Times Square

When I arrived in the Big Apple in '89 this place was a dump. Sure there was theatre and neon but it was also the centre of New York's sleeze business and every other shop was a dime store selling peeps. It was also a place of drug-dealers, gawking tourists, gospels and squeegee men who did your car windows for cash... or else. By the early or mid-1990s under Mayor Dinkins there was a clean up effort and eventually the cathedral became disney-fied and indeed I believe Walt put in an installation on the Southside but there are no traces of it now- maybe I'm mixing it up with the humungous Toys R US. Who knows. Most people know Times Square for New Years and in '89 I went to a party on 44th and Broadway - at Midnight spinning drunk I fell into the street to watch the ball drop. It was cold and raining - who cared? At 12:01, 1990, the exit scramble laid waste as we and everybody scrambled to our next destination.

Did you know that the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street, at the southeast corner of Times Square, is the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway which was the first road across America? There's a nice piece of trivia.