Delicious incongruity aside, the scene served as another reminder of the age: Nobody with any alternative—even skis—took the subway then, especially at night.

Manhattan, it is harder and harder to remember, used to be a really rough place. But as rough as it was in the late ’60s, there is no doubt it had improved considerably in the 350 years since it was first settled by the Dutch. A few years ago, TMN’s Tobias Seamon brought Manhattan and the Hudson Valley’s violent past in a series of pieces commemorating the days when New York was the Wild West—ready to read here on TMN or in an e-book you can export to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, etc.