Manhattan Transfer

I don't spend a lot of time talking or writing about the New York City of my youth because it is too annoying to confront the skepticism of people who only know the city as the iridescent playland of Sex and City or the chummy coffeehouse world of Friends. The crime ridden city of Taxi Driver, Deathwish or Warriors strikes them as a dystopian fantasy past, and the mere fact of my survival counts as evidence against the story of my life.

In the City Section of today's New York Times, Steven Kurutz pulls The Age of the Mugger out of the memory hole. It's a necessary reminder of an awful age.