I started taking the bus into Manhattan when I was 15. It was the early 80's, and I was in love with the gritty streets of the East Village. Sometimes I would roam around with friends and shop in the boutiques on Broadway that have long since disappeared. Other times, we would get dressed up and sneak into dance clubs.
Looking back, it's rather surprising that my parents gave me that much freedom. I suppose they didn't know that we were scamming drinks at the dance clubs or stepping over cracked-up bodies on the sidewalk or getting lost on the subway.
It was marvelous fun. The early 80s was a time when the city was recovering the devastation of the 1970s, but it was still cheap enough for people to open alternative boutiques and odd after-hour bars. The artists could still afford to live in the city.
This weekend, I walked along that very familiar strip on Broadway between Houston and Canal, and it was no different from the shopping malls on Route 17 in New Jersey.
UPDATE: More nostalgia… The store pins.
Apt. 11d 
No doubt gentrification and corporate suburbanization will solve all urban problems, in time.
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I find that I spend less time in Soho because of all the chain stores.
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It’s hard to anticipate, when your children are 12 or so, how fast they will change. So although it may seem unimaginable to Laura now, it would be unwise to assume that her parents didn’t know that she and her friends were sneaking into clubs or drinking.
When our daughter was 15, our main concern was physical safety, which is best assured by making sure she goes with and stays with a group of friends. Fortunately, teenage girls are pretty strongly disposed to do that anyway.
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OMG I had a heather grey hoodie (not that the word “hoodie” existed then) with a ROW of Canal Jean pins… my favorite was pink but had faded pale.
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Imagine how I feel walking around that neighborhood — I lived there as a teenager! (SoHo, not the LES.)
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Great pics. Grew up in Manhattan (high school class of ’67), came back to NJ to work in ’75, my wife commuted to work on the Lower East Side from ’75 to ’79, at the New York Shakespeare Festival. A hugely creative as well as destructive time in the city.
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Sorry, too long in NJ–should have written East Village (though work took her to the LES too).
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