I think a lot of people have kinda forgotten what NYC was like before companies like airbnb and uber showed up.
Before Uber, there were underground networks of ride sharers that had to evade the police by using “secret” signals and code words. It was absolutely wild, required a ton of trust and only really existed because of the stranglehold the cab companies had over the city.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a similar system in place for rentals before airbnb showed up.