I feel tremendously lucky that I'm of an age and upbringing that has allowed me to get a piece of what the real, old NYC was like. People often ask "So you're saying you'd rather have crime, crackhouses, and garbage overflowing in the streets than a couple of shopping malls?" When it comes down to it, yeah, because New York would never have become such a force to be reckoned with if it weren't originally a sleazy, anarchic, colorful cess pit. (You can say the very same about San Francisco.) I live here because places like Coney Island -- cultural anachronisms that could never be authentically replicated elsewhere -- have continued to rage against the dying of the light rather than in spite of that fact. Why would anyone want to pay such ridiculous rents to live in a city that resembles itself only in the most superficial way, and may as well be any other dreary, anonymous-looking "downtown redevelopment project" with pristine new buildings and freshly mowed waterfront parks and weird yupmarket retail emporia that no one really shops in? It gives me the creeps.

And now they wanna take away Ruby's bar and Nathan's??

Jeez. At least we still have Washington Heights, the neighborhood that time (thankfully) forgot.