TIMES SQUARE, Second Part

Among the various dazzling features here in Times Square, you will have noticed the huge red staircase rising up in the center of the square.

This is part of the original roof of the world’s most renowned ticket booth, TKTS, famous for selling half-price tickets for any show playing in one of the nearby theatres; the only condition is that you must buy the ticket on the day of the show. That explains the long lines of both tourists and New Yorkers looking for such an appealing discount!

Times Square is the heart of the Theater District, better known as Broadway, the dream factory that in the 1920s began producing popular plays and musicals, reaching its peak in the 1940s with the arrival of great dramatists such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, and the creation of the prestigious Tony Awards.

However, the splendor of Broadway, and of Times Square, began to wear off in the 1970s, when the recession led to the appearance of drug dealers, prostitutes and criminals, as well as dens of iniquity, porn theaters and strip clubs. It was thanks to Mayor Giuliani that, with the dawn of the New Millennium, the area regained, and indeed enhanced, its former splendor....