Lost Secrets from the City

This is probably mostly of interest to my fellow anti-gentrification fetishists like Jeremiah, EV Grieve, the Hunter-Gatherer, the Bowery Boogieman and the Greenwich Village Daily Photographer, but it's well worth a look for the layperson as well. As many of you may have figured out by now, I'm somewhat obsessed with photographs of Manhattan, specifically ones that reflect the myriad changes (both good and bad) that the city has undergone. A week or so back, I composed a post about the Surf Punks (of all bands) and did a Google search to augment the entry with some photos. I happened upon a shot, serendipitously enough, of a Surf Punks flyer from a show here in NYC. I checked out its page of origin and was blown away.

I'd uncovered a cache of vintage New York pictures by a photographer named Bruce Barone. Culled together under the loose heading "Not There Anymore," these shots paint a gritty, endearingly rough-round-the-edges portrait of New York in the  late 70s (there are a few outer borough and Jersey shots in there too). For someone who thrills to pictures of vanished New York, this was like stumbling upon a hidden gold mine.