The gritty neon charm of New York's Times Square from the 1970s to today Langdon Clay (born 1949) recalls the drab and dusty mood in New York City at the end of the 1970s: the once-exciting political sea change wrought by the Vietnam War and the Haight-Ashbury drug experiments had given way to a sense of apathy, intensified by the aftermath of an oil crises and the omnipresent Cold War. The particular stretch of 42nd Street...