The same 1990s city inspired narratives of gritty decay and aspirational wealth simultaneously

Evidence

One of New York’s few cultural successes during this period was Larry Clark’s controversial 1995 film, Kids. This grim, amoral portrait of teenage boys inflicting violence, doing drugs, and spreading HIV cemented the careers of screenwriter Harmony Korine and indie “it” girl Chloë Sevigny. Yet it reinforced the stereotype of New York as an urban wasteland, a mythos increasingly detached from reality. New York underwent an economic boom in the 1990s. Crime rates plummeted, graffiti was removed from subway cars, and gentrification yuppified Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Three years after Kids, HBO’s Sex and the City would showcase the same city as a playground of aspiration and wealth. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 51