House of Paradise-one flight up
by john-f-mccullagh
The bricks and sidewalks still remain though every other thing has changed.
Our City teetered on collapse as pimps and prostitutes worked Times Square.
That long hot summer of Seventy five, ere Disneyfication happened there.
When fear ruled these streets and crime rode the subway trains.
The bricks and sidewalks still remain though every other thing has changed.
Fun City’s last mayor had packed and left, the sad faced accountant now held the reins.
Along the Bowery vacant eyed drunks panhandled passersby for change
And squeegee men collected tolls on all the bridges.
The bricks and sidewalks still remain though every other thing has changed.
Working and Middle class New Yorkers fled the mounting crime and social strain
Open enrollment disrupted schools as educational standards went down the drain
And FALN placed a bomb in Fraunces Tavern.
The bricks and sidewalks still remain though every other thing has changed.
Then real estate sold for a song; there were so many vacant lots.
Fires up in the Bronx had consumed whole City blocks.
That year the Yankees played their games in Queens.
The bricks and sidewalks still remain though every other thing has changed.
Gerald Ford told the City to drop dead when Beame went to him hat in hand.
Midnight cowboys plied their trade, strangers in a stranger land.
In Yonkers, a deranged young man was taking cues from a black dog.