Déjà Lou
It’s déjà vu all over again in New York City.
1988: The bankrupt Fear City NYC of the 1970s had given way to the go-go ’80s, with many missing the fruits of the Wall Street boom. AIDS ravaged the city, unabated, and a rash of violence and crime fueled by the crack-cocaine epidemic made for a grim underbelly of urban blight and neglect.
2020: A global pandemic runs rampant, killing thousands of New Yorkers, accompanied by an economic collapse (except on Wall Street) and social unrest. The crime rate spikes. People are fleeing the city, and there’s a strong sense of sliding backward into chaos.
In 1988, the late, great Lou Reed surveyed the scene, retreated to his New Jersey country house, and turned out a masterpiece of an album, . Reed’s songs were minidramas of urban decay: biting, sardonic, empathetic, and sensitive to the problems of average people trying to live in a seething cauldron of disease and violence. The album resonated
