Living around: Tompkins Square Park

The Times real-estate section has a "Living Around — Tompkins Square Park" feature today titled Grit, Glam and Green, in One Vibrant Package. Here are a few passages:

Susan Stetzer, the district manager of Community Board 3 and an East Village resident since 1970, said the park had attained a state of relative quiet, aside from complaints about the handful of “very loud” concerts it hosts throughout the year.

“There’s no issues there,” Ms. Stetzer said. “We have a big playground that was renovated very, very recently. It’s very nice. The park is well used. We have a rat problem, but so does a lot of the rest of New York City.”

Speaking as a resident rather than as a district manager, she described something bittersweet about having witnessed the slow gentrification of the park. The playgrounds — there are actually three — are shinier and more colorful than when she used to take her son there in the late ’70s and early ’80s. But, she said, they loved the park then, too, and that era had its advantages.

“It was a much stronger, much closer community then,” Ms. Stetzer said. “Everyone knew everyone, and they weren’t necessarily people like you.”