Mouse That Roars Helps Dull New York’s Edge

NEW YORK — No dancing on the bar, please. Put away your quarters--Peep Land and Nimble Video are vague memories. Feel free to visit our K mart, or snag a cute souvenir from the Disney Store, or chow down at one of our many “theme restaurants.”

Welcome to New York in the ‘90s, where the cutting edge seems a little duller lately. For years, the Big Apple was a place where folks felt that anything goes. Now some are wondering where it all went.

Rats are out and “mice” are in on 42nd Street, courtesy of the Walt Disney Co. Revered Fifth Avenue shops like Tiffany’s abut sneaker companies and Bugs Bunny T-shirts, outlets once confined to New Jersey strip malls. Gimbel’s is long gone, but K mart has arrived--in two Manhattan locations.

Police are padlocking bars in fights over the patrons’ right to dance. The adult entertainment industry--OK, the porn business--is reeling from new city regulations that cleaned up Times Square.

So is the city that never sleeps getting drowsy? It depends on whom you ask.

“Not at all,” snaps Mitchell Moss, director of New York University’s Urban Research Center. “Give me a break. New York is still the only American city with a vibrant core that’s working 24 hours a day.”

The bars are still open until 4 a.m., the subway runs round the clock, you can get a pastrami sandwich--a good pastrami sandwich--24 hours a day. “Try that in Connecticut,” Moss challenges.

But Dan Park, 21, a Manhattan bartender, laments the city’s crackdowns on everything from peep shows to public drinking.

“Every time you pick up the paper, somebody’s getting a ticket,” he complains. “The seedy part of New York is what makes it great.”

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani disagrees. So does Disney President Michael Eisner, who helped transform the XXX-rated block he remembered from his youth into a G-rated family entertainment center.

Giuliani promised Eisner that he would clean up Times Square before the Mouseketeers rolled into Manhattan, and the city bent over backward to appease the Disney crowd.

Local columnists have ripped the “Orlandofication” of New York, but it doesn’t bother Fred Hakim.

Hakim has worked on the block since 1939; he runs the last surviving lunch counter on “The Deuce,” the 42nd Street block between Seventh and Eighth avenues. From behind the Formica counter of his six-seat eatery, he remembers when you could stroll “24 hours a day without worrying.”

If the massage parlors and live sex shows that inundated 42nd Street in the ‘70s gave New York its edge, Hakim prefers things a little less edgy.

“We’ve been here through good and bad,” the 68-year-old Hakim says. “Things are getting good again.”

There’s no disputing that tourists favor the new Manhattan, with its dwindling number of street- corner hookers, dope dealers and squeegee men and its drastic drop in violent crime. Statistics showed a 10.5% drop-off in the first six months of last year, three times the national average.

Tourism is up by 2 million visitors since Giuliani arrived in 1994 with his “quality of life” campaign. The tourists are dropping more money too--about $2 billion more a year, up to a projected $13.5 billion this year.

What the city is now, Moss argues, is a town in transformation. Manhattan in the ‘90s is about tourism and leisure, he says.

Need proof?

Take a stroll along 57th Street. The cross-town boulevard once was known as the home of the Steinway piano display room, Carnegie Hall, Tiffany’s, the Russian Tea Room--all spots loved and visited by common New Yorkers and (even better) famous New Yorkers.

Choreographer George Balanchine would occasionally stroll from Carnegie Hall into the Russian Tea Room with a dancer on each arm.

Now 57th Street boasts the Hard Rock Cafe. And the Brooklyn Diner. And the Motown Cafe. And Planet Hollywood, where the only sign of celebrity is the memorabilia left behind by its absentee owners. Tourists now compare their handprints with concrete impressions left behind by Michael J. Fox.

Niketown, half a block from Tiffany’s, is five stories of ceaseless self-promotion for the company and its highly paid athlete-pitchmen. On Fifth Avenue, Cartier sits across the street from Banana Republic. Jeweler Harry Winston offers his “rare jewels of the world” opposite the wares of Coca-Cola and yet another Disney store.

“Most of these national chains, these mass entertainment firms, realize they cannot afford to be out of New York,” Moss says. “More people pass through Grand Central Terminal every day than live in Charlotte, N.C.”

While the landscape has changed, the New York attitude--that in-your-face combination of blarney, chutzpah and candor--endures in varying degrees. Some folks and institutions have it; others could use a dose.

* Giuliani’s got it. The mayor’s recent battle with the United Nations over unpaid parking tickets, his public spats with the police commissioner, the schools chancellor and two ex-mayors are clear indications.

* Broadway needs it. The Great White Way now has a corporate sponsor--an airline. And Broadway’s current fare is dominated by revivals (“Chicago,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”) and warhorses (“Cats,” “Miss Saigon”).

* The Yankees have it. They won the World Series just seven months ago, but already George Steinbrenner is griping about the manager and the general manager while bidding millions for unproven Japanese fastballer Hideki Irabu.

* The Mets need it. No explanation necessary.

For those who really fear the city is getting too tame, there remains the enduring image of Giuliani’s comedy bit at a March charity dinner.

The conservative, Italian Catholic mayor took the stage in full makeup and drag, crooning “Happy Birthday” in a voice reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe.

You can’t get that in Connecticut either.