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This Chapter tells the story of how the developers “scripted” the active adult lifestyle for their communities and got them functioning socially. By 1980, the first communities were reaching “build-out,” giving birth to the second generation of these communities, such as Sun City West. Webb and Cortese began with advertising strategies that were designed to target a particular kind of buyer and to give that buyer a certain identity or image that in turn would define the community. From the start, Webb and Cortese made frequent use of the word “active” in defining their buyers and used the phrase “new way of life” to provide a script for their buyers' expectations of life in Sun Cities and Leisure Worlds. Furthermore, the lure of golf and an active social life were advertising themes, and many buyers were attracted to Sun City because they wanted such a lifestyle.

This chapter focuses on the most important and most famous of the developers, Del Webb, and how he conceived and implemented the concept of “active retirement” and “a new way of life” for retirees. Del Webb characterized the typical resident of his Sun City, Arizona, development as the guy who worked for a power company in Chicago. Del Webb was a creative, careful, and brilliant risk taker. Some of his interest in construction, his competitiveness, and his calculated approach to risk taking combined with a certain comfort with who he was can be traced back to his childhood. As by the mid-1930s his company had grown in size, he practiced diversification into various types of construction in different states. He also invested in professional sports in the 1940s with part ownership of the New York Yankees. He drove himself hard and was constantly on the go from Phoenix to New York to Los Angeles.

The expansion of communities brought to a head certain political issues such as familial discrimination for their banning of under adult age children as permanent residents. This topic is covered in this chapter. The phenomenal success of Webb and Cortese motivated a host of other developers to build their own communities, often with different minimum ages than Sun City's fifty or Leisure World's fifty-two. To exempt age-restricted, active adult communities from legislation designed to bar discrimination in housing with respect to the presence of children under nineteen, Congress had to grant them a precise definition, which resulted in a level of standardization. Meanwhile, these communities continued to evolve and proliferate, challenging and redefining attitudes toward aging.

This chapter describes events from 1993 to 1996. These include Cooper’s recruitment of new personnel for the City Sun; real estate developer Abe Hirschfeld’s appointment of Wilbert Tatum of the Amsterdam News as editor and co-publisher of the New York Post; Mayor Dinkins’s reelection campaign; and the City Sun’s debts and collapse in October 1996.

This chapter describes stories covered by the City Sun from 1984 to 1985. These include the paper’s crusade for the family of Eleanor Bumpurs, a sixty-seven-year-old grandmother who was shot and killed by police after she resisted being evicted from her Bronx apartment; the paper’s strong dissatisfaction with the policies of mayor Ed Koch; Cooper’s doubts about the credibility of mayoral candidate Herman D. (Denny) Farrell, a black assemblyman from Manhattan; and the case against Transit Authority police in the death of Michael Stewart, a twenty-five-year-old graffiti artist arrested for allegedly defacing a subway station at Fourteenth Street and First Avenue.

This chapter describes Andy Cooper’s weekly paper, called the City Sun, which promised an editorial environment that was compatible with advertisers’ interests without allowing them to dictate tone or content. The City Sun’s first issue was published on June 6, 1984. By the time the sixth edition was released in July, the paper received its first of many letters from Mayor Koch. Cooper’s City Sun also broke a taboo of other black newspapers—it criticized black politicians whenever it became convinced their behavior was venal, lazy, or self-serving.

This chapter describes stories covered by the City Sun in 1986. The editors of the paper de-emphasized reports about Mayor Koch, and invested more of their time on local activists’ involvement in Haiti and South Africa. Throughout the year, the City Sun kept readers focused on apartheid in South Africa and the regional war against the white minority regime by neighboring black states.

This chapter describes events in 1992. These include the competition between the City Sun and the Amsterdam News for the city’s readers; Utrice Leid’s promotion of Farhan Haq, who had been the City Sun’s international affairs reporter for nine months, to metro editor; legal proceedings in the Crown Heights case; the City Sun’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October; and the Cooper–Leid confrontation and breakup.

This chapter describes the case of Tawana Brawley, which would occupy the New York press, including the City Sun, for most of 1987. Tawana was a fifteen-year-old black girl who was reported missing on November 25, 1987. She was later was found inside a plastic garbage bag, covered in feces. “KKK” and “nigger” were scrawled on her chest and stomach with a marker. Passersby took the incoherent girl to St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie.

This chapter details the careers of City Sun alumni. These include Harry Allen, who wrote for magazines such as the Source; Maitefa Aganza, who became managing editor of African Voices literary magazine; Milton Allimadi, who founded the Black Star News; Christopher Atwell, who founded Chris Atwell Communications to do public relations work and became speechwriter for New York governor David Paterson in 2010; and Doug Blackburn, who left the City Sun to cover the NHL for the New York Times.

This chapter describes the City Sun’s feature story on filmmaker Spike Lee on August 6–12, 1986; the publication of movie and arts critic Armond White’s blistering review of Eddie Murphy’s blockbuster comedy Coming to America; and the Murphy public relations machine’s response to Armond White via three full advertising pages in City Sun.