Even if you never experienced it yourself, we have all heard the lore of 1970s New York City. It was a raw, dangerous, and unpolished city that was simultaneously teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and providing fertile ground for artists and many other forms of expression (some suspect and some not).

Jane Jacobs is famous for saying that "new ideas often require old buildings." And the New York of this era was exactly that kind of city. Artist Donald Judd (a favorite of mine) bought his five-storey cast-iron building in Soho (on Spring Street) around this time (1968). He paid just under $70,000.

So it is perhaps easy to romanticize this more accessible (and equitable?) version of New York. But there were many other things going on the city at this time beyond minimalist art in Soho loft buildings.

This photo essay by Joseph Rodriguez does a great job at telling some of those other stories in a decidedly humanistic way. Joseph was a New York cab driver from 1977 to 1985. And his final years, he had taken up photography and had started documenting the people and the city through his windows.

His incredible photos are also available in this book called, TAXI: Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987.

Photo: Joseph Rodriguez

We switched coasts today. Here is a photo of our Miami Beach hotel taken from the boardwalk with my iPhone:

And here is the after:

I took it into Lightroom. Fixed the alignment of the building. Whitened it, but brought out the beautiful warm sunset light on the north elevation. And I took the greenery in the foreground out of the shadows.

The balconies remind me of one of Donald Judd’s “Untitled” pieces. He was one of my favorite artists. I also like the one dude leaning over that upper balcony. It gives the photo a tranquil feel, which is not usually how one would describe Miami Beach.

The New York Times ran an interesting piece this past week about the rise and fall of Bleecker Street in the West Village. 

The synopsis of the story is as follows: 

Bleecker was once a quaint West Village street. Then the yuppy cupcake shop and big brands (Marc Jacobs) came in to cater to the “Black Card-wielding 1-percenters”. But eventually rents got so out of hand that even the big brands started closing up shop. Now the street is filled with empty storefronts.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Bleecker Street, Mr. Moss said, is a prime example of high-rent blight, a symptom of late-stage gentrification. “These stores open as billboards for the brand,” he said. “Then they leave because the rents become untenable. Landlords hold out. And you’re left with storefronts that will sit vacant for a year, two years, three years.”

Nobody likes vacant storefronts. But it is a perfect example of the kind of cycles that neighborhoods and cities can and will continue to go through. Understandably though, there is a real concern that New York could be losing its soul. And really that’s a question and challenge for all global cities.

What happened to the New York where the artist Donald Judd was able to buy a five-story cast-iron building in Soho for under $70,000 (1968)? It’s gone.