You Are All Travis Bickle Now

Thirty-something born-and-raised Manhattanites wear subway molestation like a badge of honor:

The rest of the country thought we were goners, collapsed in a sputter of crime, crack and fiscal disaster. There were landlords burning down their buildings — you couldn’t give ’em away! Hookers hanging out on 83rd and Broadway — right near Zabar’s!

But you know what? We liked it.

The dog shit was piled so high in the streets you needed a mountain ax just to traverse the sidewalk — but we liked it. The buildings were so blackened by grime you could barely see them in the dark — but we liked it. The subways were so dangerous you felt you were descending into Hell — and we liked it, we loved it, hallelujah!

For a certain generation of New Yorker — a generation that came of age at the city’s economic nadir, but also in the glory days of Bella Abzug, checker cabs and CBGB — this city of yore seems as perversely lovable as some long-lost episode of The Magic Garden.

“It seems kind of weird to say that one would be nostalgic for times when you were scared to get mugged going out at night and riding the subways was taking your life on your hands,” said Dalton Conley, 37, an Alphabet City kid turned New York University sociology professor, who memorialized his childhood in the book Honky. “Yet I think there is something that’s lost.

“The old New York is kind of like an old spouse that you just complained about the whole time,” he said, “but then, when it’s gone, you realize you loved him or her.”

New York has always been a breeding ground for nostalgia; constant change will do that to a place. But sometime in the last few years, between the outlawing of the squeegee men, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the coronation of Michael Bloomberg, this sentiment has been particularly overwhelming to those natives who took their first bite of chocolate at Barton’s Candy on West 86th Street in 1974 (now a Gap), bought their first Duran Duran album at West Side Records on Broadway, or perhaps got their first human biology lesson from some random guy in a trench coat.

But between the born-and-raised (read: “never-been-west-of-Newark-Airport”) New Yorker and the new New Yorker — “the kind who has just moved to Manhattan with dreams of dinner at Per Se and dancing at Bungalow 8” — exists a truly pernicious third group who moved to the city as adults in the bad old days and now bemoan the departure of treasured institutions like, say, Western Beef. To these people we say “Move along, gramps! It’s twenty and out for you!”

Twenty And Out, we’re certainly impressed by you still only paying three figures for a West Village apartment. That must feel good each month! But we also look at it this way — you live on an island that is well on its way to becoming the modern equivalent of Bruges. And even if we could afford anything south of 191st Street, we certainly couldn’t afford the price of, I don’t know, toilet paper at your local bodega.

So yeah, it’d be a blast to live in “Tribeca” or the “West Village” or “Alphabet City” or “SoHo” (oh those great historical names!) but when you think about it, Flushing is kind of far from there, no?

And let’s be clear — “Twenty and out” should apply to all transplants (god help me if I ever start pining for the glory days before Queens had guidebooks). The real problem could be that New York City is just way too fetishized, in which case everyone should just get over it and finally move to Philadelphia. Besides, I hear they still have a big violent crime problem*!

*This could become the great anti-statistic for upper-middle class thrill seekers!