Looking at this series of images around New York City assembled into a 10-minute city portrait in 1931, I recognized a lot of them, because I'm over sixty and I grew up with a backward-looking attitude to culture -- comfortable with movies and books back to the Victorian Era. But looking at this with a modern eye, I am astonished at how few of the surface details are left: a couple of skyscrapers, a couple of bridges, and the rest are gone; the streets are covered with tar, not cobble-stones and trolley-rails; no elevated trains rumble past Chinatown nor the new-built (in this movie) Empire State Building. Even the hansom cabs are gone.
Well, the hot-dog carts are still there. However, a wiener with sauerkraut and mustard will cost forty times as much as it did back them.
Well, the hot-dog carts are still there. However, a wiener with sauerkraut and mustard will cost forty times as much as it did back them.
