Think of Times Square as a barometer of New York City's overall health and wellbeing. In peaceful and prosperous times, the area--since its official founding, anyway--has reflected the city's vibrance. During times of upheaval and poverty, Times Square not only reflects, but magnifies American cultural rot.
Over the weekend, a disturbing trend associated with more sprawling cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta made its way to the Crossroads of the World: multiple car donuts.
Given Times Square's reputation as one of the most highly policed areas in Manhattan, the video above is shocking. Multiple NYPD lookout posts are positioned throughout the area. But given the lack of legal consequences for nonviolent offenders in New York, perhaps this kind of lawlessness was inevitable.
As noted in the city's official Times Square website, the history of the area has been volatile.
[in 1904], Mayor George B. McClellan signed a resolution that renamed the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue from Long Acre Square to Times Square. Ochs told the Syracuse Herald, “I am pleased to say that Times Square was named without any effort or suggestion on the part of The Times.” Yet, he clearly felt proud: the new building represented “the first successful effort in New York to give architectural beauty to a skyscraper,” he said. Within a decade, the Times outgrew their space and moved to a new location, but not before starting a tradition that continues today: the New Year’s Eve spectacular. Ochs staged the first event to commemorate the new building and crowds still gather today to bring in the new year.
Times Square became a desirable location, attracting fine dining and upscale entertainment venues. Further, the construction of rail lines that intersected at Broadway and 42nd St. greatly increased local and tourist traffic. These were boom times for the nation, and Times Square was at their literal and figurative center.
Then came the Great Depression. Again, from the Times Square's official site:
As theaters struggled to survive during this period, many became cheap ‘grinder’ houses that showed sexually explicit films. Soon, other lower forms of entertainment arrived in the area: burlesque shows, cheap restaurants, peep shows, dance halls, and penny arcades. Then, commercialized sex proliferated throughout the neighborhood as both male and female prostitutes began lingering along 42nd Street. The advent of World War II did little to improve Times Square’s reputation. Soldiers on leave, in search of erotic entertainment, further catalyzed the neighborhood into a zone for vice. Likewise, construction restrictions during the war worsened conditions by halting the city’s building boom of the 1920s. Times Square had begun a descent into disrepair and depravity.
World War II led to a literal dimming of the world's most famously bright triangle of light. Even traffic lights were covered with blackout hoods due to fears of creating a beacon for enemy submarines. One sign in particular, the news headlines "belt" that flashed around the base of the Times Tower, was darkened. One employee looked forward to its return:
Frank Powell, one of three electricians tasked with the sign’s maintenance, stated on the night of the dimout: “All I want is to start it up again the night Hitler gets killed. That would tickle me to death.”
From there, Times Square entered a period of sustained debauchery. For the next fifty years, it was a hive of gambling, peep shows, prostitution, and open-air drug dealing.
The tide started to turn under Rudy Giuliani, and under Michael Bloomberg, the "Disneyfication" of Times Square gained real momentum. It was not only a place you could take children, it was a destination for family-centric entertainment.
Read more on the history of Times Square here.
Now, increasingly, with the addition of tens of thousands of illegal aliens hawking ill-gotten goods, street drugs such as ketamine and fentanyl on the rise, and lawlessness fostered by soft-on-crime policies thanks to Marxist District Atty. Alvin Bragg and Atty. General Letitia James, Times Square is on the decline again.
