New York in the 70s Paperback – December 27, 2011

I've enjoyed having my memory jogged by this book of photos of New York in the 70s, most of them of famous people and places.I especially enjoyed the images of the Lennon-Ono family (John and Yoko). I wonder what Lennon would make of New York today, with Montblanc stores in the industrial SoHo and TriBeCa districts.I didn't find it as useful for my purposes (I'm writing a memoir, and I lived in NYC in the 60s and spent time there in the 70s) as it might be, but it is a lovely book and I can definitely recommend it to anyone who admires John and Yoko or has curiosity about Club 54.

This review is going to be somewhat longwinded so please bear with me I loved the New York City of the 70's when Frank Sinatra sang his New York song he was singing about the New York of the 40's 50's 60's and 70's he sure as heck was not singing about the New York of 2014. There was a grittiness and toughness about the New York of the 70's the New York of the 70's was not a good place for wimps, you had to be tough mentally and physically to live in New York City in the 70's places like the South Bronx on page 33, The Lower East Side on page 34, and Times Square on pages 36 and 37, now a days you see tourists walking along Times Square at 2am and 3am that did not happen in the 70's Times Square. I am a big Jazz fan from 1974 to 1979 every Friday night I went to the village to enjoy a Jazz show I will never forget seeing Dizzy Gillespie perform in the Village Gate Jazz Club on his birthday you know his face cheeks really did ballooned out while he played his trumpet, there is a picture of him on page 185 I also saw the two Jazz Giants Buddy Rich and Charles Mingus perform at the Village Gate there is a picture of Charles Mingus on page 185. My three Jazz Clubs were the Village Gate, the Village Vanguard, and the Bottom Line I saw the Great Lionel Hampton perform at the Bottom Line. Here are some more of the Jazz Greats I had the good fortune to see perform; Count Basie, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, and Dexter Gordon and I also saw the Great and enigmatic Miles Davis at a free show in Central Park during the 70's, he came on stage blew a few notes and then walked off stage never to return, Miles Davis was a strange character, there is a picture of him on page 184. The pictures in this book make me wish I had a time machine I would go back to the 70's New York and stay there.

Beautiful book, as described But this very large and heavy item was shipped in a very flimsy mailer. Edges of jacket were crimped slightly due to poor packaging.

I was a child in the seventies and I remember most about it, fond memories being a kid. This book, however, makes me wish I was old enough to be an adult and living the way adults did back then. So raw, provocative, old school bad-asses! Very sexy and gritty... you feel the characters jumping out of the book. You can almost experience the amazing shots of the disco scene, etc. It has elements in there that's almost scary, in a romantic way. Lots of texture, lots of life. Something we lack today.Great book. Makes me uber proud to be a New Yorker, good-bad-ugly. Super job Mr. Tannenbaum!

My friends and I had a great time waxing nostalgic with this book. It is a collection of photographs of NYC in the 70s. The photos are incredible and cover everything about the 70s--art, architecture, fashion, disco etc. The sexual frenzy that came about in the 70s is captured perfectly. This book is for those of us who came of age in the 70s, or for anyone interested in the 70s. A great history book.

Not what I expected. Heavy on the photographs, light on the text. And the photographer seems to have a decided inclination for naked women. Not the 70s NYC I remember.

Allen is a great photographer the well documented the 70's era

as expected

I first visited New York in 1982, there you could still see abandoned cars on side streets, people huddled around fires, a massive gap between those who had and had not, the subway trains were intimidating just to look at let alone travel on, Times Square was still wonderfully sleazy (I was almost 18), hip hop and rap you could only see in the street or by visiting certain clubs, dance music was on the rise at the PG, in CBGB's you could still see old punks, collectable vinyl was still cheap, crikey - everything was still cheap, there was litter everywhere and it was brilliant.I went back twice in the 80's - each time it was a little more sanitized, went once in the 90's and by now it was losing a lot of it's allure, that excitement that I had when I first visited and then, well a couple of years ago I went again but I just couldn't believe how much it had changed. Gone is the dirt and the sleeze, all the character is away and it now just seems like one massive bleached clean cosmopolitan city with extortionate rents and house prices that only the affluent can afford.This book takes me back, wonderfully photographed, it captures a city that for me, could be described as one of those first big crushes, the instant big love job that, once the intial feeling of euphoria has died down, starts to knock you back, starts chipping away at everything you liked about it by changing things. In the end, you no longer feel the passion you once had and you put it to the back of your mind, until that brief moment when you're instantly transported back by a smell, a sound or a song and it briefly grips you again - this book had that effect on me.I'm from Yorkshire, I don't like change.

I had seen a couple of photographs from this book on a Facebook page, a couple of very evocative street photographs and I thought, "I have to have that". I lived in NYC from 1977 - 83,arriving just in time to find the city at its nadir, a filthy,dangerous, exhilarating and fascinating place. In the six years I was there it started to change and gentrify, and whenever I've been back I'm amazed at how much its changed (you can walk through Alphabet City in the dark, for one thing). Now, thirty five years on, it almost feels like a dream, and I wanted something to bring back those memories. Well, this book...kind of does that. There are a few shots that make me go,"Wow, just as I remember it", but a lot of it is taken up with shots of celebrities and artists of the time who might have flown in for a party (Altman, Jack Nicholson and that well-known New Yorker, Helen Mirren) as well as a lot of shots of nightclubs, music stars and fashion icons. Whereas I was hoping to see photos capturing the grittiness and diversity of the city back then, this was giving me a very thin slice of the action, a NYC that wasn't really within my reach. I mean, I knew someone who worked at Studio 54, but that was about it. So, not as evocative as I'd hoped, but you can't blame them for raised expectations. So, it's...it's fine. It just doesn't do it for me.

If you want to enjoy a little peek back on how New York looked in the 70's this is the book that will tick all the boxes for ya

I was extremely disappointed to receive this as the quality of the printing is absolutely atrocious for a book of photography. Cheap and nasty.