The 1981 film Escape from New York depicts a future Manhattan that has become so overcome with crime that the United States turned the island into a maximum security prison. At the time, this prediction didn’t seem all that absurd. With an average of six murders a day, a raging crack epidemic, and a debt of $4 billion, New York City wasn’t far off from director John Carpenter’s forsaken dystopia. Mayors Ed Koch, David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani, and Michael Bloomberg dedicated their tenure to pulling New York out of its civic cesspool. But have these leaders transformed New York into a nanny state along the way? Today, New Yorkers can't smoke in public, eat at a chain restaurant without being reminded of how many calories they’re consuming, or donate food to homeless shelters where the nutrition value can’t be monitored. That's a far cry from what you could get away with in the city back in the day. As Mayor Bill De Blasio hits his stride and begins to sign his own lists of laws, take a look at everything you could do in the depraved New York City of yesteryear.
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