Where the gangs lived, that’s where the rubble was. One of our biggest pastimes was flying kites on the roof. One local health official called it “a necropolis – a city of death”.īut when I ask the groundbreaking DJ Grandmaster Flash what he remembers about his adolescence on Fox Street, not far from the embattled police precinct known as Fort Apache, he says, “It was wonderful. Touring the rubble in 1980, Ronald Reagan compared the neglected neighbourhood to London during the blitz. ![]() By the end of the decade, the South Bronx had lost almost 40% of its population. Whole blocks were reduced to ghost towns as cynical landlords torched their unsellable properties for insurance money. Unemployment and poverty were sky-high, as was crime, overwhelming police precincts and fire stations that were squeezed by austerity. H istory remembers the South Bronx in the 1970s as an urban catastrophe the ground zero of a city in crisis.
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