Manhattan is really going down the tubes. It’s impossible to live there unless you’re rich, in a rent stabilized apartment, or someone who bought years and years ago.
Even Eloise can’t live there anymore. Starting April 30th when The Plaza Hotel begins its transformation into condos, a mall and a small boutique hotel, Eloise will be just another unemployed children’s book character. Maybe she should move out to Brooklyn.
Sure, Manhattan still has lots to recommend it: stellar institutions like the Guggenheim, the Met, the Rainbow Room, MOMA, the Metropolitan Opera and now Jazz at Lincoln Center. But that’s not enough to make a city interesting. A city needs its landmarks (official and unofficial) and its historical places to give it that well-worn feeling of texture and depth.
It also needs its low rent stomping grounds for musicians; its funky downtown theaters for actors and directors; its hole-in-the-wall screening rooms for avant garde film.
Recently I learned that CBGB’s "the home of underground rock since 1973" may soon be closing its doors. So many legends of 1970’s punk rock have graced its dilapidated stage: Television, Talking Heads, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie to name a few. The New York Press writes, "As the Bowery becomes increasingly unappealing for
anyone who’s lived here more than six months
She could take a room at the Mariott Hotel in Bklyn – It would be nice to have her picture in that rather drab lobby – hear it’s hard to get a room there now, though. yeah, I know what you mean, that New Yorker cover of Adam and Eve leaving Manhattan and heading to Bklyn seems very real. In the real estate section, even the “unliquid” rich are being rejected from many “A” and “B” list apartment building. Most of these coops are so strict that the board members couldn’t even get in – It’s completely crazy.
It’s closing April 30th – if you come before that you’ll make it.
And I was going to take Mermaid Girl to the Plaza when we came to visit in April!
Rats.