News came out this past week that the company I work for
will be moving all of its New York offices to Times Square, where we already
have a flashy facility. It will be a big to-do with renovation and creating an
office of the future and I’m sure the office will live up to the hype and it
will be great for the company.
There’s everything to love about it but it means having to
work in Times Square, which is both a blessing and a curse.
Times Square has undergone a complete 180-degree
transformation over the last two decades. In the mid-1990s, it was still famous
for its crime and pornography. I remember walking through as a kid and
marveling at the graphic photos advertising the pornographic films, the
barely-censored photos of naked women you tried to look at while pretending to
ignore.
Times Square today is a tourist mecca that glows with the
false light of a thousand larger-than-life screens and signs. It is a backdrop
to television shows, a center showpiece of a city that crawled its way out of
the financial and social gutter to become a well-regarded metropolis of the
future. It’s found a way to personify the state of the five boroughs within its
blocks. When New York was in a state of decay, Times Square reflected that. Now
that economic interests have invested for the future here, Times Square
reflects that also. Whether you love it or hate it, it is our city’s barometer.
Like much of the conversation today surrounding questions of
the changing character of New York City, the gritty past tends to get
sugar-coated. While I prefer watching pornography to shopping for Disney
trinkets, the Times Square of today is no doubt better for New York City and a
proud measure of our progress over crime. (Keep in mind that the tremendous
makeover never completely washes out the criminal element or the sub-strata of sleaze
or grit. There are still plenty of con artists, prostitutes and drug dealers
making money in the Times Square area.)
Times Square’s success as an attraction for visitors makes
it less appealing for local residents. Slow-moving foot traffic is maddening
for someone trying to get to work. Long lines of people at overpriced tourist
traps do not make for suitable lunch spots. Friends who have worked in Times
Square report that some of the potential upsides, such as going to the office
to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, are foiled by strict rules, often
dictated by security concerns.
But as with the rest of life, working in Times Square will
be an opportunity to adapt and overcome. I’ll find the good lunch spots to go
to and I’ll figure out how to move in and out without being caught up in mobs
of plodding tourists. Being a New Yorker means being able to find the right
path through adversity and make inconvenience into something triumphant.
The midtown canyons of concrete and glass will be calling
for me within a year’s time. It will be another chance to embrace the chaos of
living in New York, and make a new path to life in the city.
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