The Kips Bay "Alphaville" Area Revisited--Urban Alienation

Some years back I named this courtyard in a Kips Bay apartment complex area East of Second Avenue as "Alphaville," after the 1965 movie by Jean Luc Godard.

Plot of movie:(from Wikipedia)

Alphaville combines the genres of dystopian science fiction and film noir. There are no special effects or futuristic sets; instead, the film was shot in real locations in Paris, the night-time streets of the capital becoming the streets of Alphaville, while modernist glass and concrete buildings (that in 1965 were new and strange architectural designs) represent the city's interiors. The film is set in the future but the characters also refer to twentieth century events; for example, the hero describes himself as a Guadalcanal veteran.

 People use this space...I guess people will use ANY space in an urban environment, as unpleasant and uninviting as this one is.

Being a nice August day, I wandered down and made the following video to give you a fuller idea of the way this place works on a summer afternoon ( I think I almost filmed a drug deal going down this time, so I kept the camera moving and got out of there).

This complex was built back in the 1980's as affordable housing, and so a lot of old tenants still live there ( why should they move?) in I assume rent stabilized apartments, if it has not gone co-op in some of the buildings by now.

The apartment buildings are hardly the slums of Calcutta and in fact then they have a market event of some kind going on here, which they do occasionally, it is not bad at all., Likewise, the streets around the complex, East 23rd Street and Second Avenue, are pretty pleasant and have nice stores and shops.

If there are old tenants with rent stabilized apartments here, then a lot of people would gladly be in their shoes given what the apartment scene is like in Manhattan now.