The Bowery-Bowery Boys episode 440, when Longacre Square became Times Square.

Hey, it's the Bowery Boys.

Hey! Hi there. Welcome to the Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young.

And this is Tom Myers. And today, Greg, we are going to be telling the origin story of one of New York's most famous,

hold on, most famous, not one of New York.

I think this is New York's most famous spot,

perhaps.

We're talking about Times Square, which is traditionally known as the center of New York's theater district, but in recent decades it's become better known just in general for tourism, know and the sort of overwhelming number of

electronic billboards and advertisements and hustle and bustle. It's like an electric

Disneyland so much like a theme park today that it sometimes

doesn't even feel connected to New York City anymore or at least you know to its

history outside of the historicise of its Broadway theaters, it can be hard to even identify any traces of its historic past.

Well, but today, dear listener, we are going to peel it back. We are going to

erase the billboards and the theme stores. We are going to kick the Elmo's and the

naked cowboys from the streets.

We're even going to evict the petty cats, the ones

blasting Alicia Keys.

Well, keep Alicia Keys, but we're taking her kicking out, kicking up the petit cat.

It doesn't need to be that loud.

No.

In fact, we're even getting rid of almost all the Broadway theaters. We're going back to the days

before it was called Times Square. In fact, we'll be ending our timeline today to

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