{"id":473,"date":"2005-11-14T10:49:31","date_gmt":"2005-11-14T18:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/11\/prewar_cornices_thats_how_we_roll.html"},"modified":"2005-11-14T10:49:31","modified_gmt":"2005-11-14T18:49:31","slug":"prewar_cornices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/11\/prewar_cornices.html","title":{"rendered":"Prewar Cornices: That&#8217;s How We Roll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know things have turned a corner in New York when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/11\/13\/nyregion\/thecity\/13vide.html\">even video games stray from the crime, murder and mafia staples the city is known for<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>When we say, &#8220;I&#8217;m a New Yorker,&#8221; we sometimes say it with a little sneer. Rats? Mafiosi? Terrorists? We can take it. Bars here close at dawn. Subway doors are ripped open with bare hands. New York&#8217;s edginess is so endemic, so untamed, that a crack cocaine den was found this year in the otherwise relentlessly genteel Upper East Side. That&#8217;s how we roll.<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>But another, equally powerful myth defines how many New Yorkers see their city: the one that makes them announce, ecstatically, that Sarah Jessica Parker lives in their neighborhood &#8211; &#8220;I see her all the time!&#8221; &#8211; or that Jack Kerouac used to get drunk in their favorite bar &#8211; &#8220;this very booth!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For this reason, the most telling glimpse of real New York life might be found in a far less showy new game being developed by Atari: &#8220;Tycoon City: New York.&#8221; The heart of &#8220;Tycoon City&#8221; is a real estate development adventure in which the first mission is to renovate a Greenwich Village coffee shop. Other tasks include running a hopping nightclub, opening a profitable Broadway show, managing a Wall Street firm, setting up a concert in Central Park, and organizing the Macy&#8217;s Thanksgiving Day Parade.<\/p>\n<p>Real-life corporate logos litter billboards and marquees &#8211; Lacoste, Nokia, Toys &#8220;R&#8221; Us &#8211; but the streets themselves are spotless, the landscaping immaculate. If the other games suggest that New Yorkers secretly see Times Square as a bloodbath, &#8220;Tycoon City&#8221; speaks to New Yorkers&#8217; obsession with window boxes and prewar cornices.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know things have turned a corner in New York when even video games stray from the crime, murder and mafia staples the city is known for: When we say, &#8220;I&#8217;m a New Yorker,&#8221; we sometimes say it with a little sneer. Rats? Mafiosi? Terrorists? We can take it. Bars here close at dawn. Subway [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturalanthropological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}