city's economy towards tourists: "You cannot lure these herds of hillbillies into the middle of a city, and not have it affect the city." Of the homelessness crisis in New York, she has said, "Any New Yorker who walks down the street in this rich city ... you can't even hear anything because the money's making so much noise now, and see people in the street and not feel this is a disgrace to the country, it's a disgrace to the city." In 2022, Lebowitz was a guest on Questlove's "Quest for Craft". She discussed how New York City is important to her craft, and how a sense of place is important to writers. Impact of HIV/AIDS In the 1980s, many of her gay male friends died of HIV/AIDS. Lebowitz has discussed the impact of the "plague years" on American culture. In particular, she has spoken about the cultural void that was left behind from losing a generation of talented artists and intellectuals. Many of these men not only produced art and intellectual culture, but they also were the passionate audiences that nurtured such culture. As she explained in a 2016 interview:What is culture without gay people? This is America, what is the culture? Not just New York. AIDS completely changed American culture... And with AIDS, a whole generation of gay men died practically all at once, within a couple of years. And especially the ones that I knew. The first people who died of AIDS were artists. They were also the most interesting people... The knowing audience also died and no longer exists in a real way... There's a huge gap in what people know, and there's no context for it anymore.In 1987, Lebowitz published a piece in The New York Times titled "The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community". Feminism Lebowitz has been called the "opposite of lean-in feminism". She said in a 2019 interview:If [feminism] really worked, there wouldn't be feminism anymore. There's a couple of things that have changed so much for the better, and the life of a girl is a billion times better than when I was a girl. There's no comparison. It's so much better, and yet it's still horrible. That will tell you what it was like, okay? In another interview, she said, "I didn't pay much attention to it, largely because it never occurred to me it would work. I