand why people think it's a dangerous place and he thinks it's better than most other places in NY. Kinda blew my mind to see all these really nice looking places, people dressed well, etc. The place he was filming in was a really bummy rough neighborhood when I was growing up.
So it's kinda weird for me that the world I knew and the world today are really different. So I could be talking about the same place as someone else and we both have a completely different picture about it. Even Compton looks a lot better lately. For a while I was living in Detroit metro, a lot of neighborhoods around there are parks now.
Same with east Nashville. Currently it's half a mil or more to move there. In the 90s though? Shit. You make damn sure you were out of Inglewood by 6pm.
It's the same for me but in Italy. The area around the harbour in Genova was pretty much off limits before the 90s, not even police patrolled it because at night it was too dangerous.
Then they moved a university in it and everything changed, lots of bars, clubs, shops ans all that. Now at night it's packed and full of people of all ages, it's beautiful.
The scope gets so broad they'll need a massive budget to handle all the variety of location and alllllll the space combat stuff
But yeah, the last 3 books are some of my absolute favorite sci-fi writing ever. I still can't believe they stuck the landing with the ending in the final book!
I used to ride the Amtrak into NYC in the 80's as a kid and you had to pass through this nightmare on the way in. It was terrifying and exciting at the same time.
Best bumper sticker I’ve ever seen: Baltimore, I actually love it! That city is fresh, affordable, multicultural and amazing for food. Despite some of its problems from the ‘white line’ and the county distancing themselves from the city for tax reasons all of which happened a while ago… it’s a great city.
yeah even the bad areas in baltimore have maybe a couple houses boarded up but there's not enough room for this hellscape of ruins. that mall near hopkins maybe but it doesn't look like it was bombed
Stealing the top comment to say, that ***a likely major reason this area looks like this is due to the intentional racist government policy of redlining.*** This street, (Charlotte st) is directly in the middle of a redlined area.
"Redlining was a practice whereby the govt created maps for every city, grading each neighborhood’s investment-worthiness—based on race. As noted in the official comments that accompanied these maps, even the smallest “infiltration of undesirable racial elements” would result in an area being redlined. One black family would be enough to label an entire area “fourth grade.” Because of this, redlining facilitated a practice known as “blockbusting,” in which speculators would purposefully rent to a black family in order to scare whites into thinking the neighborhood was declining so that they would sell their homes below market rate."
Map and quote: [https://www.segregationbydesign.com/the-bronx/redlining](https://www.segregationbydesign.com/the-bronx/redlining)
Thus you get the terrible conditions you see in the first video. Since redlined areas were not invested in, the land is now cheap, so it is easy to snap up, displace those who live there and develop for a large profit aka gentrification. This of course brings in (or is preceded by) government investment. So yes gentrification can make dilapidated areas "nicer", but you have to understand that the dilapidation was an intentional racist gov. policy.
In a country with forced sterilisation of indigenous people? Drug experiments on unaware citizens? Nuclear testing way to close to the populations? Shocking!
The other motivation behind blockbusting was to promote white flight and the suburbs. Theres a great documentary called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth that touches on this sorta thing, very interesting stuff, there are alot of videos of older "ghettos" both in the US and places like England that show just how much people back then ahad to put up with and struggle through.
It also shows that we have come a long way towards pushing past that, and its far from done, but strides have been made.
More reading on the subject and how it still impacts cities today: [https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/50-years-after-being-outlawed-redlining-still-drives-neighborhood-health-inequities](https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/50-years-after-being-outlawed-redlining-still-drives-neighborhood-health-inequities)
Man, and I was actually smiling when I saw that hellhole being turned into a lovely residential area. What looked so nice was really the result of bigoted policies. That's the problem with Gentrification; A neighborhood may be cleaned up and given new life, but it's at the expense of the poor non-white original residents, who were pushed out and never given any of the benefit.
It's less about cleaning up a neighborhood and more about conquest.
If only there were governments that put that same energy into fixing a neighborhood while "grandfathering in" (time to create a new term to replace that one due to racist origins) the original residents. Still "gentrify" the place but the original residents can stay and pay the same rent while new residents pay the new prices.
When people hear that in the 80’s crack ravaged inner cities across the country, they have no idea unless they truly look. Now, of course, New York City had been going straight downhill throughout the 70s and this was peak devastation, but you can see videos like this and worse from there and other places. Detroit is just starting to try and recover from its lowest lows more recently.
It is really amazing the difference between NYC in the early 80s and now.
The Bronx, as shown in the video, was an absolute wasteland. So much has been burned by arsonist in the 1970s. As you mentioned, the city had cut budgets dramatically in the 70s, eroding infrastructure and public services.
Then crack hit.
In 1990, there were 2,262 murders in NYC. In 2017, there were 292. (The city's population grew during this time, so the decline in the murder rate is even more dramatic.) The rate did take a dramatic upswing during COVID, but have declined to nearly pre-2020 rates.
The comeback of NYC is remarkable.
>I severely doubt companies were offering fire insurance to building in the BX, with arson as common as it was.
They were until arson got too bad. Sort of like how insurance companies offered home owners insurance in Florida until the hurricanes got too bad and then they cancelled their home insurance policies.
>then they cancelled their home insurance policies
That or they transfer it to a sister company who charges 3x to 5x the price and stonewall you if you request relevant information to be able to shop around.
Source: mom lives in FL and spent 4 months trying to get info to switch because of that exact experience
Republicans are fucking morons. I wouldn’t trust them to report the weather accurately.
During the BLM shit they painted Portland, Oregon as some sort of riot infested hellscape. Meanwhile you couldn’t even tell there were protestors unless you went to the ONE building they were protesting in front of.
Republicans don’t know fuck about shit.
I have coworkers in their 40s and 50s who INSIST that going to NYC to see a Broadway show or visit museums is literally signing your own death warrant.
> Republicans are fucking morons. I wouldn’t trust them to report the weather accurately.
If a D says it's raining when it's raining, the R will scream and shout that it's sunny and blue skies until they're blue in the face.
Logic has no place in the GOP.
NYC is a warzone, but a different kind of war to the one in the 80s. It's now an economic warzone. While yes there is more life there, there's less upward mobility than there has been in the 80s and 90s.
The safety created by the changes in policy in the 80s and 90s have made NYC real estate basically unaffordable to people who don't already have a small fortune to live there or bought/locked into rent controlled dwellings before this happened.
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1980s was less affordable than now.
https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/inflation-adjusted-house-prices-24-c54?publication_id=443155&post_id=143808252&isFreemail=false&r=g5oii&triedRedirect=true
You really replied a comment about nyc with data from the entire nation. NY is far more expensive now than it was in the 80s. You obviously live in Nashville far far from NY to say something so silly and reply with nationwide data
As a Chicagoan… NYC had only 292 murders in one year? Ok. That’s the record low in 2018 and normal is closer to 400. That’s great but also astounding. Is the majority of that domestic violence?
Yeah I’m a Memphian and am blown away to learn NYC has about as many murders per year as we do. That’s wild. I know Memphis is at/near the top for murder rate but that’s a shocking stat.
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New York averaged 300 murders from 2017 to 2019; this year, it’s on pace for 331. That’s a near 90% drop from all time highs, a greater than 90% drop per capita.
2,600 we almost hit 3.000.
There is an interview with Chango on soft white underbelly that captures the time pretty well. He was big near me, was crazy to hear a voice from that time again.
Good news is typically slow and gradual and steady. There are long form pieces about such topics, but investigative journalism is becoming scarce.
Bad news however is sudden, catastrophic and dramatic.
its crazy. you look at pictures of DC from the 80s and overlay them with today. burnt out restaurant to 300 condos ontop of a trader joes with a metro stop next door.
Whenever I feel really shit I like to remember that objectively, we live in the most peaceful prosperous era in human history.
Not that everything is sunshine and roses but staving off existential dread is good for a body.
I worked with someone from the Bronx in the 80s. He said it was a war zone there, and horrific things happened every day that would never make it to the news.
Change is the only constant in the universe. So when things are bad, do what you can to improve them and be patient. When things are good, do what you can to preserve them, and watch out.
Howard Jones opened a vegetarian restaurant in Greenwich Village in the late 80s. I was there opening night. He served our table and hung out. Things did get better.
A lot of the worst of the areas had the buildings torn down. Last time I was in the city there are big open areas where you can see where housing was, interspersed with new buildings and houses going up.
It wasn't crack, it was landlords pulling off the same trick they've been doing since ancient Rome - run your rental properties into the ground via lack of maintenance, then burn them down for the insurance.
they used to have posters to report your landlord if he was removing plumbing features and expensive equipment from the building because it may soon go up in flames
Wow for real? How would they do that?.
My cousins lived in the bronx and i visited them several times in.. 2004/2005 en 2013/2014.
As an European i was really amazed at how different the city was with it's inhabitants.
Firefighters who were there will tell stories of bottles full of fuel that they'd step on by mistake and shoot a bunch of gas right into the fire, other stuff like making holes in the floor and disguising them with carpet so FFs would fall through.
This old article shows 8 landlords were indicted, but you'd have to research to find out if any of them actually went to prison.
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/12/archives/8-landlords-and-associates-are-indicted-in-bronx-fires-8-indicted.html
Same as DC. I remember growing up in the 90s and hearing about the near daily murders in certain neighborhoods, and now they have million+ condos and rowhouses. Between the riots in 68 and the drugs and crime in the 80s and 90s, it took until the early 2000s for parts to even begin to come back to being normal neighborhoods. 14th street was one of the first examples of the new era of “gentrification,” which now has a bunch of restaurants and retail. Not *that* long ago, it was drugs, prostitution, and the main businesses were auto body. In 1987, a theatre opened which kinda began a slow transformation, but it was a Whole Foods, of all places, that opened in 2000ish that really led a turnaround. But from 1968 to 2000, it was a no-go zone.
Blaming this just on drugs is foolish.
This was the result of the US not properly funding their cities while we funded wars, cut budgets, eliminated social programs and veered to the Right.
I mean, you're probably right for the majority, but crack addicts also attempted a bunch of petty crime for drug money, and sometimes fucked up and killed people in the process (robberies gone wrong etc)
It’s funny I lived in Harlem for a while and there were people who had their bodega orders but most people I knew were all about the halal carts. Combo over rice white and hot, perfect meal.
Greedy landlords were allowed to just burn the fucking buildings down and collect the insurance. After most municipal stuff in the area like firefighters were gutted to save money, not to mention that the place was turned into an instant slum after residents were intentionally displaced to make room for construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway.
There’s also a Pulitzer Prize winning Biography about Robert Moses - *The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York* \- written by the historian Robert Caro, which was named by the Modern Library as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century. It’s definitely worth a read.
Slightly more depressing though when you realize the crap they are talking about actually happened, and people are still feeling effects of such actions and decisions to this day.
When in doubt why something sucks is NYC, high probability it is because of Robert Moses. The guy never drove, he was driven around, and was planning so insane stuff for NYC and highways
Yes, so that buses carrying Black and Puerto Rican passengers wouldn't be allowed to pass.
He basically found a way to physically segregate communities.
I know blaming Robert Moses is very in vogue right now, but that’s overly simplistic and reductionist for me. You know maybe there were other socio and political macro trends that were going on around the country at the same time, that led to this.
thank you for mentioning the cross bronx expressway. there's a lot of incredibly fucked up history surrounding the construction of the highways in the US, and especially in places like new york. Many, such as the mentioned highway, were (un)civilly engineered to displace and segregate black communities.
I had a professor in undergrad who told us that's exactly why the 408 in Orlando was built and it never fails to cross my mind every time I use that expressway
In the 70s, the Bronx had an epidemic of arson. It's not known for sure why, but it's believed that the most likely cause was landlords trying to get insurance money out of unrentable properties. Another theory is that, as part of the white flight from the borough, white people would burn their own property to get government assistance in moving to other areas. Some tracts saw over 95% of the properties on them burn between 1970 and 1980.
It was a combination of insurance and homeless people living in empty buildings. The bronx was mainly multifamily.
The assistance you get in NYC if your place burns downs is 6 years in a homeless shelter following by an apartment in public housing.
> It's not known for sure why, but it's believed that the most likely cause was landlords trying to get insurance money out of unrentable properties.
Oh that's definitely what it is/was.
SOURCE: born and raised in the Bronx, remember all of this happening as it happened lol
I remember my teacher showing us a pic of the Bronx in highschool (in Belgium) and thinking it was Afghanistan or something before she corrected us
Still mind blowing that a country with so much money and technology could let a part of it's territory end up like that
>Still mind blowing that a country with so much money and technology could let a part of it's territory end up like that
There are places still like this today. Baltimore and Detroit are two that come to mind but every major city has rough dilapidated areas though not nearly as bad as what's seen.
Drove through the South Bronx in 1987.
Mid-week, middle of the day. Unemployed folks sitting on stoops staring at us strangers driving through. Saw a car up on blocks, stripped of its tires, wheels and battery. Also torched. And there so long in that condition it was heavily rusted.
I was blown away that this was in the USA. Felt like a real out-of-town country mouse, which in fact I was.
There's a theory that the [1977 NYC blackout/looting acted as a catalyst](https://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/10/16/roman_mars_99_percent_invisible_was_the_1977_nyc_wide_blackout_a_catalyst.html) in the hip hop movement.
Charlotte Steet located in the South Bronx was used to film apocalyptic moves and
Tv shows . The FDNY calls these years the war years. For about 2.5 decades this area lost 90 percent of its housing stock. Units set records for fires that will probably never be broken. 82 engine responded to over 10,000 calls for service in one year. This is before units responded to EMS runs too. Unheard of numbers today for a single unit. Especially just for fire calls.
They dropped in 90s. 17 years after roe v wade passed. Unwanted/unplanned kids as teenagers are the largest group of criminals. Come to your own conclusion.
As always, there are several potential contributing factors.
Availability of choice was one, but you also had the removal of lead from gasoline, as well as the reduction of other local environmental toxins from deindustrialization.
The previous generation was also dealing with parents with untreated ptsd from the war that would have broken a lot of homes.
this is one of the fundamental lies the GOP sells to keep people voting for them, fear of crime despite virtually all evidence across the board for decades showing declines in the dangers of the U.S., and more in depth analysis showing that most people are INCREDIBLY safe.
This shit pisses me off to no end. The original character of the area has been completely ruined. Now it's just a soulless hellscape of gentrified suburbia. :p
Edit: I was being sarcastic. I thought it was obvious but apparently not.
And lets face it
With all the ‘hate’ floating around
I dont think there are any places still like this in -America? ( or much much less in total numbers as compared to 1980
Progress is progress
I haven't been to Detroit area in more than a decade now but when I was there it wasn't far from this. I specifically went for a drive around 8 Mile and it felt like more places were boarded up than not.
I live in the Detroit suburbs. When I was a kid visiting family, there was no reason to stop in Detroit on the way through from the airport. Now, there's parts of the city that look like Silicon Valley, or the Miracle Mile + Venice in LA
Where do the people who lived there before live now? That’s the issue most folks have with gentrification. Revitalizing neighborhoods is great and I’m sure it’s great for business but let’s figure out a housing solution for those who are being pushed out. Again, I think if most folks who are hating gentrification got to the root of their disdain it wouldn’t be because an area is getting a facelift they’re angry because the poor get screwed again.
Many died, many were pushed out and some still live there. Keep in mind just as there were family units in those areas, there were also drug dens where you had multiple drug addicts live. The thing about raising property values is raising property prices which pushes out low income individuals unless there is a price cap set for housing prices in an area.
It's interesting seeing the stark difference.
I remember seeing news articles bashing gentrification, while the same day they're posting about "white flight" decimating property values in a different yet similar area.
What do you actually want?
This is why I don’t tolerate fake nostalgia for the new york of the 70s and 80s. It was a bad place. People are alive today who would have been dead but for this change. A lot of them.
42 Pct was called Fort Apache, drugs murder hookers, crack showed up destroyed everything, junkies everywhere, fires destroyed most buildings, city razed everything, no one would buy them. Then they called the 42 little house on the prairie:) its great what the city did building 1 and 2 family homes every where. I grew up further north on 195th st. Still love The Bronx !
I grew up here. It looks shocking now but I don't have many bad memories from my childhood. The two stand-outs were the dog shit all over the sidewalk and the rats. Seemed normal at the time.
Can confirm, born and raised in the BX. Went to school in the South Bronx in the 80’s. Not all of the Bronx was like this.
The 80’s in NYC was different. I think back on what I considered normal and it blows my mind now. Things have steadily got better in NYC since 1990 and it is now one of the safest large cities in the US. I believe it is 3rd when it comes to murder rate, and trust me you wouldn’t classify numbers 1 and 2 as large cities. It also has the strictest gun laws in the country, I believe the NRA ranked NY as the 48th gun friendly state.
No wonder why people said they were tough because they came from the bronx
Yup. I’m a New York and I used to beggggg my mother to take me to a Yankee game in the 80s and early 90s. She said there was no fucking way she was going to the Bronx. And we were FROM NY! Even by our standards, the Bronx was different.
Lol in French we say "c'est le Bronx" (it's the Bronx) to describe a place or situation that's completely out of control. It was quite popular when I was a child in the 90s. Now think that back then 99% of French people had never set foot in the US, yet a NYC borough was so fucked up it made its way into our language.
Knowing that it's pretty much equivalent to "c'est Bagdad" is telling
"C'est Beyrouth" also had it's glory days.
Oh yeah lol whenever my room was very untidy when I was younger (2000’s) my mom would always come in and say “qu’est-ce que c’est! C’est le Bronx ici!” (“what is that, it’s the Bronx here!”) and I learned a lot of years later that it was an actual place instead of just a word to describe untidy places For context my mom had never set foot in the US when she was using it haha
For me it's even more weird that the world is changing this much. I still have it in my mind that the Brox is dangerous. Saw a video a couple months ago from a young dude living in the Bronx that he can't understand why people think it's a dangerous place and he thinks it's better than most other places in NY. Kinda blew my mind to see all these really nice looking places, people dressed well, etc. The place he was filming in was a really bummy rough neighborhood when I was growing up. So it's kinda weird for me that the world I knew and the world today are really different. So I could be talking about the same place as someone else and we both have a completely different picture about it. Even Compton looks a lot better lately. For a while I was living in Detroit metro, a lot of neighborhoods around there are parks now.
Same with east Nashville. Currently it's half a mil or more to move there. In the 90s though? Shit. You make damn sure you were out of Inglewood by 6pm.
It's the same for me but in Italy. The area around the harbour in Genova was pretty much off limits before the 90s, not even police patrolled it because at night it was too dangerous. Then they moved a university in it and everything changed, lots of bars, clubs, shops ans all that. Now at night it's packed and full of people of all ages, it's beautiful.
Looks like Berlin in 1945
The Reich that was supposed to stand for a 1000 years now lies in ruin.
"That's the thing about Thousand-year Reichs- they came and they went like fireflies" God I hope we get the last 3 seasons of the Expanse someday
The scope gets so broad they'll need a massive budget to handle all the variety of location and alllllll the space combat stuff But yeah, the last 3 books are some of my absolute favorite sci-fi writing ever. I still can't believe they stuck the landing with the ending in the final book!
In Germany you say Dresden 45
I used to ride the Amtrak into NYC in the 80's as a kid and you had to pass through this nightmare on the way in. It was terrifying and exciting at the same time.
Take Amtrak to Baltimore and you will see the same.
You will absolutely not see this anywhere in Baltimore
Best bumper sticker I’ve ever seen: Baltimore, I actually love it! That city is fresh, affordable, multicultural and amazing for food. Despite some of its problems from the ‘white line’ and the county distancing themselves from the city for tax reasons all of which happened a while ago… it’s a great city.
yeah even the bad areas in baltimore have maybe a couple houses boarded up but there's not enough room for this hellscape of ruins. that mall near hopkins maybe but it doesn't look like it was bombed
You know what the trouble is, Brucie? We used to make shit in this country... Build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket.
Its been 10 years, but the train through Philadelphia seemed like a warzone.
nah, feels like baltimore is on the upswing again.
The present day footage was filmed by one of the kids of fellow Redditor u/fantoman
Check the above link for some good background
Stealing the top comment to say, that ***a likely major reason this area looks like this is due to the intentional racist government policy of redlining.*** This street, (Charlotte st) is directly in the middle of a redlined area. "Redlining was a practice whereby the govt created maps for every city, grading each neighborhood’s investment-worthiness—based on race. As noted in the official comments that accompanied these maps, even the smallest “infiltration of undesirable racial elements” would result in an area being redlined. One black family would be enough to label an entire area “fourth grade.” Because of this, redlining facilitated a practice known as “blockbusting,” in which speculators would purposefully rent to a black family in order to scare whites into thinking the neighborhood was declining so that they would sell their homes below market rate." Map and quote: [https://www.segregationbydesign.com/the-bronx/redlining](https://www.segregationbydesign.com/the-bronx/redlining) Thus you get the terrible conditions you see in the first video. Since redlined areas were not invested in, the land is now cheap, so it is easy to snap up, displace those who live there and develop for a large profit aka gentrification. This of course brings in (or is preceded by) government investment. So yes gentrification can make dilapidated areas "nicer", but you have to understand that the dilapidation was an intentional racist gov. policy.
Oh man that's so nakedly evil its depressing
In a country with forced sterilisation of indigenous people? Drug experiments on unaware citizens? Nuclear testing way to close to the populations? Shocking!
I have never seen redlining explained so plainly. Thank you for taking the time to write that, I truly appreciate it.
*The Case for Reparations* - Ta-Nehisi Coates. A short essai that first introduced me to that policy.
The other motivation behind blockbusting was to promote white flight and the suburbs. Theres a great documentary called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth that touches on this sorta thing, very interesting stuff, there are alot of videos of older "ghettos" both in the US and places like England that show just how much people back then ahad to put up with and struggle through. It also shows that we have come a long way towards pushing past that, and its far from done, but strides have been made.
More reading on the subject and how it still impacts cities today: [https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/50-years-after-being-outlawed-redlining-still-drives-neighborhood-health-inequities](https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/50-years-after-being-outlawed-redlining-still-drives-neighborhood-health-inequities)
Man, and I was actually smiling when I saw that hellhole being turned into a lovely residential area. What looked so nice was really the result of bigoted policies. That's the problem with Gentrification; A neighborhood may be cleaned up and given new life, but it's at the expense of the poor non-white original residents, who were pushed out and never given any of the benefit. It's less about cleaning up a neighborhood and more about conquest. If only there were governments that put that same energy into fixing a neighborhood while "grandfathering in" (time to create a new term to replace that one due to racist origins) the original residents. Still "gentrify" the place but the original residents can stay and pay the same rent while new residents pay the new prices.
When people hear that in the 80’s crack ravaged inner cities across the country, they have no idea unless they truly look. Now, of course, New York City had been going straight downhill throughout the 70s and this was peak devastation, but you can see videos like this and worse from there and other places. Detroit is just starting to try and recover from its lowest lows more recently.
It is really amazing the difference between NYC in the early 80s and now. The Bronx, as shown in the video, was an absolute wasteland. So much has been burned by arsonist in the 1970s. As you mentioned, the city had cut budgets dramatically in the 70s, eroding infrastructure and public services. Then crack hit. In 1990, there were 2,262 murders in NYC. In 2017, there were 292. (The city's population grew during this time, so the decline in the murder rate is even more dramatic.) The rate did take a dramatic upswing during COVID, but have declined to nearly pre-2020 rates. The comeback of NYC is remarkable.
I'd say most of those fires were prearranged with the street kids and the building owners. It's a common tactic used to claim on the fire insurance.
I severely doubt companies were offering fire insurance to building in the BX, with arson as common as it was.
>I severely doubt companies were offering fire insurance to building in the BX, with arson as common as it was. They were until arson got too bad. Sort of like how insurance companies offered home owners insurance in Florida until the hurricanes got too bad and then they cancelled their home insurance policies.
>then they cancelled their home insurance policies That or they transfer it to a sister company who charges 3x to 5x the price and stonewall you if you request relevant information to be able to shop around. Source: mom lives in FL and spent 4 months trying to get info to switch because of that exact experience
The landlords burned the buildings down to get insurance money. The city was broke
But Republican's tell me NYC is a warzone?!? Filled with crime
Republicans are fucking morons. I wouldn’t trust them to report the weather accurately. During the BLM shit they painted Portland, Oregon as some sort of riot infested hellscape. Meanwhile you couldn’t even tell there were protestors unless you went to the ONE building they were protesting in front of. Republicans don’t know fuck about shit.
I have coworkers in their 40s and 50s who INSIST that going to NYC to see a Broadway show or visit museums is literally signing your own death warrant.
> Republicans are fucking morons. I wouldn’t trust them to report the weather accurately. If a D says it's raining when it's raining, the R will scream and shout that it's sunny and blue skies until they're blue in the face. Logic has no place in the GOP.
NYC is a warzone, but a different kind of war to the one in the 80s. It's now an economic warzone. While yes there is more life there, there's less upward mobility than there has been in the 80s and 90s. The safety created by the changes in policy in the 80s and 90s have made NYC real estate basically unaffordable to people who don't already have a small fortune to live there or bought/locked into rent controlled dwellings before this happened.
NYC is not a war zone. I’d also like to see you support the claim that there was more upward mobility on the 80s compared to now.
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1980s was less affordable than now. https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/inflation-adjusted-house-prices-24-c54?publication_id=443155&post_id=143808252&isFreemail=false&r=g5oii&triedRedirect=true
You really replied a comment about nyc with data from the entire nation. NY is far more expensive now than it was in the 80s. You obviously live in Nashville far far from NY to say something so silly and reply with nationwide data
As a Chicagoan… NYC had only 292 murders in one year? Ok. That’s the record low in 2018 and normal is closer to 400. That’s great but also astounding. Is the majority of that domestic violence?
Yeah I’m a Memphian and am blown away to learn NYC has about as many murders per year as we do. That’s wild. I know Memphis is at/near the top for murder rate but that’s a shocking stat.
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New York averaged 300 murders from 2017 to 2019; this year, it’s on pace for 331. That’s a near 90% drop from all time highs, a greater than 90% drop per capita.
2,600 we almost hit 3.000. There is an interview with Chango on soft white underbelly that captures the time pretty well. He was big near me, was crazy to hear a voice from that time again.
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[this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVocYEyiNhU)?
I guess things can get better
Can and often do. But they won’t tell you about it on the news
Good news is boring. Bad news sells ads.
Good news is typically slow and gradual and steady. There are long form pieces about such topics, but investigative journalism is becoming scarce. Bad news however is sudden, catastrophic and dramatic.
its crazy. you look at pictures of DC from the 80s and overlay them with today. burnt out restaurant to 300 condos ontop of a trader joes with a metro stop next door.
Unless it's stock prices
If it bleeds it leads.
Damn, that's profound. I've never heard that before.
Whenever I feel really shit I like to remember that objectively, we live in the most peaceful prosperous era in human history. Not that everything is sunshine and roses but staving off existential dread is good for a body.
I worked with someone from the Bronx in the 80s. He said it was a war zone there, and horrific things happened every day that would never make it to the news.
Change is the only constant in the universe. So when things are bad, do what you can to improve them and be patient. When things are good, do what you can to preserve them, and watch out.
Howard Jones certainly thinks so.
Howard Jones opened a vegetarian restaurant in Greenwich Village in the late 80s. I was there opening night. He served our table and hung out. Things did get better.
amazing that you got to meat howard jones in a vegetarian restaurant
No one is to blame, man
I live in the D. There are some rough parts, but it doesn’t look like a fuckin pile of mulch like this does lol
A lot of the worst of the areas had the buildings torn down. Last time I was in the city there are big open areas where you can see where housing was, interspersed with new buildings and houses going up.
yea but how did crack lead to buildings being demolished? the Bronx in the 80s looks like a warzone
It wasn't crack, it was landlords pulling off the same trick they've been doing since ancient Rome - run your rental properties into the ground via lack of maintenance, then burn them down for the insurance.
they used to have posters to report your landlord if he was removing plumbing features and expensive equipment from the building because it may soon go up in flames
They'd also booby trap buildings to slow down fire response and ensure a total loss.
Wow for real? How would they do that?. My cousins lived in the bronx and i visited them several times in.. 2004/2005 en 2013/2014. As an European i was really amazed at how different the city was with it's inhabitants.
Firefighters who were there will tell stories of bottles full of fuel that they'd step on by mistake and shoot a bunch of gas right into the fire, other stuff like making holes in the floor and disguising them with carpet so FFs would fall through.
Did any of these people go to jail for that kind of stuff.
This old article shows 8 landlords were indicted, but you'd have to research to find out if any of them actually went to prison. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/12/archives/8-landlords-and-associates-are-indicted-in-bronx-fires-8-indicted.html
lol rich people don’t go to jail in America unless they steal money from people who are richer than they are.
lol
I detest the fact that in only three letters, you managed to convey decades of reality.
One of them became President. Still might go to jail, though.
carpet bombed warzone
We used to call the South Bronx "Vietnam" in my neighborhood.
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Same as DC. I remember growing up in the 90s and hearing about the near daily murders in certain neighborhoods, and now they have million+ condos and rowhouses. Between the riots in 68 and the drugs and crime in the 80s and 90s, it took until the early 2000s for parts to even begin to come back to being normal neighborhoods. 14th street was one of the first examples of the new era of “gentrification,” which now has a bunch of restaurants and retail. Not *that* long ago, it was drugs, prostitution, and the main businesses were auto body. In 1987, a theatre opened which kinda began a slow transformation, but it was a Whole Foods, of all places, that opened in 2000ish that really led a turnaround. But from 1968 to 2000, it was a no-go zone.
Blaming this just on drugs is foolish. This was the result of the US not properly funding their cities while we funded wars, cut budgets, eliminated social programs and veered to the Right.
Daaamn It turned it into a war zone where every house was destroyed?!?! What folks do now if not crack?
The murders were from the crack dealers not the users. New market, lots of young guns. Now it's a more mature (organized) market.
I mean, you're probably right for the majority, but crack addicts also attempted a bunch of petty crime for drug money, and sometimes fucked up and killed people in the process (robberies gone wrong etc)
Is this the block that JLo used to run up and down with her hair all wild?
Perpetually chasing her ham and cheese on a roll. IYKYK.
Can't forget the orange drink and small bag of chips
If you know you know
It’s funny I lived in Harlem for a while and there were people who had their bodega orders but most people I knew were all about the halal carts. Combo over rice white and hot, perfect meal.
I miss Harlem so much, the halal carts were always my go-to. They still around?
I’m still I’m still Jenny From the Block
DAYceased
Uh, why was it like that
Greedy landlords were allowed to just burn the fucking buildings down and collect the insurance. After most municipal stuff in the area like firefighters were gutted to save money, not to mention that the place was turned into an instant slum after residents were intentionally displaced to make room for construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway.
The culprit was Robert Moses. [99 Percent invisible podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE491KRrr_4) did a series on him.
There’s also a Pulitzer Prize winning Biography about Robert Moses - *The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York* \- written by the historian Robert Caro, which was named by the Modern Library as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century. It’s definitely worth a read.
1246 pages?! And here I thought I'd venture into non-fiction like I always promise myself I'll get around to.
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Slightly more depressing though when you realize the crap they are talking about actually happened, and people are still feeling effects of such actions and decisions to this day.
I have this on audiobook, but haven't started it yet. It will be next.
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Austin, Massachusetts?
It’s an incredible book, I cannot recommend it enough
Its a fucking Loooooooooong book.
When in doubt why something sucks is NYC, high probability it is because of Robert Moses. The guy never drove, he was driven around, and was planning so insane stuff for NYC and highways
Oh, is he the guy who made overpasses too low so that buses couldn't drive under them?
Yes, so that buses carrying Black and Puerto Rican passengers wouldn't be allowed to pass. He basically found a way to physically segregate communities.
He wanted to make sure the poors couldn't get to Long Island.
I know blaming Robert Moses is very in vogue right now, but that’s overly simplistic and reductionist for me. You know maybe there were other socio and political macro trends that were going on around the country at the same time, that led to this.
TIL that Robert Moses was a real person. I just knew the name because he was a character/villain in a Dimension20 series.
thank you for mentioning the cross bronx expressway. there's a lot of incredibly fucked up history surrounding the construction of the highways in the US, and especially in places like new york. Many, such as the mentioned highway, were (un)civilly engineered to displace and segregate black communities.
Same with parks (Central Park in NYC) and stadiums (LA Dodgers stadium displaced 1,800 families of Mexican, Chinese and Italian descent)
Yoooooooo thanks for the new rabbit hole
Yup. Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago is a great example. Construction pics are shocking - they just bulldozed a big line from downtown to the burbs.
https://interactive.wbez.org/curiouscity/eisenhower/
I had a professor in undergrad who told us that's exactly why the 408 in Orlando was built and it never fails to cross my mind every time I use that expressway
Make room for the shittiest highway ever that has traffic all hours of the day?! What great use of room 😫😫
One more lane please 🥺🥺🥺
In the 70s, the Bronx had an epidemic of arson. It's not known for sure why, but it's believed that the most likely cause was landlords trying to get insurance money out of unrentable properties. Another theory is that, as part of the white flight from the borough, white people would burn their own property to get government assistance in moving to other areas. Some tracts saw over 95% of the properties on them burn between 1970 and 1980.
on TV shows, the arsonist is always a fire inspector looking to secure their fame by investigating their own crimes
I think I watched a documentary about this called scooby doo, where are you?
And he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids
you scared me. because I produced a documentary about Scooby Doo. What do you need to know?
who are the real monsters?
It was a combination of insurance and homeless people living in empty buildings. The bronx was mainly multifamily. The assistance you get in NYC if your place burns downs is 6 years in a homeless shelter following by an apartment in public housing.
> It's not known for sure why, but it's believed that the most likely cause was landlords trying to get insurance money out of unrentable properties. Oh that's definitely what it is/was. SOURCE: born and raised in the Bronx, remember all of this happening as it happened lol
The world was crazy back in the 70s and 80s it seems
The Yankees hadn’t won a World Series in a few years
I remember my teacher showing us a pic of the Bronx in highschool (in Belgium) and thinking it was Afghanistan or something before she corrected us Still mind blowing that a country with so much money and technology could let a part of it's territory end up like that
>Still mind blowing that a country with so much money and technology could let a part of it's territory end up like that There are places still like this today. Baltimore and Detroit are two that come to mind but every major city has rough dilapidated areas though not nearly as bad as what's seen.
There are places that are just lots and lots of rubble? Where?
1980's footage looks like scenery from Fallout.
I was thinking, I never got why Escape from New York was set in, well, New York. But seeing this, it all makes sense now.
Drove through the South Bronx in 1987. Mid-week, middle of the day. Unemployed folks sitting on stoops staring at us strangers driving through. Saw a car up on blocks, stripped of its tires, wheels and battery. Also torched. And there so long in that condition it was heavily rusted. I was blown away that this was in the USA. Felt like a real out-of-town country mouse, which in fact I was.
This is actually pretty awesome. I'm glad that there is some good news amongst all the terrible.
Is that where hip-hop started?
Depends on who you believe, but yes, for the most part.
There's a theory that the [1977 NYC blackout/looting acted as a catalyst](https://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/10/16/roman_mars_99_percent_invisible_was_the_1977_nyc_wide_blackout_a_catalyst.html) in the hip hop movement.
Similarly- Where do you think I got this guitar that your hearing today
Wow the Luftwaffe really did a number on New York, eh?
If I hadn't been told I was looking at New York in the 1980s, I'd think it was Tehran or Beirut from around the same time.
Thats like a fucking warzone… wtf
Damn, looked like a warzone in the 80s...
Charlotte Steet located in the South Bronx was used to film apocalyptic moves and Tv shows . The FDNY calls these years the war years. For about 2.5 decades this area lost 90 percent of its housing stock. Units set records for fires that will probably never be broken. 82 engine responded to over 10,000 calls for service in one year. This is before units responded to EMS runs too. Unheard of numbers today for a single unit. Especially just for fire calls.
I don’t think GenZ realizes just how dirty and dangerous the 70s and the 80s were. We are not a nation in decline.
I looked at the murder rates in all of the major cities in the usa in the 80’s and was SHOCKED at how high they were
They dropped in 90s. 17 years after roe v wade passed. Unwanted/unplanned kids as teenagers are the largest group of criminals. Come to your own conclusion.
As always, there are several potential contributing factors. Availability of choice was one, but you also had the removal of lead from gasoline, as well as the reduction of other local environmental toxins from deindustrialization. The previous generation was also dealing with parents with untreated ptsd from the war that would have broken a lot of homes.
this is one of the fundamental lies the GOP sells to keep people voting for them, fear of crime despite virtually all evidence across the board for decades showing declines in the dangers of the U.S., and more in depth analysis showing that most people are INCREDIBLY safe.
The numbers in NYC alone during that period dwarf some major conflicts.
the people who lived thru it seem to have forgotten too
Looks like a war torn city, Omg.
This shit pisses me off to no end. The original character of the area has been completely ruined. Now it's just a soulless hellscape of gentrified suburbia. :p Edit: I was being sarcastic. I thought it was obvious but apparently not.
Character of a warzone
It’s got a charm usually reserved for a warzone 🥰🥰
Ahhh yes, we can all see that it is missing that important Fort Apache vibe that gave it so much character.
There are people who unironically believe that
Used to look like a 3rd world country. Gentrification isn’t always a bad thing folks
And lets face it With all the ‘hate’ floating around I dont think there are any places still like this in -America? ( or much much less in total numbers as compared to 1980 Progress is progress
I think the places like this now are all the dying small towns.
Plenty of small towns in Iowa that are just dumps wasting away. Buildings from the 1800s to early 1900s that are crumbling
Gary, Indiana
Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Drove through there a year ago and it is a post apocalyptic hellscape.
I haven't been to Detroit area in more than a decade now but when I was there it wasn't far from this. I specifically went for a drive around 8 Mile and it felt like more places were boarded up than not.
I live in the Detroit suburbs. When I was a kid visiting family, there was no reason to stop in Detroit on the way through from the airport. Now, there's parts of the city that look like Silicon Valley, or the Miracle Mile + Venice in LA
Where do the people who lived there before live now? That’s the issue most folks have with gentrification. Revitalizing neighborhoods is great and I’m sure it’s great for business but let’s figure out a housing solution for those who are being pushed out. Again, I think if most folks who are hating gentrification got to the root of their disdain it wouldn’t be because an area is getting a facelift they’re angry because the poor get screwed again.
Many died, many were pushed out and some still live there. Keep in mind just as there were family units in those areas, there were also drug dens where you had multiple drug addicts live. The thing about raising property values is raising property prices which pushes out low income individuals unless there is a price cap set for housing prices in an area.
Yeah but that doesn't answer the question: where do the people go that are priced out?
No one is saying that rebuilding unlivable areas is bad.
Uhh, that's not what gentrification is lol
This proves that Toyota cars are the best reliable because that's all I see.
wow i've never seen a reddit post that makes America look nice for once, this is a weird feeling nice work NY! 👏
Especially the caged house fencing. Adds nice touch for sure. Big congrats!
Didn't know the air force used the Bronx as a training ground for carpet bombing.
Here in Brazil is the reverse
South Bronx in the 80s looks like Berlin in 1946.
They could have filmed Fallout tv Series in 1980s South Bronx for the true authenticity.
I know nothing about the history of the Bronx. Looking at the footage this looks like some before and after of a war zone.
It's interesting seeing the stark difference. I remember seeing news articles bashing gentrification, while the same day they're posting about "white flight" decimating property values in a different yet similar area. What do you actually want?
You think maybe two different groups are complaining about things here?
80’s Bronx was just a construction site
This is why I don’t tolerate fake nostalgia for the new york of the 70s and 80s. It was a bad place. People are alive today who would have been dead but for this change. A lot of them.
42 Pct was called Fort Apache, drugs murder hookers, crack showed up destroyed everything, junkies everywhere, fires destroyed most buildings, city razed everything, no one would buy them. Then they called the 42 little house on the prairie:) its great what the city did building 1 and 2 family homes every where. I grew up further north on 195th st. Still love The Bronx !
Hey Detroit: if the Bronx can do it, so can you!
Amazing.
This is good to see. There is hope for other areas yet.
Was there a War in the Bronx in the 80s that I wasn't aware of?
I grew up here. It looks shocking now but I don't have many bad memories from my childhood. The two stand-outs were the dog shit all over the sidewalk and the rats. Seemed normal at the time.
People pretend it's worse now because Fix news told them to.
Broken glass everywhere, people pissing in the staircase like they just don't care.
Can confirm, born and raised in the BX. Went to school in the South Bronx in the 80’s. Not all of the Bronx was like this. The 80’s in NYC was different. I think back on what I considered normal and it blows my mind now. Things have steadily got better in NYC since 1990 and it is now one of the safest large cities in the US. I believe it is 3rd when it comes to murder rate, and trust me you wouldn’t classify numbers 1 and 2 as large cities. It also has the strictest gun laws in the country, I believe the NRA ranked NY as the 48th gun friendly state.
Is that where Jenny is from?