HAIR, with fill frontal nudity, was on Broadway, in the mid '60s and the costumes for CABERET were very "racy" for the time. So was the abortion and covert homosexuality.
Never been to 42nd street in N.Y.C. I take it. Until it's Disneyfication, in the '90s, I never ever thought that that area would be free of hookers and pimps and peep shows and live sex acts show and drug dealers. And in truth, that area had been that way from the '50s onwards.
"Street people"? They've always and ever been there, in every major and a lot of minor cities. Heck, at the turn of the 20th century, hookers from the Tenderloin, used to proposition one of my Great Uncles by marriage, on his way to and from grammar school!
Get back to me, when you know more history, than just your immediate neighborhood, when you were a child.
I'm sorry the sleaze from your area of expertise has managed to eventually infect the rest of the country. It really was quite pleasant during the early sixties in most areas of California.
Until the lib east coasters invaded.