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You emerge from the passage of the Lincoln Tunnel to the world of Times Square in the mid 1980’s. From the perimeter can be seen the yellowish glow that is cast by the neon lights of the topless bars and gay discotheques. Prostitutes stand on the street corners, waiting. There are unfed vagrants who are soliciting money for beer and Negroes who are involved in fraudulent card games and in the selling of inert drugs. People picking through the metallic garbage cans that are placed by the city, seeking food. The Word of God is preached, from Bibles. Loose coins are thrown. Eyes that stare through you, minds that are at infinity, bodies that just sit, torpid. Men who sleep in an alley or in a doorstep, while others urinate near them, or on them. Living human animals in all the disgust and beauty of their naked primeval existence. Survival is what is practiced here, the relation of predator to prey is the essential law, a domain where human life is worth less than the price of a whore.
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