Mourn For Times Square

I was in New York City last week, mostly Midtown, and on my one free day I managed to get to Times Square and 42nd Street. I was both amazed and dismayed by what had happened to the city I once knew.
   I was last in New York City fifteen years ago, in Times Square for New Year's Eve. Back then Times Square had a Sbarro pizza place on every block, both sides of the square. Now there are none. Back then Times Square played host to a wide variety of three-card Monte games, desperate men bilking tourists out of their cash atop cardboard boxes. Gone. No more pay phones. No more honking horns. No more Guardian Angels watching. The seamy, gritty, dangerous Times Square I remember has gone the way of the dinosaur and the barely-qualified mortgage broker, swept away by the forces conspiring against it.
   Now Times Square sits aglow with flashing neon and scrolling LED billboards. The ball from the New Year's celebration still sits on top of One Times Square, changing colors every few minutes. ABC is there, and ESPN, and an M&M's store, and Levis, and Bubba Gump's Shrimp thingy and probably every other retail establishment in the country too. For the summer NYC has closed Broadway to auto traffic, and they've put lawn chairs on the asphalt. For an hour I sat in one of those lawn chairs in the middle of Broadway at 44th, right in front of the Toys-R-Us, feeling ambivalent even as I took advantage of the changes. Fifteen years ago I checked my wallet every block, today someone would probably chase after me to return it if I dropped it.
   Safer? Absolutely, positively, safer by far than fifteen years ago. Better? Eh... I kind of liked the old Times Square, it was a red badge of courage to have survived it. Now it's like wearing a helmet and elbow pads in a bouncy castle, taking the risk away has taken away the fun.
   And don't even get me started on 42nd Street. No more drug dealers? No more porno theaters? Scummy people have a right to work too, you know.