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New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg
New York City in the 1970s was the setting for Taxi Driver , Annie Hall , and Saturday Night Fever , the nightmare playground for Son of Sam and The Warriors , the proving grounds for graffiti, punk, hip-hop, and all manner of other public spectacle. Musicians, artists, and writers could subsist even in Manhattan, while immigrants from the world over were reinventing the city in their own image. Others, fed up with crime, filth and frustration, simply split.
Fast-forward three decades and today New York can appear a glamorous metropolis, with real estate prices soaring higher than its skyscrapers. But is this fresh-scrubbed, affluent city really an improvement on its grittier––and more affordable––predecessor? Taking us back to the streets where eccentricity and anomie were pervasive, New York Calling unlocks life in the unpolished Apple, where, it seemed, anything could happen. All five boroughs––the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island––comprising hundreds of neighborhoods and the interlaced worlds of politics, crime, drugs, sex, and mischief, are explored with a love of the city unclouded by romance yet undimmed by cynicism.
Acclaimed historian Marshall Berman and journalist Brian Berger gather here a stellar group of writers and photographers who combine their energies to weave a rich tale of struggle, excitement, and wonder. John Strausbaugh explains how Uptown has taken over Downtown, as Tom Robbins examines the mayors and would-be mayors who have presided over the transformation. Margaret Morton chronicles the homeless, while Robert Atkins offers a personal view of the city’s gay culture and the devastating impact of aids. Anthony Haden-Guest and John Yau offer insiders’ views of the New York art world, while Brandon Stosuy and Allen Lowe recount their discoveries of the local rock and jazz scenes. Armond White and Leonard Greene approach African-American culture and civil rights from perspectives often marginalized in so-called polite conversation.
Daily life in New York has its dramatic moments too. Luc Sante gives us glimpses of a city perpetually on the grift, Jean Thilmany and Philip Dray share secrets of Gotham’s ethnic enclaves, Richard Meltzer walks, Jim Knipfel rides the subways, and Robert Sietsema criss-crosses the city, indefatigably tasting everything from giant Nigerian tree snails to Fujianese turtles.
It’s a long way from old Brooklyn to the new Times Square. But New York Calling reminds us of what has changed––and what’s been lost ––along the way.
Fast-forward three decades and today New York can appear a glamorous metropolis, with real estate prices soaring higher than its skyscrapers. But is this fresh-scrubbed, affluent city really an improvement on its grittier––and more affordable––predecessor? Taking us back to the streets where eccentricity and anomie were pervasive, New York Calling unlocks life in the unpolished Apple, where, it seemed, anything could happen. All five boroughs––the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island––comprising hundreds of neighborhoods and the interlaced worlds of politics, crime, drugs, sex, and mischief, are explored with a love of the city unclouded by romance yet undimmed by cynicism.
Acclaimed historian Marshall Berman and journalist Brian Berger gather here a stellar group of writers and photographers who combine their energies to weave a rich tale of struggle, excitement, and wonder. John Strausbaugh explains how Uptown has taken over Downtown, as Tom Robbins examines the mayors and would-be mayors who have presided over the transformation. Margaret Morton chronicles the homeless, while Robert Atkins offers a personal view of the city’s gay culture and the devastating impact of aids. Anthony Haden-Guest and John Yau offer insiders’ views of the New York art world, while Brandon Stosuy and Allen Lowe recount their discoveries of the local rock and jazz scenes. Armond White and Leonard Greene approach African-American culture and civil rights from perspectives often marginalized in so-called polite conversation.
Daily life in New York has its dramatic moments too. Luc Sante gives us glimpses of a city perpetually on the grift, Jean Thilmany and Philip Dray share secrets of Gotham’s ethnic enclaves, Richard Meltzer walks, Jim Knipfel rides the subways, and Robert Sietsema criss-crosses the city, indefatigably tasting everything from giant Nigerian tree snails to Fujianese turtles.
It’s a long way from old Brooklyn to the new Times Square. But New York Calling reminds us of what has changed––and what’s been lost ––along the way.
400 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2007
3 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Marshall Berman
20 books128 followersMarshall Berman (born 1940, The Bronx, New York City) is an American philosopher and Marxist Humanist writer. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, teaching Political Philosophy and Urbanism.
An alumnus of Columbia University, Berman completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1968. He is on the editorial board of Dissent and a regular contributor to The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bennington Review, New Left Review, New Politics and the Village Voice Literary Supplement.
His major work is All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience Of Modernity. His most recent publication is the anthology, New York Calling: From Blackout To Bloomberg, for which he was co-editor, with Brian Berger, and also wrote the introductory essay. In Adventures in Marxism, Berman tells of how while a Columbia University student in 1959, the chance discovery of Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 proved a revelation and inspiration, and became the foundation for all his future work. This personal tone pervades his work, linking historical trends with individual observations and inflections from the situation.
Bibliography
* The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society (1970)
* All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982)
* Adventures in Marxism (1999)
* On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square (2006)
* New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg (2007), edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger.
An alumnus of Columbia University, Berman completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1968. He is on the editorial board of Dissent and a regular contributor to The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bennington Review, New Left Review, New Politics and the Village Voice Literary Supplement.
His major work is All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience Of Modernity. His most recent publication is the anthology, New York Calling: From Blackout To Bloomberg, for which he was co-editor, with Brian Berger, and also wrote the introductory essay. In Adventures in Marxism, Berman tells of how while a Columbia University student in 1959, the chance discovery of Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 proved a revelation and inspiration, and became the foundation for all his future work. This personal tone pervades his work, linking historical trends with individual observations and inflections from the situation.
Bibliography
* The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society (1970)
* All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982)
* Adventures in Marxism (1999)
* On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square (2006)
* New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg (2007), edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 28, 2008
The eternal debate: old New York versus new. Few people remember the air of constant menace in the 1970s. But also the creative drive to make something out of nothing. On the other hand today's New York is rich, boring and (the greatest insult of all) unoriginal. As one author says in here, "if NYC is becoming Cleveland on the Hudson, why is it necessary to live there?" It's not quite that bad yet, but it has lost much of the old spark. It would seem that New York was once full of people with not so much money but lots of creativity, and is now the opposite.
May 19, 2009
This was patchy. I'm tempted to give it four stars in part just because the last of the essays (the one on food) was one of the best of thirty or so that make up this book. The concept is, I think, a series of essays of varying stripes on various threads of culture and history of NYC - or at least, the downtown and dirty 'real' NYC (pretty much all the contributors have a very clear line between 'us' and the them of either yuppies, hipsters, or both - in the last 30-40 years, and they vary from illuminating and oddly compelling (the entries based on the Bronx, commerce in life on the lower east side, drugs) or just plain amusing (coffee, cocktails and cigarettes), to just plain dull (Staten Island - although that one was a little amusing given that the idea the author was trying to push was that Staten Island wasn't as boring as it's made out to be. He failed, but I don't think that was really his fault, in that case).
Some of them were even irritating, in that they failed to either present whatever they were talking about in a wider context that fitted into the wider history of the city, or to have their individual narratives actually be engagingly individual. A snapshot of what concerts you and your friends were going to in the late 80s, and how everyone you knew, incidentally, were uninterested in the Strokes, fails to make me the least bit interested in what you have to say.
Still, when it's good, it's very very good, and everyone who's interested in the famed and fabled New York should at least take the time to read the Introduction by Marshall Berman, which might be the best part of the whole thing.
Some of them were even irritating, in that they failed to either present whatever they were talking about in a wider context that fitted into the wider history of the city, or to have their individual narratives actually be engagingly individual. A snapshot of what concerts you and your friends were going to in the late 80s, and how everyone you knew, incidentally, were uninterested in the Strokes, fails to make me the least bit interested in what you have to say.
Still, when it's good, it's very very good, and everyone who's interested in the famed and fabled New York should at least take the time to read the Introduction by Marshall Berman, which might be the best part of the whole thing.
August 7, 2014
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection of short pieces about the various neighborhoods and subcultures of NYC during the late 60s through Bloomberg's 2nd term. As you could imagine, there is quite a bit about the differences before and after Giulliani. It tracks the changes to Williamsburg and E. Village. Lots of nostalgia for those who were around and pretty accurate description for those who weren't.
February 20, 2012
Really more like 2.5 stars; a compendium of essays it is hit or miss, depending on your interests.
I kind of regret getting duped by the title, which I expected to be much more about the contentious and troubled times of the 80's and less a retrospective of change from crisis to commercialism.
meh.
I kind of regret getting duped by the title, which I expected to be much more about the contentious and troubled times of the 80's and less a retrospective of change from crisis to commercialism.
meh.
July 12, 2012
New York Calling gathers a loose collection of essays, memoirs, and photos of New York from the 70s to the 90s into a terrific and detailed whole ranging over the Bronx fires and life in each of the boroughs, the art world, police corruption, sex in many forms, drugs in many forms, coffee, cigarettes and booze--it's almost endless. And it has a potful of further reading, listening, and looking.
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November 19, 2007I just bought this book. Lots of good essays and photos about the changes that have defined New York over the past 30 years.
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November 10, 2008I have a photo of the Magik Markers in here, weirdly enough...
July 19, 2009
my youth. a detailed, somewhat melancholy look at nyc from the 1970s onward.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews