Abstract

Seventeen years ago, in a devastating song, Lou Reed portrayed Forty-Second Street and Times Square as the "Dirty Boulevard." Looking at this same place today, we would have to call it "the cleaned-up boulevard." What can we say about life on the cleaned-up boulevard? The big thing is that it isn't as bad, as antiseptic, as suburban, as many of us feared. It's nice to see that Rudolph Giuliani's project of turning the keys to the city over to Disney hasn't turned the city into Disneyland. The thrill's not gone.

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