"The Rotting of the Big Apple"

It was these words that were splashed all over the front cover of Time magazine in the late summer of 1990. Brian Watkins, a twentysomething tourist from Utah, was with his family on a 7th Ave. subway station when a gang set upon his mother. Like any other son, he tried to defend her. For this, he was stabbed fatally in the chest.
It marked a nadir for the city's self-image and its reality. Murders were peaking in the crack wars, and public spaces had been taken over by the homeless and illegal and illicit activity. Bryant Park was impassible for most, and it was hidden from the street by high hedges and walls.
That's why the most impressive things to happen in the past 20 years has been the reclamation of parks and public places in general.
Last week, having been semi-stood up at a bar in Flatiron (The Olde Town), I encountered a beautiful evening in August.
I had walked from Washington Square Park, three-quarters of which are under a renovation. Union Square was redoing the northern half of the park. Madison Square featured a huge line to the improbably hip Shake Shack in it.
Bryant Park is now a great public space, having taken the playbook for great spaces from the urbanist William Whyte and applied them - movable chairs, concessions, a running fountain, and a well-patronized restaurant and bar at the base of the library.
It was dark by this time, yet no one seemed afraid. Instead, it felt like a European public space.
The biggest fight, of course, was Tompkins Square Park. In the late 80s it had been the scene of rioting between police and occupants of the park that did not observe the new closing hours.
I must admit I felt like a badass just going there in college, what with the self-styled anarchists and punkers and the like. I used to freely drink there and get in loud, drunken political arguments with a friend. At about 2 or 3 in the morning.
Later, in Guiliani's crackdown, I literally got caught with my pants down pissing in the bushes. The cops let me off with a warning, instead of an enforced $50 ticket.
So Tompkins Square is now more a sunning spot than a hotbed of dissent. The only rotting going on in the Big Apple now is in unsold super-luxury condos.
But I always felt that there should be a discreet memorial where Brian Watkins breathed his last while defending his mother. Far away in Utah, there probably is.