Looking back at the events of December 8, 1980, is like peering at New York in a rearview mirror, three decades into the past.
It was a place where everyone was accosted – by squeegee pests and aggressive panhandlers and working girls on the “Minnesota Strip,” a patch of Eighth Ave. largely occupied by Twin Cities transplants.
In midtown, a public access videographer named Ugly George trolled the sidewalks, searching for women willing to disrobe for his lens. At the site of the current Strawberry Fields in Central Park – named for the Beatles song, in the wake of John Lennon’s murder 30 years ago today – Poet-O would corner visitors, offering to compose and sell poetry on the spot.