The peace and quiet of Belfast in 1973

abigailnussbaum:

lizardsfromspace:

If you overdose on nostalgia slop you end up at the most advanced stage: talking about the peace and quiet of 1970s Belfast and 1970s New York

The 90s really were a better time bc we had no means of discovering that the guy who played Hercules thought the era of New York City where the city was bankrupt and arson was happening all the time was calm and restful

The thing is, longing for Belfast in the 70s is obviously stupider from the perspective of simple historical reality. There was an honest to god civil war going on at the time, and I know British people who have spoken about either their anxiety over traveling to Belfast around this time, or (if they’re a bit younger) growing up knowing that Beflast was a place they could not safely go.

But New York City in the 70s is something that’s embedded in popular culture. Our whole image of a city as someplace dirty, seedy, crime-ridden, and dangerous was derived from this city and this time. There are whole swathes of culture, from Taxi Driver to Batman, that have their canonical form because they were made in this particular moment, or were referring to this particular city. So pervasive is this perception that people still have those associations with NYC decades later, even now that it’s one of the safest cities on earth, and following a very aggressive campaign to clean it up and make it tourist-friendly. The idea that anyone - much less a conservative white man - would be rhapsodizing about the lost glory of NYC in the 70s is simply deranged, and I have to believe that even Sorbo’s fellow travelers were looking at him like he was crazy, because he should know that the talking points are very clear on this score.

The peace and quiet of Belfast in 1973