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Apocalypse Then: Patti Smith's Horses

Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 15 November 2005

ON OCTOBER 30, 1975, the Daily News printed its "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD" cover. But long before that other unelected president refused to bail out our defaulting boroughs, us New York kids already knew we were fucked. It was Taxi Driver time, as Punk magazine writer Mary Harron put it in the oral history Please Kill Me. The Bronx burned, roads collapsed, crime surged, and city agencies kept shutting down; it seemed the stench of the previous summer's garbage strike would never leave.

Total word count of piece: 1189

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