ABSTRACT
On the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970s, New York City has been restored as a center of economic and cultural vitality in the 1980s. But it has also become an increasingly brutal place, where incivility reigns, drugs lace the streets, and crime is so pervasive that most New Yorkers now consider it a permanent fixture, like gray skies and impossible traffic. What is it that continues to draw people to this city of contradictions?Born and educated in New York, Herbert London knows this city of dreams as few do. The Broken Apple is based on his keen observations of New York's social, political, and cultural life over the critical decade of the 1980s. London examines the city's continuing failures, including a city administration unable to meet the most basic citizen needs or to assure safety and security. He sees schools that have become mean-spirited, with teachers unable to teach, administrators unable to maintain order, and students unable to learn. He describes the new slaves of New York as those in search of a place to live, in a city where housing is in shorter supply than in any other major city in the nation. London asks why, despite all this, everything is bigger than life in New York, and finds the answer in New York's role as the nation's communications hub and the measuring rod by which other cities are judged.London writes with knowledgeable affection about this very special place, where the mundane is freely converted into the metaphorical. His book is an excursion, a guide to what is good, what is bad, and what is awful in the city. It is a montage of the years of Mayor Koch, the period many have described as the city's fin de siecle. But it is also a perscriptive book, pointing out what can be done in practical ways to improve life.The Broken Apple will be of interest to urban specialists as well as those for whom New York is an aspiration or a reality. Like the city itself, the book has something for everyone, from visions of political corruption to acts of redemption. Above all, it captures the pulsating rhythm of this unique city
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|40 pages
Cultural Life in the City
chapter 1|2 pages
New Yorkers Reach for the Sky in Their Ever Restless Quest
chapter 2|2 pages
Changing Our Street Names
chapter 3|2 pages
Ten Miles of Great Rides Right in Manhattan
chapter 4|2 pages
Let's End Public Funding of Demoralizing Art
chapter 5|2 pages
Don't Ruin Our Beautiful Buildings
chapter 6|2 pages
The New Central Park Zoo: A Tribute to the Absurd
chapter 7|2 pages
Rauschenberg's Ego on Display
chapter 8|2 pages
Historical Excision by New-Age Censors
chapter 9|2 pages
Art Appears in an Unlikely Place
chapter 10|2 pages
Lamenting the Passing of the Old-Fashioned Neighborhood Schoolyard
chapter 11|2 pages
Winning the City Title: Memory for a Lifetime
chapter 12|2 pages
Life on the Noisiest Street in Town
chapter 13|2 pages
New York, New York, But Oh …
chapter 14|2 pages
New York's Lost Civility
chapter 15|2 pages
Why Life in New York Is So Harsh
chapter 16|2 pages
Radical Chic Pervades Ritzy Parties on Park Avenue
chapter 17|2 pages
There's More to Being a WASP Than Money: Most Are Really Only Waspy
chapter 18|2 pages
“About Men” Is Really about the New Age
chapter 19|2 pages
Renovating the Lower East Side of Our Imagination
part II|34 pages
Politics
chapter 20|2 pages
The Cable TV Fiasco
chapter 21|2 pages
Why Politicians Misunderstand Problems
chapter 22|3 pages
The New Dictators of the Department of Environmental Conservation
chapter 23|2 pages
The Byzantine Politics of New York
chapter 24|2 pages
A Black Cop Rejects “Quota” Promotion
chapter 25|2 pages
A Justification for Firings
chapter 26|2 pages
Liberals Brook No Criticism of Mr. Cuomo
chapter 27|2 pages
New York's Socialist Ethos
chapter 28|2 pages
The Tyranny of Community Boards
chapter 29|2 pages
Reformers on the March
chapter 30|2 pages
Who Is Buying Influence in New York?
chapter 31|2 pages
Maintaining the City's Public Works: A Story of Neglect
chapter 32|2 pages
The Politics of Cynicism
chapter 33|2 pages
Why the Mayor Shouldn't be Given a Fourth Term
chapter 34|2 pages
Extra-Democratic Methods for the Selection of New York's Mayor
part III|32 pages
Urban Economics
chapter 35|2 pages
Instead of Taking Jobs, Immigrants Improve Our Standard of Living
chapter 36|2 pages
“Full Employment” in New York City
chapter 37|2 pages
Plenty of Jobs for Teenagers
chapter 38|2 pages
Put Cork on the Bottle Law
chapter 39|2 pages
The Homeless Workers of New York
chapter 40|2 pages
The Disappearing Newsstands of New York
chapter 41|2 pages
Developers Are Not Devils
chapter 42|2 pages
So That's What It's Like to Be a Landlord
chapter 43|2 pages
The Housing Mess in New York
chapter 44|2 pages
The Endangered Bookstores of New York
chapter 45|2 pages
42nd Street Renovation May Be Only Way to Save Times Square
chapter 46|2 pages
The Free-License Zone of New York
chapter 47|2 pages
Public-Private Partnership
chapter 48|2 pages
Inauthentic Brooklyn Beer
chapter 49|2 pages
Private Enterprise Responds to the Bureaucrats
part IV|20 pages
Social Dimensions of City Life
chapter 50|2 pages
The Human “Time Bombs” on Our Streets
chapter 51|2 pages
The Boggs Affair Revisited
chapter 52|2 pages
The Web of Civil Libertarian Hypocrisy
chapter 53|2 pages
New York's Forgotten People
chapter 54|2 pages
Assault in the Subway
chapter 55|2 pages
The Absurdity of Distributing Needles to Addicts
chapter 56|2 pages
The Homosexual “Live for Today” Childless Vision
chapter 57|2 pages
Cultural Bias and Tests for the Police
chapter 58|2 pages
Ethnic Stereotyping Conies with the Territory of Rights for Minorities
part V|45 pages
Crime
chapter 59|2 pages
One Victim's Encounter with the Criminal Justice System
chapter 60|2 pages
Daytime Barbarism on a Midtown Subway
chapter 61|7 pages
How I Learned to Respect the Police: Notes of a Civilian Observer
chapter 62|2 pages
The Minority on the Astor Place Station
chapter 63|2 pages
The Law in the Streets of East Harlem
chapter 64|2 pages
Our Streets: A Cafeteria of Uncontrolled Substances
chapter 65|2 pages
Professors, Clean Up Your Own Front Yards
chapter 66|2 pages
Washington Square Park Redux
chapter 67|3 pages
It Isn't Drugs That He's Pushing
chapter 68|2 pages
Extending Judicial Power
chapter 69|2 pages
What Happens When “Vagrants” Become “Homeless”
chapter 70|2 pages
Is the Howard Beach Incident a Racial Issue?
chapter 71|2 pages
Reclaiming New York's Prisons from the Inmates
chapter 72|2 pages
Polishing One of the Apple's Public Pools
chapter 73|2 pages
A New Look at the Goetz Case
chapter 74|2 pages
Liberals Put Fuel on Fire of City Crime
chapter 75|3 pages
What is Behind the Closing of New York Beaches?
part VI|18 pages
Education
chapter 76|2 pages
Improving the City's Five Worst High Schools
chapter 77|2 pages
A Proposal for the New Chancellor
chapter 78|2 pages
McGuffey's Readers and Moral Education
chapter 79|2 pages
Barbarism in a New York High School
chapter 80|2 pages
The Study of Learning Styles
chapter 81|2 pages
How to Find More Good Teachers
chapter 82|2 pages
Call a Lawyer: The Obvious Thing to Do
chapter 83|2 pages
Fixing New York Schools
part VII|22 pages
Several Proposals to Aid New York