Lifelong NYC resident here and trust me when I tell you, people living in these 'hoods in 1974 or 1984 would consider 2024 a futuristic paradise by comparison l.
Likewise, born 1960 and lived here all my life. Seen so much bad stuff back in the 70s and 80s. Things are tough today, but NYC was essentially a sh*thole 40/50 years ago. Amazing that it actually recovered the way it has.
@@dwayneneal3342 trust me it was really tough times. Had my car broken into multiple times each year. Happened all the time to my friends too. Good buddy of mine in the Bronx had his apartment broken into twice in 6 weeks. They actually took the urn with his fathers ashes and trashed everything else they didnt steal. A great deal of violent crime too. Look up the murder rates during that time. I also remember the blackout in July of 1977. A great deal of looting when on. Some parts of the city, like in Bushwick on Broadway took over 25 years to start to recover. Am sure there are videos of all of this on YT too. Stay well.
I was reading an article about Sesame Street not long ago and the whole show was created to try and give the kids that lived in those ghettos a hope in heII. Hits harder actually seeing how those neighborhoods were. Thanks for the video.
This was the Nyc I remember as a kid in the 70s & as a teen in the 80s. It's crazy how much it's changed. Sometimes I think of friends & family who passed away back then, and wonder what they would have thought about what this city has become & what life is like today. Thanks for this video man, brought back many memories.
If it was for you. What time would you rather be in at the moment? And how was it different compared to nowadays. Can you name some examples? Sidenote: I have never visited USA, would love to go to for the nature etc.
@@ErgensUit1987 Harlem and Bronx are not very different than they were in the 70s. Harlem is till mostly welfare, drugs and middle aged men just sitting around smoking weed all day. Bronx has nicer areas but is also the #1 worst county for health in New York State. Both are poor and dangerous. Brooklyn is terrible too but Manhattan below 100th St is nice.
As someone who was born and spent a lot of my youth in the BX, I remember a lot of those abandoned buildings, I remember my family had a high rise in a white building (clinton tower) and the BX was always on fire. I later found out a lot of those fires were intentional, building owners trying to get insurance $$$ was rampant.
100% solid gold footage, Charlie. I think it's important for people to remember that what happened in the South Bronx wasn't merely neglect but coordinated arson and insurance fraud perpetrated by the buildings' owners. Hardly anyone was ever prosecuted let alone convicted for this wholesale destruction.
Absolute bullshit. If the people respected the area, didn’t commit crime, and were on a more human level, then property values wouldn’t drop, and landlords wouldn’t have resorted to such tactics to get their money back. Ask yourself how the area was before this during the 40’s and 50’s before Jacob Javitz ruined this city in the 60’s? It was paradise.
@@StreetLethalRacing Bullshit! You're saying if the animals there acted as humans...?? We need to get to the reason behind why these places looked like a war zone 40 to 50 years ago. It's not all the fault of the residents. Far from it.
@@StreetLethalRacing Bull hockey pucks! Robert Moses started the downward spiral with all his freeways criss-crossing The Bronx and the housing projects and urban renewal schemes.
I used to make deliveries from philly to nyc in the late 70's 2-3 times a week on foot, ... I never imagined it would be turned around...Going there used to make me happy to get back to PHILLY... :)... I was on google street maps recently; It's night and day...Very clean for a giant city!
I remember those days..As a kid growing up in South side Jamaica Queens from the late 60's,70's,and visiting my family all the time up in Harlem, Bed-Stuy,and Fort Greene Brooklyn,things were rough
I grew up in Brownsville. The roughest, most destitute area in NYC at that time. Heroin needles everywhere. It looked like Beirut at that time. I lived on a block with homes that were spared, but the surrounding area was scary. This is why we are built like no other. We survived. I now live in the suburbs of Georgia. Manicured lawns, beautiful homes, minimal crime if any. I know what it’s like to live on both sides of the spectrum.
Hi I worked in Brownsville for two years as a repairman from 2017-2018. At the time I'd hear it considered one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It probably was, but I can say I never felt in danger walking around there in the day time. It was lower income for sure than other areas of the city but I didn't feel like there was a sense of hopelessness. A lot of people I met living there seemed to be doing the best with what they had. I could sense though it was still a place where you needed street smarts to get by
@RRW-c6x I don't know that era firsthand but that was the feeling I had. I didn't witness any crimes or even see anything really horrifying in two years. I was surprised by how well some of the residents in NYCHA fixed up their apartments. I saw things like people installing new vinyl flooring themselves and other indications that they are looking to improve on what they have. No burned out buildings from what I saw. I felt more at ease there then in some parts of Long Island or New Jersey where I also worked. There's a decent shopping district in Pitkin. Nothing fancy in Brownsville, no trendy restaurants from what I could see. I heard about kids still getting killed but it seemed this was happening less and less as the last century is in the rear view. Nothing like what this video shows or what you described. I'm also in suburban Georgia now with a lot of other new yorkers!
my family is from Beirut and I went there right after the war ended in 1990 to visit and yes you’re right these shots of L’s school nyc looks exactly like Beirut did after the war good. observation
Yhea that New York was terrible. I remember visiting Brooklyn in the 80’s coming from canada . The energy was unmatched but. NY was really scary and extremely dangerous .
@@ecup1384 We didnt have subway pushers then..and a lot of those murders were 'gang related" it wasnt random attacks like today. But 2200 is a lot of death.
@@Piggy-Oink-Oinkif we are talking statistics 1970s NYC way wayyyy more dangerous than current NYC. I think the difference now would probably be more mentally ill ppl sleeping in the streets.
At the 0:45 mark you see an old abandoned school building. It's location is 220 West 148th Street. When you look at it now on Google maps you'll see that it's not abandoned now. It's the PS 90 Condominiums.
What would be great is a split screen side by side video of the South BX in the early 80s compared to the South BX in 2024 .... I saw a video of California like that!😊 🇬🇧👍🏾
The public pay were like the cell phones back then. Some locations had lines just to use the pay phone. If you were to have a long conversation, you'd need a hella quarters
In the late 60's- early 70's went to a few Yankee and NY footballl Giant games with my Dad and you had to park in these sketchy lots and leave the keys. Scary place. Driving through the South Bronx on a hot day with no A/C my Dad would say "Roll'em up." Times Square smelled like sex and piss. The city is so much better now.
I was stationed on Staten Island in the Military for 6 months in 1971. I took the SI Ferry to Manhattan and went walking around the city. While at a corner stop crossing a car went by and a person on the front seat was shooting up with a needle in his Arm. I never forgot that. I was like wtf?
The old footage shows the effects of deindustrialization and job loss, coupled with policies like redlining that starved inner city areas of capital. One form of redlining meant that certain areas were designated "slum" by the US government, and banks wouldn't issue mortgages for properties in those areas. Most of these were areas with large black or brown populations. Meanwhile, freeway construction and the GI bill which allowed service members to get mortgages on favorable terms for new construction but not existing properties also spurred white flight from inner city areas to the suburbs. Since building owners couldn't get money to fix places up or properly maintain them, by the late 1960's many started resorting to arson to collect the insurance money. The phenomenon continued through the 1970's, when Howard Cosell famously remarked on it during a World Series broadcast. It's how large sections of the South Bronx ended up looking like Berlin at the end of WW2. So sad and wasteful.
❤ very good video ❤ it reminds me a city, that's a prison. I visit there, and NYC, drove through all of it. When I got back on I94 , i promised I would never be back. Sad.
From Illinois! About 7 years or so ago I took a road trip to NYC and of course had to hit The Bronx. The clip of the school house/lot with the kids is from a video posted on YT many years ago. I made it a point to find the school and I did - P.S. 61, I believe. Big difference in how the whole neighborhood looks now compared to the old bad days of The Bronx! Crotona Park is right behind the school.
😮 Damn Charlie, you're good with vidz, didn't know you conjure up the last Millennium, the Cadillacs were the newest vehicles on the street , thanks for the past visits
what a time to be alive. i was a kid in the 70's, we use to have gang meetings at our house, 100 gang members in my garage, drinking quarts of beer, they put every empty beer on the shelf, eventually we had over a thousand bottles,on the wall. The garage had a pool table, guys laughing, hanging out,couple of girls come thru, smoking reefer,making babies. i was like the little mascot.they'd give a dollar to walk or bop like i was 'superfly', they'd crack up laughing, nobody got killed, nobody could afford no guns, zip guns, yeah,but they are unreliable, only one gang member evr dies, that I recall, and that was because he drowned sneaking into a park pool at night.
I prefer the old 70s and 80s having lived through it. The people there just had a better vibe, look at how beautiful the kids laugher was at PS 61. Walking around the streets, you could talk to people now everybody’s just stuck on the phone and you can feel them being angry.
Those days back then were rough, and you needed street smarts to stay in one piece, you learned fast, don’t think it would work for these kids if they had to live a week back then, thanks for the pics, no one would believe how it was
I was living in a suburb of Boston in the 1970s when the arson plague was at its height. Brick buildings would literally crumble from the flames! Baltimore, Philly, Canden, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, and other cities today have nothing on what happened to the South Bronx, Harlem, and parts of Brooklyn in the 1970s! "Ladies and gentlemen, The Bronx is burning."
Wow, this was bad the Government made sure people live in poverty,mean while their wallets are getting thicker. Dirty sh*ts get rich off poverty, it truly looked like a 3rd world Country. An eye opener for me, love Aotearoa New Zealand.❤❤❤❤❤
The place did a 180 from the 70's & 80's, but has regressed a lot in the last 8 years. The unremoved graffiti and gang tags all over (which ain't street art) is always a dead giveaway that a city has gone into the sh*tter.
AMerican dream right there ..... nothing better then a house build it and live in small communities like Amish people or like in old times but American Dream go live in prison cells called cities lots of buildings and small apartments to pay them up until you die .... brainwashing is good working great and no one try to change a thing for himself or everyone to make change and to leave this paganic money system but everyone love to live like this poor etc ....
I played in these abandoned buildings during the bronx is burning Era and then visit my grandmother in East new york cypress p's where they were shooting off the roof
@@lifeisagambletv I'm just going to have to troop to go see where big Brodie's stomping grounds be...ever since Barclays Center open BK ain't look the same since... GENTRIFICATION like a virus spreading rapidly😂😂
It looks even worse than described in grandmaster flash song: It's like a jungle sometimes It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under Broken glass everywhere People pissin' on the stairs, you know they just don't care I can't take the smell, can't take the noise Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice Rats in the front room, roaches in the back Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat I tried to get away but I couldn't get far Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car
Wow the difference is night and day. That was back in the time where everyone would throw trash out their car windows. The bldg look so old and outdated. New York looked like a junk yard.
Incroyable je suis de France 🇫🇷 et je me dis que j’ai eu de la chance 😱 mon dieu les gens vivait la 🥵 J’essaye de trouver des documentaires avec le New York de l’époque quand elle était prospère, cette ville mais j’ai du mal en France. un jour quand j’étais plus jeune, j’ai regardé le film Warriors et ça se passait là-bas sur ces images incroyables
Thank for teaching the whiny Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Y who pretend the Cities were better back in the day. At 60, I remember both Los Angeles and San Francisco with neighborhoods like this....the Tenderloin, South of Market, Skid Row, Cabrini Green in Chicago. This is what Cities were like.
@@TMendocino I wasn't using sarcasm. The idea of old cars surrounded by unboarded vacant properties everywhere with no fences is my idea of a good time. in 2024 Most cities won't let a property sit for more than a year before they take it down. and while it waits to be taken down there's boards, fences, cameras, and security. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a total idiot. I know it wasn't like a fantasy movie back then, But I'd have more crap to keep myself occupied with.
@@TMendocino the thought of me being able to defend myself against my tormentors, without fear of cameras everywhere and being able to find a woman who doesn't care about instagram or having $50,000,000, then hop in a dodge diplomat and go explore an abandoned building is all I need to romanticize it. If it was a terrible time for you, I'm sorry, I really am, but its a terrible time for me NOW, and I might have been able to save myself before it was too late had I been born 30-50 years earlier. Chicken pox, AIDS, I'd take all of it just to be happy for even 1 day 😊
The lower middle class Jews and Italians who took care of their neighborhoods left in the 60s/70s and got replaced by people who didn’t care or didn’t have the money to take care of the area. My grandparents moved from Brownsville in the late 60s, the area basically became worse and worse as the working class Jewish population declined there, the same thing in East NY but with Italians. (examples from Brooklyn)
I was around back then, and frankly, youre showing the worst. But that was maybe 20% of the city. Outside of those areas things werent so bad at all. Housing was inexpensive, my neighborhood in Queens had very little crime. Our pro teams were spectacular. The culture was exploding, the downtown nightlife was colorful. I consider that time the best years of my life, and things were trending upward
How can any business survive there when the residents are too poor to afford anything and nobody from outside the hood is going to come in fearing violence?
What is the story behind the abandoned burned out apartment buildings and all the rubble?? What happened to them all ?? Where did everyone go that was living in them ? And when were they being lived in - in the 50's and 60's ? When were they ever actually nice places to live how far back would you have to go ?
Lifelong NYC resident here and trust me when I tell you, people living in these 'hoods in 1974 or 1984 would consider 2024 a futuristic paradise by comparison l.
Likewise, born 1960 and lived here all my life. Seen so much bad stuff back in the 70s and 80s. Things are tough today, but NYC was essentially a sh*thole 40/50 years ago. Amazing that it actually recovered the way it has.
Yeah I don't buy that
Its true. Crime was also far worse@@dwayneneal3342
@@dwayneneal3342 trust me it was really tough times. Had my car broken into multiple times each year. Happened all the time to my friends too. Good buddy of mine in the Bronx had his apartment broken into twice in 6 weeks. They actually took the urn with his fathers ashes and trashed everything else they didnt steal. A great deal of violent crime too. Look up the murder rates during that time. I also remember the blackout in July of 1977. A great deal of looting when on. Some parts of the city, like in Bushwick on Broadway took over 25 years to start to recover. Am sure there are videos of all of this on YT too. Stay well.
Hard to believe there was a place that was worse than Detroit is in the 2000's.
I was reading an article about Sesame Street not long ago and the whole show was created to try and give the kids that lived in those ghettos a hope in heII. Hits harder actually seeing how those neighborhoods were. Thanks for the video.
Well said.
Neanderthal!
This was the Nyc I remember as a kid in the 70s & as a teen in the 80s. It's crazy how much it's changed.
Sometimes I think of friends & family who passed away back then, and wonder what they would have thought about what this city has become & what life is like today.
Thanks for this video man, brought back many memories.
Neanderthal!
@@deanrane1961 as a 1980s born, in some ways it's more better/convenient. But just keep the traditional/multi-cullturul values in place as well
i was here, in NYC, in the 1970's, 80's and today, its a totally different place.
If it was for you. What time would you rather be in at the moment? And how was it different compared to nowadays. Can you name some examples?
Sidenote: I have never visited USA, would love to go to for the nature etc.
@@ErgensUit1987 Harlem and Bronx are not very different than they were in the 70s. Harlem is till mostly welfare, drugs and middle aged men just sitting around smoking weed all day. Bronx has nicer areas but is also the #1 worst county for health in New York State. Both are poor and dangerous. Brooklyn is terrible too but Manhattan below 100th St is nice.
That's true. Very odd how fast it changed too.
@@tommeadows-ie2xbyou don't know what the hell you are talking about cause if you did you would know GENTRIFICATION has taken over Brooklyn big time
@@tommeadows-ie2xbSo 100% Democrat voters huh?
0:33 I heard that Mercedes-Benz 300 diesel before I saw it! May still be running today!
As someone who was born and spent a lot of my youth in the BX, I remember a lot of those abandoned buildings, I remember my family had a high rise in a white building (clinton tower) and the BX was always on fire. I later found out a lot of those fires were intentional, building owners trying to get insurance $$$ was rampant.
"BX" as "Latinx"?
@@pepelefrog1121 No, BX means the Bronx.
@@LobotomizeCommies10 oh, I thought it was some sort of liberal socialist woke bullshit like "latinx".
@@pepelefrog1121 Nah, you can’t be a weak, communist vagenis in the hood. The streets will eat you up and you will never survive.
Neanderthal!
Its nice to see charliebo go back in time and share this with us
Neanderthal!
I didn't know CharlieBo313 had the ability to time travel.
Fr though.
Ahora lo sabes, Bobby
Fart??@@Sehlan-jw2cm
CharlieBo
Lol I was thinking the same thing:-) I just watched Time Changer and loved it.
Looks like a war zone - buildings in rubble/ruins. Love seeing the old cars.
100% solid gold footage, Charlie. I think it's important for people to remember that what happened in the South Bronx wasn't merely neglect but coordinated arson and insurance fraud perpetrated by the buildings' owners. Hardly anyone was ever prosecuted let alone convicted for this wholesale destruction.
Absolute bullshit. If the people respected the area, didn’t commit crime, and were on a more human level, then property values wouldn’t drop, and landlords wouldn’t have resorted to such tactics to get their money back. Ask yourself how the area was before this during the 40’s and 50’s before Jacob Javitz ruined this city in the 60’s? It was paradise.
@@StreetLethalRacing Bullshit! You're saying if the animals there acted as humans...?? We need to get to the reason behind why these places looked like a war zone 40 to 50 years ago. It's not all the fault of the residents. Far from it.
@@StreetLethalRacing Bull hockey pucks! Robert Moses started the downward spiral with all his freeways criss-crossing The Bronx and the housing projects and urban renewal schemes.
@@EdwardM-t8p i heard that one
History. Read. Fool.
I used to make deliveries from philly to nyc in the late 70's 2-3 times a week on foot, ... I never imagined it would be turned around...Going there used to make me happy to get back to PHILLY... :)... I was on google street maps recently; It's night and day...Very clean for a giant city!
Now Philly is the dump lol
@@Lv_nyc HOW DARE YOU!
That's a long way to make deliveries on foot, man
@@MikeConrad-oj6se : )...You!!!! :)...But, damn that would be a hoof!
that’s a two day walk (for one direction) lol
Wow nobody with phones in their hands! 😂😂😂
Good times!
Nice.
Thank you very much. My father, his sister and mother left New York City looking for a better life. He passed away from gun violence. God Bless!
After 30yrs, she went up.
Wife of 30 yrs. Passed on not too long ago.
Wife of 30 yrs. passed.
Oh God, the Boogie Down Bronx was the worst of the worst 😫 total waste landscape ever
That, and parts of Uptown
Brownsville and east new york wasn’t any different downtown Brooklyn looked like a bomb dropped
@@upsidedownkingdom2757I grew up as a kid in Brooklyn can I have to wholeheartedly agree with you. Brooklyn was a fucking dump in the early nineties.
This is what parts of Philadelphia looks like today.
Kensington avenue.
and Baltimore
Which parts?
@@xwhitexstarxxKensington
Must of been a hell of a playground for kids. I'd imagine quite a few kids and even adults got into bad accidents exploring the rotting buildings.
Charlie as a kid in the back seat of family car taking video, on a trip to NYC.
I remember those days..As a kid growing up in South side Jamaica Queens from the late 60's,70's,and visiting my family all the time up in Harlem, Bed-Stuy,and Fort Greene Brooklyn,things were rough
I grew up in Brownsville. The roughest, most destitute area in NYC at that time. Heroin needles everywhere. It looked like Beirut at that time. I lived on a block with homes that were spared, but the surrounding area was scary. This is why we are built like no other. We survived. I now live in the suburbs of Georgia. Manicured lawns, beautiful homes, minimal crime if any. I know what it’s like to live on both sides of the spectrum.
Hi I worked in Brownsville for two years as a repairman from 2017-2018. At the time I'd hear it considered one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It probably was, but I can say I never felt in danger walking around there in the day time. It was lower income for sure than other areas of the city but I didn't feel like there was a sense of hopelessness. A lot of people I met living there seemed to be doing the best with what they had. I could sense though it was still a place where you needed street smarts to get by
@@CSPandW
I’m talking late 60s, 70s. 2018, apples and oranges I promise you.
@RRW-c6x I don't know that era firsthand but that was the feeling I had. I didn't witness any crimes or even see anything really horrifying in two years. I was surprised by how well some of the residents in NYCHA fixed up their apartments. I saw things like people installing new vinyl flooring themselves and other indications that they are looking to improve on what they have. No burned out buildings from what I saw. I felt more at ease there then in some parts of Long Island or New Jersey where I also worked. There's a decent shopping district in Pitkin. Nothing fancy in Brownsville, no trendy restaurants from what I could see. I heard about kids still getting killed but it seemed this was happening less and less as the last century is in the rear view. Nothing like what this video shows or what you described. I'm also in suburban Georgia now with a lot of other new yorkers!
my family is from Beirut and I went there right after the war ended in 1990 to visit and yes you’re right these shots of L’s school nyc looks exactly like Beirut did after the war good. observation
@@CSPandW
I’m glad you personally didn’t experience anything bad. Thousands of inner city kids did.
Yhea that New York was terrible. I remember visiting Brooklyn in the 80’s coming from canada .
The energy was unmatched but. NY was really scary and extremely dangerous .
it's extremely dangerous once again.
@@Piggy-Oink-Oink Back then it was 2200 Kills in a year Dangerous. Now Just 350. Thats a difference
@@ecup1384 We didnt have subway pushers then..and a lot of those murders were 'gang related" it wasnt random attacks like today. But 2200 is a lot of death.
@@Piggy-Oink-Oinkif we are talking statistics 1970s NYC way wayyyy more dangerous than current NYC. I think the difference now would probably be more mentally ill ppl sleeping in the streets.
@@Piggy-Oink-Oinkthere were more subway murders back then. You have no idea what you are talking about.
broken glass everywhere.....
People pissing on the stairs , you know they just don't care
Don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge we're trying not to lose our heads
@@MOLICIOUS69it's like a jungle sometimes and makes me wonder, how I keep from going under.
@@TheAlmightyExlennium 😂👏🏿👏🏿
this is so interesting! It would be great to get some interviews from people who have lived on those times
Grandmaster Flash's 'The Message" playin in my head while I watch this video. "Like"
Broken glass everywhere 🎶🎵🎶 u
At the 0:45 mark you see an old abandoned school building. It's location is 220 West 148th Street. When you look at it now on Google maps you'll see that it's not abandoned now. It's the PS 90 Condominiums.
You definitely deserve more recognition for this!
Leningrad looked better after the siege
This is the NY I always remember growing up.
What would be great is a split screen side by side video of the South BX in the early 80s compared to the South BX in 2024 .... I saw a video of California like that!😊 🇬🇧👍🏾
It's incredible that Hip Hop came out of the South Bronx.
Wow! This is some amazing footage. It almost looks like an apocalypse at times.
Even Fallout didn't look this bad.
@@brodriguez11000 True.
No Cell Phones only Beepers back then!
Not even beepers, those came in the 90s
@@teezee1000…word up homeboy! 👌🏿
The public pay were like the cell phones back then. Some locations had lines just to use the pay phone. If you were to have a long conversation, you'd need a hella quarters
@@teezee1000exactly
@@spontaneouz1000-sr6lsyup😂omg you just took me 🔙 with that
If you've survived in NYC from 1970 thru 2000, you're truly special!!! My Hat tilts to you
not all district were bad
@@Moodboard39 I can agree
NY in the 70's looks like Detroit today...
And I'd like to think that NYC and Detroit should have the top economies in America
At least NYC didn't go bankrupt like Detroit did
@@spontaneouz1000-sr6ls they did at one time before the democrats took over everything
@@spontaneouz1000-sr6ls NYC went bankrupt during Mayor Abe Beam. He was after Lindsey.
That’s only some of the parts of the city everywhere in Detroit does not look like this video clip lol
In the late 60's- early 70's went to a few Yankee and NY footballl Giant games with my Dad and you had to park in these sketchy lots and leave the keys. Scary place. Driving through the South Bronx on a hot day with no A/C my Dad would say "Roll'em up." Times Square smelled like sex and piss. The city is so much better now.
I was stationed on Staten Island in the Military for 6 months in 1971. I took the SI Ferry to Manhattan and went walking around the city. While at a corner stop crossing a car went by and a person on the front seat was shooting up with a needle in his Arm. I never forgot that. I was like wtf?
70's nyc was rough, nyc is a paradise today compared to then -- pretty unbelievable actually.
The old footage shows the effects of deindustrialization and job loss, coupled with policies like redlining that starved inner city areas of capital. One form of redlining meant that certain areas were designated "slum" by the US government, and banks wouldn't issue mortgages for properties in those areas. Most of these were areas with large black or brown populations. Meanwhile, freeway construction and the GI bill which allowed service members to get mortgages on favorable terms for new construction but not existing properties also spurred white flight from inner city areas to the suburbs. Since building owners couldn't get money to fix places up or properly maintain them, by the late 1960's many started resorting to arson to collect the insurance money. The phenomenon continued through the 1970's, when Howard Cosell famously remarked on it during a World Series broadcast. It's how large sections of the South Bronx ended up looking like Berlin at the end of WW2. So sad and wasteful.
❤ very good video ❤ it reminds me a city, that's a prison. I visit there, and NYC, drove through all of it. When I got back on I94 , i promised I would never be back. Sad.
Terrific footage. Thanks for posting it.
This was what Washington DC looked like in the 70s.
Omg yes Hanover square.... chocolate City was no MFn joke...now it's the young gangs
I still feel the sadness in the air. It's triggering me, it always seems like it's too hard to live in America. Very sad.
What's more triggering is all these blacks unduly soaking up living space and those lovely cars.
such a great city in ruins, thanks to imcompetant leaders...
That is crazy man. Imagine being a little kid growing up in that?? Wow, can’t believe the state let it get that bad. Look at the garbage everywhere.
This is late 80s 87-89 to early 90s Jeep Cherokee didn't come out until 87 or 88
this is great but a video retracing the route in the car would be gold.
Charles Bronson fixed that.
From Illinois! About 7 years or so ago I took a road trip to NYC and of course had to hit The Bronx. The clip of the school house/lot with the kids is from a video posted on YT many years ago. I made it a point to find the school and I did - P.S. 61, I believe. Big difference in how the whole neighborhood looks now compared to the old bad days of The Bronx! Crotona Park is right behind the school.
😮 Damn Charlie, you're good with vidz, didn't know you conjure up the last Millennium, the Cadillacs were the newest vehicles on the street , thanks for the past visits
Back then homies drove Cadillacs, now they drive BMWs and Benzes.
what a time to be alive. i was a kid in the 70's, we use to have gang meetings at our house, 100 gang members in my garage, drinking quarts of beer, they put every empty beer on the shelf, eventually we had over a thousand bottles,on the wall. The garage had a pool table, guys laughing, hanging out,couple of girls come thru, smoking reefer,making babies. i was like the little mascot.they'd give a dollar to walk or bop like i was 'superfly', they'd crack up laughing, nobody got killed, nobody could afford no guns, zip guns, yeah,but they are unreliable, only one gang member evr dies, that I recall, and that was because he drowned sneaking into a park pool at night.
Old time New York is soo interesting and fun to watch. I wish I was alive back in this time era.
No way, back then it was miserable! Today, New York is much safer and a whole lot cleaner. It’s absolutely beautiful now.
need a bit narrative, to plain
@@jbissainthe the abandoned buildings made it besutiful
You have the best videos ever!! Love them.
Thanks for watching.
I prefer the old 70s and 80s having lived through it. The people there just had a better vibe, look at how beautiful the kids laugher was at PS 61. Walking around the streets, you could talk to people now everybody’s just stuck on the phone and you can feel them being angry.
Those days back then were rough, and you needed street smarts to stay in one piece, you learned fast, don’t think it would work for these kids if they had to live a week back then, thanks for the pics, no one would believe how it was
I was living in a suburb of Boston in the 1970s when the arson plague was at its height. Brick buildings would literally crumble from the flames! Baltimore, Philly, Canden, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, and other cities today have nothing on what happened to the South Bronx, Harlem, and parts of Brooklyn in the 1970s! "Ladies and gentlemen, The Bronx is burning."
Excellent video
Wow, this was bad the Government made sure people live in poverty,mean while their wallets are getting thicker. Dirty sh*ts get rich off poverty, it truly looked like a 3rd world Country. An eye opener for me, love Aotearoa New Zealand.❤❤❤❤❤
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under !! Grandmaster Flash
Imagine how many unsolved crimes/ murder/ kidnappings took place back them…sad 😢
It may not be perfect but it's definitely changed for the better.
Proper old NYC the way i remember it and loved it
The place did a 180 from the 70's & 80's, but has regressed a lot in the last 8 years. The unremoved graffiti and gang tags all over (which ain't street art) is always a dead giveaway that a city has gone into the sh*tter.
Street art is forced, commissioned crap.
Isn't street art
Says who
A lot? It got a little worse post pandemic but a lot is a stretch.
Great compilation!! Thank you for creating this video.
What kind of city is this? Is this Johannesburg South Africa? 🤔
Johannesburg was a good city in the 70s clean and relatively safe.
Not so much now
Sad reality for an American place
AMerican dream right there ..... nothing better then a house build it and live in small communities like Amish people or like in old times but American Dream go live in prison cells called cities lots of buildings and small apartments to pay them up until you die .... brainwashing is good working great and no one try to change a thing for himself or everyone to make change and to leave this paganic money system but everyone love to live like this poor etc ....
And it's funny, when the americans keep talking about third world countries ,like it's something very far from them !!?
This is what happens when people from third world countries come here. This shithole is a very thin slice of America.
What is that banging sound?? Great video BTW
gagged person kicking at the trunk lid bro ! 😂 dont you know anything ? 😳
Def some 60’s in here too. You can tell the 60’s cars look new and you see cars from the 50’s
Neighborhoods reflect the values of the people that live there.
White man create, black just take.
That’s the NYC I remember from when I was growing up and we used to go there a lot. Love those old cars. Really takes me back to the time I remember.
This is what Mike Tyson grew up in.
Y Louise Verónica ciccone también
I played in these abandoned buildings during the bronx is burning Era and then visit my grandmother in East new york cypress p's where they were shooting off the roof
You must be from Brooklyn
@@MOLICIOUS69 mos def son.. kings county baby boy 718 til the grave
@@lifeisagambletv #2 n #3 to FLATBUSH AVE..respect king💪🏿
@@MOLICIOUS69 mos def king C train Clinton and Washington, grand between Putnam and gates 2 blocks from Big on st james
@@lifeisagambletv I'm just going to have to troop to go see where big Brodie's stomping grounds be...ever since Barclays Center open BK ain't look the same since... GENTRIFICATION like a virus spreading rapidly😂😂
It looks even worse than described in grandmaster flash song:
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
Broken glass everywhere
People pissin' on the stairs, you know they just don't care
I can't take the smell, can't take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn't get far
Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car
Imagine night time
😳
Wow the difference is night and day. That was back in the time where everyone would throw trash out their car windows. The bldg look so old and outdated. New York looked like a junk yard.
Living those days makes me apreciate what I have now, that was part of my life I will never forgett,regardless what some people say, I love N Y.
Was a great time to be a mobster, pimp, or drug dealer.
my eyes lit up at :48. I can't believe it ever got like that wow!!!!!!
Incroyable je suis de France 🇫🇷 et je me dis que j’ai eu de la chance 😱 mon dieu les gens vivait la 🥵 J’essaye de trouver des documentaires avec le New York de l’époque quand elle était prospère, cette ville mais j’ai du mal en France. un jour quand j’étais plus jeune, j’ai regardé le film Warriors et ça se passait là-bas sur ces images incroyables
Yo im from the D to good to see your almost at 1million subscribers keep pushing you will be there soon
Those guys had some nice luxury cars
Was the first footage from the 70’s or 80’s or a mix of both??
Got to love the beeper going off.
I could just imagine sammy the bull at his peak in those times
0:22 bro beeper went off 😂. I remember those days, in the mid nineties I had one.
Thank for teaching the whiny Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Y who pretend the Cities were better back in the day. At 60, I remember both Los Angeles and San Francisco with neighborhoods like this....the Tenderloin, South of Market, Skid Row, Cabrini Green in Chicago. This is what Cities were like.
The abandoned rotting buildings made it better. Don't you get it?
@@Heather-lg4gq They weren't even born, yet the yearn for the days when LA and SF were so much better. NOPE
@@TMendocino I wasn't using sarcasm. The idea of old cars surrounded by unboarded vacant properties everywhere with no fences is my idea of a good time. in 2024 Most cities won't let a property sit for more than a year before they take it down. and while it waits to be taken down there's boards, fences, cameras, and security.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a total idiot. I know it wasn't like a fantasy movie back then, But I'd have more crap to keep myself occupied with.
@@Heather-lg4gq It was a dangerous mess. There is no romanticizing the 1970's and 1980's
@@TMendocino the thought of me being able to defend myself against my tormentors, without fear of cameras everywhere and being able to find a woman who doesn't care about instagram or having $50,000,000, then hop in a dodge diplomat and go explore an abandoned building is all I need to romanticize it. If it was a terrible time for you, I'm sorry, I really am, but its a terrible time for me NOW, and I might have been able to save myself before it was too late had I been born 30-50 years earlier. Chicken pox, AIDS, I'd take all of it just to be happy for even 1 day 😊
Can anyone explain why the city looks so destroyed? What happened here and why are the buildings all broken down and abandoned?
Blacks
@@kinsmanredeemer6965nice try with the bigotry. Would you like to try again with actual facts and the truth?
@@Usererror28 that was the truth but feel free to keep making excuses for them
The lower middle class Jews and Italians who took care of their neighborhoods left in the 60s/70s and got replaced by people who didn’t care or didn’t have the money to take care of the area.
My grandparents moved from Brownsville in the late 60s, the area basically became worse and worse as the working class Jewish population declined there, the same thing in East NY but with Italians. (examples from Brooklyn)
@@relaxedleisure4766 why did they move out? Sorry I am not from here
I was around back then, and frankly, youre showing the worst. But that was maybe 20% of the city. Outside of those areas things werent so bad at all. Housing was inexpensive, my neighborhood in Queens had very little crime. Our pro teams were spectacular. The culture was exploding, the downtown nightlife was colorful. I consider that time the best years of my life, and things were trending upward
Awesome comparison video mr.
Transformed but still ‘challenging’ and ‘tricky.’
Thank you
The graffiti got better didn't it
Going to Yankees stadium. What a sight back then.
Unless you were in NYC during the 50's or older it sucks, EVEN NOW. Robert at 69.
I've seen New York when it was good,bad,and ugly. Now it is beautiful and I Love New York always!
*6:37** 1988 Chrysler New Yorker, This Was My 1st Car in The Same Color. It Cost $1800. Bought It in 1996*
Eddie had a routine skit on SNL , with the the minature town as a hood. It was...
Imagine having an ATM on one of these corners, you'd be held up toot sweet.
Where was Big L during this era?
139 Lennox I belive ?
How can any business survive there when the residents are too poor to afford anything and nobody from outside the hood is going to come in fearing violence?
What is the story behind the abandoned burned out apartment buildings and all the rubble?? What happened to them all ?? Where did everyone go that was living in them ? And when were they being lived in - in the 50's and 60's ? When were they ever actually nice places to live how far back would you have to go ?
That's weird! I wonder why someone would park such nice caddis in such a bad neighborhood?😅dopeman! Dopeman!
What movies were filmed in the Bronx in this era, Superfly?
Fort Apache and Wild Style
Not parts of NYC the TV liked to show, very apocalyptic, but loved those cars.