Classic Mr NYC

Ten years ago today I wrote one of my favorite blog posts -- Farewell to Funky Town.

It was the last day of the Bloomberg era, the end of a time of enormous change in the city. Mayor Bloomberg had taken office on January 1st, 2002, just months after 9/11, and the city was in full-recovery mode. By the end of his time in office, the look, feel, and life of the city had changed -- in many ways for the better -- but it had also become more expensive and difficult to live here, the city feeling more and more like any big international city around the world.

For the last ten years -- from December 31st, 2013 to December 31st, 2023 -- the city has been mostly the same as the Bloomberg era, except for the massive disruption and trauma of COVID.

In many ways, the last ten years can be divided into 2014-2020, and 2020 to 2024. COVID did something to the city's spirit, it enervated it, it seemed to bring up the decades of buried traumas of the past. Fear returned. Fears about crime, dislocation, seeing the city as failing. These fears are not in any ways borne out by reality -- NYC is booming more than ever. But these fears, exacerbated by the media and a new incompetent mayor, in this era of anti-progress, have had their impact. We haven't returned to "funky town", we've entered some new odd phase but I hope it ends soon -- and our city's great optimism returns.