New York’s quality of life today is so questionable that it scares even a writer of horror novels: Bret Easton Ellis, author of “American Psycho,” was on a short visit to the city and was shocked.
During a recent trip to NYC – where he maintains an apartment he hasn’t used in years – to promote his new book “The Shards”, the novelist rhetorically asked ‘How in the f–k does anyone live here?’ (“How the hell… does someone live here?”) in reference to the now “unrecognizable” metropolis.
“I arrived on Wednesday night during this horrible storm, and then the usual problems of picking up your luggage, an hour wait at the Delta carousel, and then the trip to New York,” the 58-year-old author told Vanity Fair while describing his recent promotional tour. “I thought, ‘How can anyone live here?’”
The author, who currently resides in his hometown of Los Angeles, is owner of an apartment in NYC since 1987, but has reportedly not slept there for a decade.
Ellis said he first became disillusioned with the city after a 2016 tour of Astor Place failed to recognize the area, according to New York Post. “Around Fourth Avenue, 13th Street, I looked up from my phone and suddenly panicked… I couldn’t believe the change,” Ellis recalled.
While he did not specify exactly how New York City had been transformed, Ellis suggested that it was a long way from the 90’s, which he described as a “glorious time” to live in the largest US metropolis, even called “the capital of the world”.
“I talk to a lot of people who just agree: being young and living in New York during that period, and being involved in the world of magazines, the glorious world of magazines,” the author gushed.
It was during these supposedly halcyon days that Ellis wrote his best-selling work “American Psycho,” set in Manhattan and the basis for the movie of the year 2000 by Christian Bale of the same name. The premise is that a psycho investment banker seemingly manages to get away with murder due to the superficial yuppie corporate culture of the 1980s.
So far the numbers support his disappointments about the chaos in present-day New York, with a rise in serious crime, especially gun violence among youth.
Other symptoms of this supposed urban decay include rising homelessness, an anti-police climate, and the collapse of shelters by the thousands of immigrants sent from Texas in the midst of a national political battle between democrats and republicans.
The Metro is a horror in itself. Since he took office a year ago, the alcalde Eric Adams, ex NYPD, announced several times that the number of NYPD officers in the subway system would be doubled in a beefed-up security plan to deal with violence. But until now crime and chaos have continued to rise.
At the same time MTA faces million-dollar losses due to the increasing number of users who access the Metro and buses without paying. In addition, it is estimated that some 3,400 homeless people are currently living in subway cars and stations.
