Somebody's poked out the eye of the perverted Cyclops on 42nd Street. The spangly ocular orb had hung above the door to the Peepland porno parlor, a lascivious Gulliver peering through a Lilliputian keyhole for a cheap thrill.
The eyeball's gone. So's Peep-land. The crack dealers, smoke shops, strip joints, flophouses, bums, drunks, crazies and sweaty-palmed raincoat men who trolled the XXX-rated video stores are gone, too.A powerful mix of outraged public morality and decaying private profits pushed the city's civic powerhouses to unleash a torrent of cash and tax breaks - $240 million in all - washing away decades of psychic manure that lay rotting in the "Crossroads of the World."
About time, say most New Yorkers.
"The only people crying for the old Times Square are people who didn't have to walk through it every day," said Dean Starkman, a writer who lives in the nearby neighborhood of Chelsea.
But in their zeal to erase decades of neglect, the city has committed the sin of the convert: overkill. The problem is gone. But the cure is enough to make lovers of urbanity queasy.
The once-greasy, beating heart of New York is being homogenized, sanitized and packaged as a theme park for out-of-town tourists.
The millions of dollars have scrubbed, painted, dressed and deodorized the famous patch of real estate that stretches north from the confluence of 42nd Street, Broadway and Seventh Avenue.
A Disney store has opened on 42nd Street, filled to the rafters with items from "Hercules," "101 Dalmations," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "Pocahontas," "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast."
Next door is the newly renovated New Amsterdam Theater, buffed to its "Great White Way" splendor (circa 1900). But don't go looking for the works of Rogers and Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin or other legends of Broadway. The theater is home to Disney productions. Currently, it's "The Lion King."
A little farther on, a huge Cat in the Hat painting covers the facade that in the 1980s once housed "The Barracks," an infamously seedy hotel that catered to male prostitutes.
Across the street, the New Victory Theater, whose paint-peeling interior was the set of the critically acclaimed film "Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street," has been burnished to make it ready for a different kind of production - perhaps an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
Up the block near the subway entrance is Ferrara's, a gentrified version of the landmark Little Italy coffeehouse. It anchors the key intersection of 42nd street and Seventh Avenue, across from Hansen's, a just-opened microbrewery.
Around the corner is Ellen's Stardust Diner, which seeks to re-create the 1950s heyday of midtown luncheonettes.
There's O'Lunneys, an "old-time" Irish pub that's been around for all of a year.
In between are new candy shops and virtual-reality arcades that wouldn't be out of place in any mall in any state. New zoning laws designed to keep out the tacky/scary grocery stores selling water pipes, cigarettes and beer have also rid the area of usual urban street markers such as drugstores.
Among the famed neon signs on Times Square are ones heralding the world's largest music supermarket, the Virgin Mega-store. Walk a bit north and there's the new All-Star Cafe, owned by the likes of baseball star Ken Griffey Jr. and tennis heartthrob Andre Agassi, doing a brisk business in T-shirts and hats.
Soon they'll be joined by a magic-themed restaurant owned by David Copperfield and a Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum (modeled after the one in London). Two movie-theater complexes, one each by AMC and Sony, will add nearly 40 screens to the neighborhood.
The Lyric and Academy Theaters will be renovated and compete in what some say is an already overcrowded group of stages vying for a dwindling number of productions. A convention and hotel complex is also still on the drawing board.
"Nudity is not an option," screams a 10-story high billboard hovering above the recently opened electronic game parlor and Disney Store. It's not an admonition, but an advertisement - for a detergent.
The unauthorized street theater of old is gone, replaced by a City Hall-sanctioned, police-approved version of fun. The porno palaces and peeps have been evicted, but so were the cut-rate theaters that served as date-night headquarters for thousands of kids from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey every Saturday night.
Commerce is the name of the game in the new, improved Times Square - guaranteed to make your visit to New York fun, happy and purse-snatcher free.
For longtime New Yorkers, it's a head-spinning change. The city has been talking (and little else) about cleaning up Times Square for years. As far back as the 1930s film "42nd Street," the title song described the boulevard as "naughty, haughty, bawdy."
Now, finally, Times Square is transforming. City Hall got off the dime. Times Square has traded dope for Dopey, crack for caffe mocha.
Fans of the transformation say Times Square and especially the once-infamous 42nd Street are now more family-friendly than at any time since World War II. With special Times Square security guards augmenting police, and tougher enforcement of loitering, soliciting and handbill laws, the sense of menace that once permeated the concrete canyon has all but evaporated.
Critics - though far outnumbered - mumble that the city's historic pleasure pressure valve has been capped. They note that as far back as the 19th century, writers were bemoaning the decline of Times Square.
The crazy-quilt entertainment district beloved by New Yorkers is being recast as a soulless chainstore mecca for conventioneers.
"Times Squared," they say.
Those who are making the changes say they have no apologies. Crime is down, occupancy is up, the streets are safer. The plan, when completed, will generate 50,000 new jobs and $330 million in revenue for the city.
Michael Eisner, the Disney chairman, has brushed aside criticism that he and others are somehow betraying New York.
"Having grown up in New York, I am personally thrilled that we are a part of the redevelopment of 42nd Street," Eisner said in launching the company's Times Square plans in 1995.
But Jimmy Breslin, a columnist for the suburban Newsday newspaper, told "60 Minutes" in an interview that he resented the corporate makeover that has left 42nd Street dominated by chain stores and rows of closed stores whose metal crash screens are painted a rainbow of happy colors.
"I'll take the hookers," Breslin said on a recent "60 Minutes" broadcast.