Peter’s Foster Response
February 14, 2018, by Peter
I am really fascinated by George G. Foster’s account of New York city during the mid 19th century. His description of Broadway holds a certain type of mystique, described with “haunts of theft and murder, the scenes of drunkenness and beastly debauch”. Formerly a few years ago, I was an employee at a store on Lower Broadway and can say that most of the street is dead at night these days. The debauchery of New York City has moved from Broadway into different areas, and arguably I’d find this seedy underground description of New York to be more akin to parts of Brooklyn in this age. He also writes “Others, held all day indoors by their employments, are just escaping to the club, the gambling-house, the brothel or the midnight revel in some underground coffee-house, such as we have described.”. This statement describes to New Yorks to me, and while I’m sure the nightlife of New York is existent in some underground parts of the city, I think the city has become much more associated with its rat-race workaholic lifestyle, after becoming so expensive, that it requires any one living there to be making enough money to live there.
I am also interested in what Foster writes about the “b’hoy”. He writes that “the virtues of the b’hoy are by no means all of a negative character. Look for a moment at our Fire Department, which owes so much of its real efficiency to this class of men, whose sturdy frames, unyielding sinews and reckless daring in the hour of danger, when stoutest hearts are appalled with sudden calamity.” I never really considered the bruteness of certain NYC characters essential to the city’s infrastructure. I suppose in a way this is relevant to discourse on gentrification in New York City, which argues the essentiality of the working class for the structure of the city. (https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/03/the-class-geography-of-new-york-citys-boroughs/519654/)