Note on My New Neighborhood

This part of the Upper West Side is a neighborhood in transition.

This was not so long ago really a Black/Hispanic area  ( with one notorious big City Project near me) and in terms of voting districts most of this is in Harlem ( represented by a notoriously-- uh, let's say "dicey" man)

Millionaire's  new condo buildings on Columbus Avenue with Whole Foods and Starbucks and all kinds of upscale shops are cheek to jowel with old tenements and smaller buildings ( some gentrified)--the supermarket I shopped in today was like a very large bodega.

If you try to ask people on the street questions ( where to find something etc) they quickly indicate they only speak Spanish and run away from you.

Well, they ARE on the run, most of them I should note old and much older people, as gentrification is bent on displacing them.

The City Projects? There was one Bloomberg proposal to start charging market rents for open apartments. Nothing came of that but people keep suggesting it.

Central Park West is elegant but eerily quiet once you go a little above 96th Street.

The subway station at 103rd Street ( the lamentable C Train) only has access for Uptown; to go downtown you have to go to the station at 96th Street.

At 96th and CPW there is a stop for the Crosstown Bus that goes East across Central Park. Always a mob of people there whenever I have been there.

A friend of mine in the Bay Area who is a very tech savvy computer person also sent me all the violations outstanding in my building in this gated complex with its pretty garden inside and patio areas. All sorts of complaints, mostly lack of heat and hot water, but mold and rodents etc. too.

The City records site is not "User Friendly" but my friend got into it. Almost all the City Violation citations for here have a notation next to them that they have not been complied with.
Going back ages.

The Managing Agent for this building is a very friendly and sympathetic person, but also very , uh weird if I may say so. She seems to have her own strange ways of doing things regarding leases etc. ( for instance, I had to sign the lease before I could see the apartment. She acted like this was totally normal, which it isn't. And so forth). I don't know what to make of the super here--(God knows the one at my old building was a complete creep). I will be after Verizon tomorrow and also speak to the people here as politely as possible about the problems in this apartment. 

To look at, ( if you ignore the  little roaches in the kitchen and bathroom, for whom I have set out Combat poisoning devices and also mouse sticky paper) ( It is interesting, the mouse sticky pads are REALLY sticky-- if you step on one you can have a hell of a time getting it off the sole of your shoe)-- but the little roaches who get stuck on them are so light they invariably wriggle their way off them.

My space heater is taking the worst of the chill out of the air but I don't want to go to bed leaving it on. Temps will drop way down tonight they say.Always coldest just a little after dawn. You hear dawn here like nobody's business from the huge chorus of birds chirping ( this did not exist in Midtown).

I will probably wake up in the middle of the night as I do often anyway and have some hot decaf and turn the space heater back on for an hour or so and look for things on the internet or listen to the BBC World Service on Public Radio.