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- <text id=90TT2494>
- <title>
- Sep. 17, 1990: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Sep. 17, 1990 The Rotting Of The Big Apple
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> While heading downtown to interview Mayor David Dinkins for
- this week's story on New York City, bureau chief Joelle
- Attinger walked to a subway stop four blocks from the Time &
- Life Building. As she approached the subway entrance, a police
- car screeched up beside it, followed by two more. Drawing his
- gun, one cop dashed down the stairs, while another warned
- passersby not to enter. Attinger took a taxi.
- </p>
- <p> In two years of covering stories in and around New York
- City, that was the closest Attinger has come to the random,
- violent crime that so disturbs the people who live and visit
- here. "I've never been mugged or anything, and the city doesn't
- frighten me," she says. "But I'm careful when I'm out in the
- streets. I'm aware of who is near me, and I never bump anyone.
- Always being so on guard can become oppressive."
- </p>
- <p> Even so, Attinger most often uses the word great to describe
- New York. "Its greatness comes from its diversity, its
- excitement, its extremes," she says. "Millions of people with
- immense social, racial and cultural differences are living
- together--and in collision. It's a long-running experiment."
- </p>
- <p> Born in Switzerland, Attinger came to the U.S. with her
- parents in 1953 and grew up near Philadelphia. Since joining
- TIME in 1973, she has been based in Paris, Washington and
- Boston. She welcomed her transfer to New York in 1988, she
- says, because "I felt the need for something bigger." Attinger
- is not defensive about the fact that she, her husband Bernard
- Cohen and their two daughters, Celia, 6, and Abigail, 3, live
- across the Hudson River in New Jersey. "Not only is it too
- expensive to live in Manhattan, but everything is too big and
- tall for small children," she says. Whenever they can, however,
- she and her family take advantage of New York's theaters,
- museums and zoos, those "good things" about the city that native
- New Yorkers brag about--but are often too busy to enjoy.
- </p>
- <p> The dramatic black-and-white picture essay accompanying the
- story is the work of Kenneth Jarecke, who spent two weeks
- photographing the city. "I always thought I knew how bad New
- York was," says Jarecke, a resident of Manhattan's Tribeca
- area, "but I didn't really know until I started working on the
- streets. You see the garbage and the homeless everywhere you
- go."
- </p>
- <p>-- Louis A. Weil III
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-