Luc Sante, still one of the best writers on old and new New York. His blog is here, but Low Life is really where to start. 5.5% unemployment in the country, and people are saying NYC might get scary again in a few years. Not that this is a good thing (I’ll never go on record as wishing crime on any place), but there’s something to be said about that feral look city dwellers must have shared on their late night walks in 1986—that holy shit look, the look that meant you were either going to go home and create or zone out or pour scotch or dance around naked because you survived another day in the city and you can now do whatever you damn well please. It wasn’t the freedom we have now, but it was a different kind of release—or at least I imagine.
Days so hot they make your knees sweat only serve to give me borrowed nostalgia, I think. Stoops and bass beats and pomade and cherry cola. So forgive my summer-addled brain.
