![]() ![]() It was the first truly cold night in December, and about an hour before curtain, the little bar of Sardi’s on 44th Street felt like about the best place to be in the world. I am.’ And she says, in classic Irene fashion, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ And he says, ‘Sam Shepard.’ ” “I was with my friend, Irene Gandy-she’s a Broadway publicist-and we were sitting at the bar and she says, ‘Mamet is the best playwright.’ And the guy next to her at the bar said, ‘No he’s not. All of which is to say that what a tourist loves on his T-shirt might actually matter. Yet we ignore the Square at our peril because, as New Yorker scribe Adam Gopnik once put it, not only does no other part of New York have “such a melodramatic, mood-ring sensitivity to the changes in the city’s history,” but the dream of New York, and the allure and viability of that dream, is the underpinning of the whole enterprise. To some degree, this makes sense-Times Square is the dream of New York made manifest and is therefore of less interest to those already living in its reality. ![]() In short, a hellhole, and an inescapable one at that, since it is also the city’s largest transit hub. And not only ignoring it, but dismissing it as a place not worth caring about, a tourist trap of ticket hawkers and retina-searing billboards and multi-level stores promoting inferior brands of chocolate. Somehow, over time, being a “real” New Yorker came to mean ignoring Times Square, just as one ignores showtime dancers and panhandlers and “Don’t Walk” signals. Nostalgia clouds the ugliness of the past and conceals the vibrancy of the present, but perhaps worst of all, it offers a pass for looking at Times Square as it really is and as it should be. The only context in which it is routinely praised is a historical one, and then usually in a misguided glorification of its former grittiness. Most mocked and derided of all, of course, has been Times Square-alternately held up as Disneyfied mall and incipient cesspool, its topless women and cartoon characters in danger of brimming over into the rest of the city in a deluge of feathers and fake fur. Shirts bearing the “I Love New York” logo are displayed at a store in Times Square. Whereas Manhattan is corporate and conformist, Brooklyn is real and, if not exactly gritty, then at least charmingly patinaed. And while love for one arguably encompasses love for the other, the global mania for all things Brooklyn is a reaction to the changes that have washed over the city since 1977-the absentee billionaires and the chain stores and the alleged sterility. Singleton has noticed that love of Brooklyn has very nearly eclipsed love of New York, an endorsement expressed in simple block letters, sans sappy heart, on the wares of Times Square. But something about the sentiment and its sincere, if cheesy enthusiasm was so fundamentally of a piece of Times Square-an earnest declaration, wrapped in an ad campaign, sold (usually without licensing) on a $5 T-shirt-that it still dominates its T-shirt tables nearly four decades later. Milton Glaser, the graphic designer who came up with the slogan pro bono, expected the campaign to last a few months at most. Coined during a marketing campaign launched in 1977, the year the Bronx burned and the city blacked out, the now-classic logo was intended to boost tourism in a place that seemed to disprove the very notion of urban revitalization, with Times Square its failed and filthy epicenter. I n George Singleton’s 14 years as a T-shirt vendor in Times Square, he’s sold many a fuzzy leprechaun hat and NYC hoodie, but his consistent hot-ticket item has been “I Love NY” T-shirts. ![]() (Photo: Emily Assiran Treatment: Kaitlyn Flannagan for Observer) See You Tuesday youtu.Whether an urban dream or an urban nightmare, Times Square is the city made manifest. Bookmark this website and sign up for our newsletter! Get your content free from Big Tech's filter. I mean, I'd bet all the money in my pockets right now that's exactly what happened. Whether or not this has anything to do with Pool being swatted while he was live-streaming those opinions is unclear at this time. Tim Pool is known for having similar opinions that with which the left disagrees. Erick Erickson, formerly of Redstate, discussed his experience being swatted, including audio of the 911 call. It was something being done during the Obama administration against people who disagreed with the president's policies. The idea behind swatting is to send police to someone's home under heightened circumstances just to see what happens. As Tim said, this could have ended differently. Police did a sweep of the property and left once it was determined it was a false call. All of Pool's producers who engaged with the police complied with orders, diffusing the situation. ![]()
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