The photo caption that appears with the main photo sums it up this way: "Uptown denizens who once thought Harry Cipriani on 59th Street was the southern border for gracious living are discovering new condos and restaurants downtown."
It's not necessarily about the East Village, but downtown in general. Examples in the article cite a UES couple who are buying apartments for their high-school age children in — gasp! — Battery Park City ...the article also mentions new developments on Charles Street and Leonard Street....
A few excerpts, because you don't really want to read the whole piece:
“Downtown is livelier — we feel as though we have been in Milan for the weekend,” said Brooke Garber Neidich, a chairwoman of the Whitney Museum.
(We believe this is a reference to Milan, Italy, and not Milan, Ohio, birthplace of Thomas Edison.)
And!
Such a rarefied perspective may particularly rankle longtime downtowners, and portend the end of Manhattan’s few remaining bastions of bohemia. But just as flocks of young New Yorkers who might once have lived in the East Village are now in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Williamsburg, and those who had once lived in Williamsburg have moved on to Bushwick, it is perhaps inevitable that gaggles of Muffys and Thurstons wearing Lilly Pulitzer are invading neighborhoods below 14th Street. The cool crowd has long been on a southward migration.
And!
“You are seeing people ask themselves: Do I have an affair, get a divorce or get a downtown apartment?” said Michele Kleier, the president and chairwoman of Kleier Residential.
38 comments:
Reading that article made me sick to my stomach.
In other news, dog bites man.
"“You are seeing people ask themselves: Do I have an affair, get a divorce or get a downtown apartment?” said Michele Kleier, the president and chairwoman of Kleier Residential.
Sorry, but: WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?
That's some marketing: Go downtown to live out your midlife crisis?
- East Villager
I liked it better when they just came down here on safari.
Well that explains the smell.
SCREW NYC I am moving to Oaxaca, Mexico next month. PS I am not advocating violence here nor burning cars either so... Give Peace a Chance Viva Zapata !!! LOVE JP
Well, if they live down here, then maybe then at least on weekends they'll go uptown to drink and vomit on someone's doorstep.
- East Villager
all these great comments making me rofl:)
from the Times article: “I think there is a big romance about living downtown...” “You can go out to dinner and you don’t have to be dressed,...you don’t have to wear jewelry.”
OMIGOD
Q. How can you tell when an Upper East Sider is dead?
A: He lets go of his wallet.
Q: What happens when four Upper East Siders find themselves in the same room?
A: A dinner party.
Q: How many Upper East Siders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Three. Two to mix the martinis and one to call the electrician.
Q: What do Upper East Siders think of the Mideast situation?
A: Well, East Hampton is all right, but EVERYbody goes to Amangansett.
The author is a self-proclaimed "Mommy blogger"
https://twitter.com/JulieSatow
"A house divided cannot stand." This city cannot withstand the level of class inequity it's gotten too. The luxuries of the rich are starving the poor to death in this town. The writer left out the end of the transition from manhattan, to williamsburg, to bushwick which is, after they.cant afford.bushwick the next step is to leave their hometown permanently. Enjoy your luxury, because people are truly suffering so you may have a little extra comfort. Off with your heads if i ever get any say!
I wonder if it was more known how much the poor are suffering in this city, if maybe some of the rich kids would not want to perpetuate that bad feeling. Imagine if you had to leave.your home and everyone you know, your work connections, your lovers, because some kid who could afford to live anywhere thinks it would be cute to slum it in your apt. Its so selfish, its vile. Plus most of these evictions are illegal
"EAT THE RICH" (time to bring up an old favorite...)
“Downtown is livelier — we feel as though we have been in Milan for the weekend,” said Brooke Garber Neidich ... this is especially true if you hang out with the crackheads across the street from me before you go sight seeing...then you'll think you traveled around the world, several times.
"Have an affair, get a divorce, or get a downtown apartment?" That's an odd mix of choices! I wonder if Michele Kleier is projecting her own domestic strife into her portfolio?
Sounds like they're going to the W. Village and Battery Park, so who cares? Anyway, the problem isn't the UESider slummers, the problem is all the gazillion bars/restaurants that have opened up over the past 15 or 20 years. Most of which I can't afford anyway ($7 for a pint? $10 for a burger and it doesn't come with fries?? c'mon!!).
If there are too many pesky flies in your yard, clean up the dog $hit that attracts them - problem solved.
Hank
Knowing that this area is like Milan makes me feel better about not being able to afford to go anywhere this Summer.
Yeah, the 13th Step is JUST like Milan...
Loudon Wainright's Uptown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SabWnz9bjuk
Downtown is where it's at, I don't doubt that
But today I can do without I'm getting sick of the slums
I'm tired of dodging the bums
And all the freaks are freaking me out
Expert trolling by the NY Times.
Cue Petula Clark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHNGvEdTwBQ
douche bags with money who want to be cool ALWAYS fuck things up.
11:51, I'd suggest the people who fck things up are perhaps the "artists" who move into neighborhoods, rename them things like "East Village" or "East Williamsburg" attract the wealthier people, and then move on to destroy some other neighborhood by making it "cool." Of course they leave long time residents to deal with the high rent, low services, loud nightlife, aftermath.
The trick is to find neighborhoods artist won't think are cool. You know, lots of sports bars, fast food restaurants, cops/fireman living there, that sort of thing.
Rich people should not be allowed to live where they want.
Anonymous 2:27pm, Artists aren't the problem, they're just tools of the real estate industry.
The Bowery was rife with artists in the '60's, yet it declined steadily until decades after most of the artists had decamped. When the Beats came to the EV in the '50's, the neighborhood declined right through the '80's. Sure, sometimes artists open the gate -- SoHo, Williamsburg -- but Harlem is gentrifying without artists paving the way (or Coney Island, Flatbush). So artists are not the cause. But wherever you see gentrification, the city administration pushed it, whether it's upzoning or park "renovation," to invite and encourage real estate expansion and its revenue.
"Have an affair, get a divorce, or get a downtown apartment?" How about a lobotomy - sounds like that might relieve your issues with so many cholces.
Isn't Milan the Detroit of Italy?
Admittedly, "of Italy" will forgive much, but still....
2:27 I would suggest back to you that you are inserting the present into the past. The so-called 'artists' that you refer to, the ones that are apparently in-part to blame for driving rents up in Williamsburg were already fucking rich when they arrived. Back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s of the East Village the rents were low and attracted people that DIDN'T have money and as a result were free to commit to a creative life. Also your reference to when the East Village got its name is also out of context. I would argue that although it was a name created by the real estate industry of that time, I don't think you can compare it in the context of today's hyper-gentrification. The neighborhood may have been attracting young artist types but you didn't have a wholesale slaughter of what the neighborhood previously was. In addition one of the most well-known and perhaps infamous underground newspapers of that time incorporated the new name of the neighborhood into their own name: The East Village Other. This wasn't a newspaper devoted to doing fashionable features and showcasing last week's party, they had something significant to say. Obviously things like 're-naming' a neighborhood back then held a different type of meaning or meant nothing at all.
Anonymous 1140pm, EVO was as involved in creating the myth of this area as anyone, probably more so, since they were actively engaged in it, rather than passive consumers of it.
“You are seeing people ask themselves: Do I have an affair, get a divorce or get a downtown apartment?” I dont even live in the city and I find that statement obnoxoius.
Slumming it in Tribeca
@ DrGecko- I think that's Naples...
This article could have been written, and likely was, 20 years ago.
Milan is a beautiful city. I think the reference is t the artistic style that downtown brings, as does Milan, not the slumminess.
The earliest references I've seen to the "East Village" occur right after the 3rd Ave. El was dismantled. Regardeless who coined it, realtors embraced it as did radicals including Ginsberg as well as The Other, persuasive evidence that gentrification was not happening, much less a problem, at a time when money was flowing, not into the city, but out to the suburbs.
So The Other would seem not to have played a role in gentrification since the neighborhood continued to decline after its demise and the expression had been largely abandoned by the time I arrived in '78 in Alphabet City, which we all considered to be the Lower East Side, plain and simple.
What trash. Can't we put up barricades or something? Who wants riffraff like that poisoning what's left of the EV?
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