New York in the 70s — Page 2

I was a tourist here up until January when I moved here. I am originally from Philly so I would go up to NYC as a teenager to see shows. Something I always do when I am visiting another city is to pay attention to what is going on around me and how things "work" in that city.

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I know they do besty, but you are correct in that it only takes a few. I go up 8th a lot and it just drives me crazy! But then I say to myself "but you are in NYC"!

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We used to be able to slip around them. Now there's no room to slip. That's the biggest difference in the crowds.

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We used to be able to slip around them. Now there's no room to slip. That's the biggest difference in the crowds.

I do appreciate the pedestrian areas in the streets by Herald Square and Times Square, as they've now opened the sidewalk up for efficient walking.

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The Disneyfication of 42nd Street mentioned by Best 12 Bars is the single most important reason for the changes that are so evident now.

To go back several years, the Nederlanders bought the New Amsterdam Theatre when it was a "grind house" churning out spaghetti westerns and the like 24 hours a day. But the Nederlanders did not take care of their theatre. They started to renovate it and then just gave up, leaving the roof open to the elements.Rain and snow seeped in, dripping down into the auditorium and ruining the great murals that had been there since the opening of the theatre in 1902, when it was described as one of the finest Art Nouveau treasures in the country.

After a while the New York Cultural Affairs Department got involved: they wished to save the New Amsterdam, but where to get the money? Disney then expressed Interest in the project, providing that the City made a real effort to get other corporate sponsors to renovate other theaters along 42nd Street, particularly the New Republic right across the street from the New Amsterdam.
Finally the deal was struck and Disney agreed to pour money into the renovation of the New Amsterdam, their new pet project. They did a magnificent job, restoring the theatre with tender loving care.

While the New Amsterdam was undergoing it's transformation, I had the good luck of being on W. 41st Street in front of the Nederlander Theatre where RENT was playing, looking up at the finished exterior facade of the New Amsterdam's
41st Street elevation. The construction foreman was watching me and said, "How would you like to take a look at the Rooftop Theatre (where Ziegfeld's MIDNIGHT FROLICS had taken place during the heyday of the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES)". He took me up in the construction elevator to show me the rooftop theatre, which was completely gutted. He then took me to the second balcony where he proudly showed me the new wood paneling. Next he said that he was busy but offered me the opportunity of going on the main stage which was empty except for new steel girders and the like in the flies. So there I was on stage which had seen the likes of Fanny Brice, Ed Whinn, Eddie Cantor, and Will Rogers. I looked out at the audiitorium which at that point did not have seats. What a thrill this all was for me.

So Disney acted as a catalyst for the rest of 42nd Street, and the results are what you see today.

Then

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Updated On: 6/23/11 at 09:42 AM

I'm sorry, but it is true, Broadway wouldn't survive without the tourists. We should be happy to have them. Someone please bring up the statistics. I've seen them multiple times. More than half the percentage of many shows are filled by tourists (who are usually the ones paying full prices). The shows that arent filled with tourists still generate a huge profit from them. Remember, they usually are paying full price, whereas lots of locals and industry members know good discounts.

Plus actors and directors and stagehands and musicians are all getting paid much more with the unions and the cost of running a show is WAY up from previous years and that is another reason why tourists are needed.

And newintown, NYC has ALWAYS been a major tourist destination.

Anyway, what I was originally going to say was:

We are lucky that the city has made efforts to improve the situation by adding pedestrian walkways where Broadway used to hold vehicle traffic. Remember fighting the crowds when there was JUST the sidewalks? Someday there will be a thread called, "REMEMBER WHEN YOU COULD DRIVE IN TIMES SQUARE?"

Updated On: 6/23/11 at 09:45 AM

givesmevoice, the internet may have played some part on the intensity now but people did know who Stephanie Mills was back then. We did have tv and radio! And we read the newspapers. I only stagedoored twice back then and it was nothing like it is now. I can remember getting my hands on the New York Times theatre section always being a thrill. :)

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Updated On: 6/23/11 at 09:52 AM

I know a number of New Yorkers who don't attend the theatre as much as they used to because of the tourists.

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Sorry, bandit, but you're wrong. NYC was not a tourist destination in the way we perceive it today, simply because so few people had the funds to travel those distances, stay in hotels, eat in restaurants pre-WWII.

It's sad how little people know about simple cultural history (even sadder how little they're interested in knowing anything about it).

Broadway existed before masses of tourists; it would continue to exist without them, too (it would just be different - no 12-year runs of glorified children's theatre like Cats or Phantom).

"Also, I don't remember stagedooring being what it has become."

Oh, not even remotely!

And Broadway is now a (high profile) star-driven business that does require the tourist trade. It also lends itself to the now-standard barricades and stage-dooring mobs. There was NOTHING like that in the '80s. There were no barricades at all, and usually not more than 15 people at the most waiting for autographs. That was typical.

As someone pointed out here, they paid $15 to see the OBC of A Chorus Line, the hottest ticket in town, with an orchestra seat. Shows didn't cost as much to produce back then, because salaries were a fraction of what they are now. When an established star played on Broadway, they were paid next to nothing. Not $15K per week. More like $200 per week (not a joke). But now a Broadway star, even a theatre star, not a movie or TV star, can command $8K to $10K per week, if they're in demand enough. (I do know this for a fact, as far as salaries go.) It's not just the stars (as has been discussed in other threads), it's the entire cost of putting on a show. People on Broadway were barely paid a living wage "back in the day." It was "what they did for love." Now they do it for profit, not just a living, and not just for love.

In order to sustain that, you MUST have the tourist trade. Or you can throw them all out (yeah, try it!) and charge $30 a ticket again. Then you'll have your "starving artists" Broadway again.

I actually see in the next 20 years or so, Times Square will be come a "pedestrian-only zone," like Florence, Italy, and other larger cities with serious traffic issues. They can't widen the sidewalks or move the buildings, so they'll make it pedestrian-only for a 6 to 10-block radius. People will freak out and say, "How can we ever manage?" as they did in other cities, but they will learn to work around it. That's the future. Give it another decade or two. And they will also charge a premium fee for driving anywhere near Midtown, as they do in the center of London.

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I'm not changing my stance, I'm trying to LEARN as much as I can. It's sad how mean people can be on these boards and how quick to judge they are. Back in the 1920s, there were over double the amount of Broadway theatres that there are now, and because so much tourism died after the depression, the attendance went down and the theatres were demolished. NYC has always been a tourist destination. Never did try to say it was always a, "tourist destination in the way we perceive it today," like you accuse me of saying, i just said it has always been a major tourist destination. People still took vacations when they didn't have as much money.

Did you read my blurb about the cost of running shows nowadays compared to then? The cost has running a show has risen way more than the cost of living has risen, so they need more tourists to come see the shows or else they wouldn't be able to stay in business.

you say: "The theatre district predates tourism by decades." I'm not sure what you mean by that. When did tourism start? If it is the 1980s, then the theatre district predates "tourism" by a century. But I think tourism has been around forever.

Updated On: 6/23/11 at 10:14 AM

There are famous stage door stories with huge names like Hepburn, Bacall, Taylor etc. but the mass crowds at shows like BOOK OF MORMON where these autographs would fetch (on a good day) 75 cents a piece is insane.