The late 1970s and early 1980s were some of the darkest, bleakest years in New York’s history — The era when the city was edgy and dangerous, when women carried Mace in their purses, when even men asked the taxi driver to wait until they’d crossed the 15 feet to the front door of their building, when a blackout plunged whole neighborhoods into frantic looting, when subway cars were covered with graffiti…This was the last period in American culture when the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow still pertained, when writers and painters and theater people still wanted to be (or were willing to be) “martyrs to art.”These wonderful color photographs were taken by Frank Florian in New York City from 1978 to 1980.