With Wall Street neutron-bombed by its own hubris and the American economy crawling along the curb, jitters have broken out that New York City might revert to the crumbling mayhem of the 70s, when it was every freaky hair ball and wounded bystander for himself—Mogadishu on the Hudson. When one ponders the 70s (as I, working on a memoir of the period, do), the word “pretty” doesn’t jeté to mind. Nor do the words “dulcet” and “fastidious.” From surviving artifacts, it’s easy to draw the impression that everybody was living in rubble and yelling like Vincent Gardenia.
