New York Sign Language Times Square Changes, But Is It for the Better? By BOB YAMPOLSKY	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
変わるタイムズスクエア 観光名所としても有名なニューヨークのタイムズスクエア。一時期は、低俗な店や劇場が建ち並び、その評判を落としましたが、今、市ぐるみで復興に力を入れています。タイムズスクエアの歴史と変わりつつある現在を見てみましょう。

hat is "The New Times Square" that banners are proclaiming? Before we answer that, let us first take a look at the old Times Square.

Times Square ― called "the crossroads of the world" ― is a busy area on the West Side of midtown Manhattan. Three important thoroughfares converge here: Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street. Eleven subway lines stop at the Times Square station, and the Port Authority bus terminal (for both commuter and long-distance buses) and the Lincoln Tunnel are nearby.

Times Square got its name in 1904, when "The New York Times" moved in. To celebrate its new home, the Times held New Year's Eve festivities that year in the newly christened Times Square. These festivities culminated in a lighted ball descending from the top of the Times Tower as the clock ticked down toward midnight. This became the yearly tradition ― of hundreds of thousands ringing in the New Year at Times Square ― that continues to this day. (The Times has since moved around the corner to a squat, more sensible building.)

Times Square is also known for its neon signs and its huge billboards. Aside from Las Vegas with its casinos, there is no brighter stretch of neon in the country. And some of the billboards ― like the huge man in the Camel ad, who blew actual smoke rings ― are now the stuff of legend.

But starting in the early 60s, Times Square became the center of Manhattan's pornography trade. An enterprising gentleman devised "peep shows" involving a type of machine that would show, for a quarter, a segment of film. The film would stop at an inopportune moment, causing the viewer to put in another quarter to make the film continue. At its height there were more than a hundred peep show establishments in the area.

Along with pornography, of course, came prostitution, and drugs, and then just about any other vice you can imagine. Times Square became home to "XXX" theaters, gambling joints, flophouses, head shops and video arcades, junkies, dealers, hookers, pimps, runaways, conmen and bums. More than for its New Year's party, its neon, its billboards, Times Square became famous for its seediness.

New Yorkers used to think: Things only get worse. The city was falling apart and it was beyond anyone's power to stop ― the decline of Times Square was a perfect example of this. But several dramatic changes in recent years have taught us that this is not necessarily true. The subway system, which was on the verge of collapse, now operates, if not efficiently, then at least with efficiency as a goal. Crime has fallen steeply and continues to fall. And ― perhaps most stunning of all ― Times Square has been cleaned up, seemingly overnight. This is why the banners say "The New Times Square."

There were many factors behind the rehabilitation, such as the law that drove away pornography shops and the tax abatements that encouraged developers to build office buildings there. But no factor was more important than the Walt Disney Co.'s decision to put a huge store on the corner of 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue.

Once Disney gave its sanction, Times Square was transformed into a mini Magical Kingdom. A swarm of stores and restaurants followed in its wake, and the fate of the old Times Square was sealed. Times Square may now be the hottest spot in the city: Tourists are everywhere, major retailers and corporations are moving in and the rents are sky-high. (Including the rents for spaces on the outside of buildings: The Cup Noodle sign atop One Times Square costs $1.6 million [・80 million] a year.) It is prosperous and clean. Times Square, once the very picture of seediness and sleaze, is now a place where families bring their children.

It goes against my nature as a lifelong New Yorker to concede that things are getting better. So, while I will admit that the streets are safer and the subways are more reliable, I am not ready to admit that Times Square has improved. Oh, it has changed, that is for sure. I am just not sure that the change is for the better. Even in its period of deepest sleaze, Times Square had character: it was sleazy in a uniquely New York way. Now it is like so many tourist spots in so many cities across the country. You could just as well be in California or Florida.

Shukan ST: July 25, 1997

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