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Tuesday, July 14, 1998 By Tony Norman
Last week I went back to New York. I used to live there in the mid-'80s, but I was too broke to appreciate its hideous beauty.
It was Reagan's America and Koch's New York. Crime, filth and the smell of money was everywhere, like the stench of urine that wafted up the stairs of nearly every subway station. It was the '80s. The crackhead was the symbol of expanding economic opportunity and conscienceless social policy.
Now it's Clinton's America and Giuliani's New York. Crack-heads are still with us, but they're no longer ambushing car windshields with squeegees for chump change. Crackheads have gone underground because they know they're violating the quality of life statutes in Giuliani's New York.
These days the subways are safe and nearly every station has undergone bacterial rehabilitation. Even Times Square, which used to double for Sodom and Gomorrah, has taken on the sinister gleam of the Disney Store at its center.
Honking cars, reckless cabbies, indifferent bike messengers and food vendors flouting health standards aren't tolerated in Giuliani's New York.
For their part, even New Yorkers don't wear their aggression on their sleeves as much as they used to. A photo of a smirking Mikail Markhasev flipping the bird on the cover of the New York Post is as rude as it gets.
But every utopia has its dark side. According to New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, an innocent man spent nearly a month at Riker's Island because the cops thought he was a fugitive from South Carolina. The Brooklyn DA refused his lawyer's insistence that fingerprints and mug shots be requested from S.C. for comparison.
The man got arrested for carrying an open beer can in public. He was eventually released on $1,000 bail. There was no public outrage.
Given those circumstances, only a fool would risk jaywalking in New York. A trip to Riker's Island for an open can of beer? You know I was waiting for green lights after that, even if red lights were 10 minutes long.
While grabbing a shishkabob from one of the few vendors I could locate on Seventh Avenue, I saw something that had to be an anachronism in NYC these days. A very wholesome-looking family of six crossing 43rd Street in a near panic with a babbling, screaming lunatic in pursuit.
He was calling them names and making the sort of "I'm-a-crazy-black-guy" ruckus you just don't see anymore. It was the closest thing to old school New York obnoxiousness I'd seen there in years.
The mortified tourists looked like they were ready to catch the first flight back to Utah. But suddenly another crazy guy, this one wheelchair-bound and seething like someone carrying more than his fair share of tuberculosis, cried out to the babbling man to "shut up, nigga, shut your mouth" before rolling after them.
The crowd held its breath. Shouted racial epithets in public are a clear violation of Giuliani's rules of civil discourse. But the babbling man didn't notice the blond redneck in the wheelchair pursuing him and pelting him with insults and pens.
I suspected there was a SWAT team en route and that the crowd was about to witness police overreaction. I decided I'd rather read about it in the Times, so I split.
Guiliani's New York isn't the cesspool it once was, but I wonder if, in cleaning it up, the mayor hasn't flushed the city's character down the drain.
Tony Norman's column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached by e-mail at tnorman@post-gazette.com.
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