Head over to a Facebook page called Dirty Old 1970s New York City  for a shot – possibly from a dirty needle – of grimy, pre gentrification New York. The page is styled for ‘those who loved NYC before the 1980s took its balls away’. It’s easy to forget that before Woody Allen got us thinking the city was a book-lined psychiatrist’s study with a movie theatre on every corner, Nora Ephron brought out its romantic side and Candace Bushnnell rebranded it as the ulitmate single girl’s playground, New York was the original mean city of dark corners and no go zones.  But then Rudy Guilliani’s Zero Tolerance campaign kicked in and out went the graffti and broken windows and with them – for some – the city’s dangerous glamour. Just like ‘ostalgie’,  the unexpected nostaligia that has grown up in Germany for the bad old days of pre unification East Germany, many people now look back at 1970s New York with fondness – and at a safe distance of over 30 years.