New York City East Village 3688

These pictures are from a trip to NYC in 2007. My first visit to NYC was in '67, but I didn't spend any time there until the mid-70's. Though the size of New York City and the thought of driving into it and then getting around it was initially intimidating, I quickly became accustomed to it in the 70's. It helped that I had a friend from Binghamton who had an apartment in the East Village and I used his place as a base for getting to realize that, if 9 million people lived there, went to work every day, and grocery shopped just like everyone else in the world does, then I shouldn't let it intimidate me.

When I took these pictures, I hadn't been in Manhattan in almost 20 years, and it had changed tremendously in those years. In the 70's and early 80's, the areas I had known best (the East and West Village) looked generally rundown, with crowded, dirty mom-and-pop stores, litter and graffiti, and overall feeling of being relatively dangerous -- perfect, actually, for feeling like an adventurer learning to know and navigate a strange environment. I knew that Manhattan had been cleaned up quite a bit, but I wasn't expecting the clean streets, repaired building facades, and trendy-hip new restaurants and shops. Very much safer feeling, but somehow relatively bland feeling as well.

This picture is of 3rd street where my friend's place had been.

Makes most sense if viewed as part of Coming Out/Northeast set