I tried both, Spendthrift, the lighter, then the darker.  The first was Fruit Of The Loom, the second Brooks.  The first works with light chinos, wheat jeans or white Levis (but I'm too old for the latter!), the second with darker denim, brown belt breaking the area between dark blue/dark green.  When I first met TRS, back in the summer of 2012, he was wearing a dark green polo shirt and cuffed Levis.  I had a USA-made green polo years ago and wouldn't mind another.

Love the depiction of NYC in this film as filthy and lawless, in fact all 70s cinema represents the city in this way with the noble exception of Woody's absurdly romantic 'Manhattan'.

Hmm. Looks like a dark green bd’s just gone on the list.

NYC’s pretty much the only part of the world that I’ve heard plenty of people bemoaning the fact that it’s been cleaned up. Sometimes the Kings Cross area of London. But I suspect there’s an element of selective memory there.

Rightly or wrongly, it is open to debate, Mayor Rudy Giuliani is widely credited for slashing the crime rate in NYC in the late 90s/early 2000s. This was achieved by hiring an extra 7,000 cops and robustly managing the NYPD to ensure it was getting results dealing with street criminals and organised crime. Later he came to prominence for his leadership after 9/11 and was honorarily knighted by the Queen. Subsequently his halo has slipped a bit due to his acting as Trump’s lawyer when he challenged the Presidential election result. Still he did a good job sorting Manhattan’s crime out.

Didn’t that Sacha Baron Cohen do a number on him?

Yes he did, toe curling & cringeworthy it was to.

Spendthrift - Ha ha, I'll give it a miss.

I have family that used to live in Manhattan in the eighties.Yes, it was slightly edgy but then I think a lot of big cities were then. The upside was housing was a lot cheaper and food was too. I will always remember my nervousness during an early visit to New York when exiting a down town record store at dusk and not being able to find a taxi. When I entered it was a bright mid January afternoon and I'd forgotten how quickly afternoon turns to Evening.  Graffeti was everywhere, certain buildings were abandoned and the streets far too quite. Years later I returned. The record store had been priced out of the neighbourhood and it was full of Yummy Mummys in designer clothes.

Woof refers to the strategy known as " Zero Tolerance" by the Police. It was a large scale crackdown on anti social behaviour. It also helped that after a decade of RICO cases against organised crime their influence was diminished. The third part of clearing-up the City was in reducing police corruption that had always been an issue.

The downside of creating a safer city was the sky rocketing housing prices. Manhattan quickly became very expensive. Clever estate agents recognised that if you created new brands for areas it helped market them. Hence Tribeca, Noho East and the Meat Packing District. Warehouses and work rooms were now Loft apartments heralding a new style of gentrification.

I asked my cousin why all the sofas in a certain store looked oversize and he explained they were used to take up space in these new open plan apartments with exposed brick and metal columns.

It's sad that there's now a homogeneous feel to most big cities in the West. The independent stores are still there but fewer in number and more hidden.What's left doesn't excite me at all.

Alvey - I childhood friend of a now sadly departed friend of mine had a business in the 70's / 80's selling classic soul vinyl, he and his business partner travelled the US picking up plenty of bargains in downtown music shops, his one golden rule was to leave before it got dark, the one time he didn't, in Memphis I think , it got tricky,

Ian Levine was doing this early/mid 70's.

Skip James sounded amazing too.

Alvey - I only met the guy 2-3 times around 20 years ago, as mentioned our mutual friend died 5 years ago, the guy in question was called ' Lol' , came from Bracknell, (he'd be mid 60's now),apparently he and his business partner use to split the US between them , the time he got caught out staying too long he'd found a goldmine of vinyl, I remember him saying that on one or more occasions when asking about soul vinyl (which was apparently out of fashion at the time), he was told the ' disco shit' is in the back room, he picked up albums for 50 cents each, pack them up , drop them off at a UPS depot for shipment back and made tidy profits at record fairs, I'm certainly no expert but I think he was impressed I had all 4 volumes of Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures compilation cd's !

Stax, I'm pretty sure they was a second hand record shop in Bracknell possibly late 80's, that sold just Jazz, Funk & soul. I picked up quite a few rare albums from there. It was around the time of the Pirate radio, because one of the guys who worked in there was a DJ on one of the stations.