Photo Credit: Mark Lentz. Viewpoint: 42nd St. looking west towards 8th Ave., 09/97, weekend morning.

Notes (Roving Rube): This view is how anyone who hasn't been to 42nd St. in a while might still remember it, and anyone who has been will have forgotten.

The Rube is the nostalgic sort, but not over old 42nd St.. In fact, during his trips across this stretch back then, when he would sometimes walk along the edge of the road to avoid the drug dealers, he fantasized about how when he became a billionaire his charity work would be to clean this stretch up -- just basically with a lot of soap and water, throw out all the porn shops, etc. -- so that his fellow Jersey tourists debarking at the Port Authority would not have to have such a bad first impression of the city. His vision, of course, was unequal to the shape of things that came.

The Port Authority is the green girder structure at the rear center -- it had recently been painted green to match the former McGraw Hill building behind it, instead of the clashing red it had been for all the previous years of its existence.

The barely visible speck on the first setback at the top left of the McGraw Hill building is a metal sculpture that had been there since it was built, and which was "disappeared" sometime after this photograph.

Of the buildings on the left side of the street, only the ornate "Empire" theater in the middle has survived. It was moved closer to 8th Ave. to become the front entrance of the AMC "Empire 25" movie complex.