Clovers In The Atmosphere

I share your concerns about the law, but I really do think that subways are an exception -- nobody should have a right to carry that stuff onto the subway, much like how you're not allowed to bring some items onto planes. They're small, and if somebody is doing something wrong on a subway, you can't just walk away and avoid them. The subway system is pretty critical to the morale of New York City. Justifiably or not, this sort of tagging on the subway makes people feel unsafe; it reminds people of the Bernie Goetz era when thugs would use unspoken physical threats to get donations from passengers, who were unable to walk away.

Perhaps these laws are too harsh, but you have to give up some of your freedom when you live in a place as densely populated as Manhattan. It goes back to nuisance law -- you should have the right to do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't interfere with other people's liberty. I can play loud music at my parents' house late at night, because there are no neighbors to be woken up by it. I can't do that in an apartment in New York, because 100 people might be woken up by it. If you see a tough-looking kid doing this on a subway car, what're you going to do?

Many of the quality of life changes in the past 12 years have been unnecessarily harsh. Some, like the squeegee laws, make a lot of sense. Should having strange men throw dirty water onto your windshield and then stand in front of your car until you pay then $10 to wipe it off be a price you necessarily have to pay for living in a big city? I would hope not.
 

The squeegee guys should definitely be part of city life. Living in a city is about living with everyone. If you want to be totally sheltered, move to the suburbs. Guiliani's clean-up effort was needed and often positive and successful, but he went too far. As does the graffiti ban. TSA doesn't let you take certain items into plane cabins, but you still have the option to check your penknife. On a subway, you don't have that option, so the ban restricts people from transporting perfectly legal items on a very popular form of mass transit, which is bullshit. I'd be all over insitituting a severe punishment for graffiti and stepping up subway patrols, but banning everyone under the age of 21 is overboard. Just because something promises to reduce crime doesn't make it the right thing to do. I was talking to someone about the Disneyfication of 42nd street and how it wasn't my kind of culture but it was probably a good thing to clear out the sex shops, and she pointed out that it's not like the sex shops stopped existing, it's just that they're now in someone's backyard in an outer borough. Which is an interesting point---is it a city's responsibility to tolerate a certain amount of lawlessness so as to be able to monitor it and circumscribe it to non-residential areas, and also so as not to smother all creative freedom? (Think Keith Haring or the Berlin squats more than peep shows as far as creative freedom goes.)
 

In cab school this past weekend, the old hack running the class couldn't go on enough about how good the Giuliani reforms had been. No cabbies killed in donkey's years, safer East Village, etc, etc. So think of the poor hacks.

Still, I saw Taxi Driver a month or two ago, and 70s New York looks like a dream world of filth -- and oh, the bargains on that dream SoHo loft! And don't forget that Annie Hall New York existed at the same time, and I don't think anyone is mugged in any Woody Allen film, except Bananas.
 

Fair enough, but Annie Hall is the same movie in which characters from New York advocate moving to Los Angeles because 1) its cleaner, 2) there's less crime, and 3) there's no racism. In Los Angeles.
 

Let's not turn this into a Woody Allen thread -- though God knows we could -- but the characters who advocate this viewpoint (but don't remember anything about racism) are roundly ridiculed by Alvy and us. Remember the exchange between him and Max, it went something like: "You don't have to wait in line at the movies, Alvy." "Yeah, and eventually you get old and die. Sometimes it's good to work for something." So NYC is better because you can get mugged while doing Shakespeare in the Park. Hey, I got knifed just the other week -- and I loved it!