The 70s were "a very bad time to be around unless you happened to be rich," writes James Traub in the Times Magazine this weekend. Odd, I swear I heard someone say the same thing about the 00's at the Peaches show I didn't go to last night.

Traub's "back in the days" piece is worth it for the dig he gets in at The New Geography author Joel Kotkin. Kotkin has warned that New York will soon become "'a permanent home for the profoundly neurotic.' An ex-New Yorker, Kotkin has apparently spent so much time in California that he uses ''profoundly neurotic'' as a term of abuse," Traub says. Heh.

Traub himself says "the real danger" in New York is "not that Times Square will become dangerous but that it will become boring." Ain't that just like the Times? Always four years late.
Back to the Future [NYT]