I don’t usually have cause to stroll around Times Square these days, but I had a particular purpose for doing so today (I can’t tell you what as prying eyes may read this post, if you know what I mean).  In my travels, I saw a sign up ahead that said “Peep Show.”  Imagine my shock.

Times Square used to be famous for its squalor and pandering to prurient interests.  It was a singular sensation.  There was no other place on earth with an assortment of adult entertainment that could compare.  This was one of the many colors of New York City.  New York, just like I pictured it.

No more.  Rudy Guiliani cleaned up Times Square.  Now you can get anything from Pokemon balls to American Girl dolls to Lego anything.  But what you can’t find is a Peep Show.

True, Times Square was way out of control.  It was a bastion of filth and smut.  It was a teenage boy’s dreamland.  There was a time you could stumble from one topless bar to another, unless a bottomless bar got in your way.  It was not family fare.

This is one of the things for which Rudy is given great credit, cleaning up Times Square.  He shut down the porn shops and topless bars and the massage parlors.  When he claims that he changed Times Square, he’s finally telling the truth.

The question that still nags me is whether he turned Times Square into some distorted version of Disneyland, where happy, smiley faces of corporate retail has replaced the sad, pathetic faces of morality challenged men and women plying whatever trade they could.  Can anyone imagine where a remake of Midnight Cowboy would be staged?

It’s hard to argue, or believe, that Times Square was healthy the way it was when New York Mayor David Dinkins left office.  Dinkins was a mess, and the place went all to hell.  But Rudy may have overimproved it.  He cleaned it up, but so totally sanitized it in the process that there’s nothing New York left in it. 

There’s definitely a lesson for me in my observation today.  Next time, take the subway and you’ll get to see the New York you know and love.