New York
The acerbic writer Gore Vidal was once asked which period of history he would choose to have lived in. ‘The 17th century with penicillin,’ was his answer. It was a good sound bite but I don’t agree. Just the smells back then would be enough to kill me, and what about the people without teeth? And the plague of 1665 makes today’s virus seem like a slight head cold. Personally, I’d choose post-second world war New York City, as described in Jan Morris’s wondrous Manhattan ’45. I got there three years later, to Manhattan, that is, and the place was as fabulous as I had heard and imagined it as a child. Beautiful limestone skyscrapers lined the wide avenues, men and women were dressed to the nines, and the place reeked of wealth and power.
I remember being in the minority at school with my dark brown hair, the majority of kids having light brown or blond hair. Americans back then looked like a mixture of Anglo-Irish, German and Scandinavian, as opposed to now. Real blondes seem to have disappeared, replaced by peroxide ones.
Another vogue of today is the beard. Everyone in this city seems to have grown one, the vilest being those long ones that bald men tend to have. On grounds of taste, the only beards that should be permitted are blond ones, and only on overweight men, but as I said, there are no real blonds or blondes around any more.
It used to be that it was mostly criminals who grew beards, and speaking of crime, it is surging as I write, the irony being that countless mayor wannabes are demanding less police presence. Go figure. Crime has always been around New York, but it used to be confined to the Bronx and the Lower East Side.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in