The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large: " Jacobs"

I first visited New York and Times Square as a 21 year old in the late 80’s. I stayed at a friends’ cousins’ apartment a few blocks from Times Square and we passed through it several times during our stay. The last time was at about three in the morning, freshly dropped off by a jitney who was clearly sent from heaven. He charged us a measly five dollars for the trip from Harlem, where all legitimate taxis feared to tread. As we walked through Times Square we were approached by a three-year-old boy, backed by his proud parents, who offered to sell us crack. His parents obviously thought that if the boy was caught he was a minor and could not be charged in the offense and at which point the police would have to give him back the crack and let him go home. It is this story that I tell when I tell a story about Times Square. During this time New York, for me at least, had a feeling of lawlessness. You could do as you wish and also be at the consequence of someone else doing as they wished.

A decade later I walked through New York with my wife and had my five-month old son strapped to my back. I had heard that Times Square had changed since my last trip a decade earlier but as I found myself approaching I began to re-think if I should be walking through there with my family. I soon found myself in the middle of what appeared to be a bigger, outdoor version of my local mall. The only danger was that of a potential trampling by theater ticket-hungry gray hairs.

It is hard to tell if New York had changed or my vision of it had changed. First viewed at nighttime through the drunken eyes of a 21 year-old and then viewed in the daytime as a 31 year-old parent.