In 1977, hip-hop literally wasn't outside the boroughs. But I was profoundly aware of the city through films like Saturday Night Fever, The French Connection, and Network. I had a friend who visited New York, and I asked him what it was like. He said, "Oh, it's great. Just wear a coat and don't look anyone in the eye. "
Biking through New York's boroughs in 2005, I thought about some old friends, Joe and Eileen Bailey. Though they are imaginary, I frequently talk to them.
Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies! Oh look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
I think there's a stigma to some degree about the outer boroughs and Jersey, and whether their stories are worth telling.
London, black as crows and noisy as ducks, prudish with all the vices in evidence, everlastingly drunk, in spite of ridiculous laws about drunkenness, immense, though it is really basically only a collection of scandal-mongering boroughs, vying with each other, ugly and dull, without any monuments except interminable docks.