East Side Story

One of the many things I loved about my CFR internship was its East Side location. Every Thursday morning when I stepped out from Bard Hall on West 58^th Street I felt a hint of energy boost. It’s 20 minute walk across Midtown, along the Southern end of the Park, then up north on Fifth Avenue reaching my final destination twenty blocks and a world away from my home in Midtown West.
Once you reach the East Side, things get both prudently humane and callously classy. Streets get wider, buildings get lower and people’s walking pace slows down a little…only a little, of course. Full-time moms who all look like Vogue models right off the covert of the magazine coolly walk their cat-size dogs and take their wellington booted GAP kids to nationally ranked Interschools down the street.
West Side Chinese, Thai and Mexican takeaways are replaced by cozy French patisseries, Italian specialty stores, hundred-bucks-a-bouquet flower shops and a plethora of nail and spa salons.
Time is money but apparently people (or at least people’s wives) have sufficient reserves of both of them on the Upper East. So you would think that once you can afford to live on the East Side, you’d know that you made it.
Actually, it’s not the case or at least less and less so. They say that the East Side moves more and more East across the river, and up the hill, all the way to Brooklyn Heights. A visit to the neighborhoody Park Slope and Prospect Park will suffice to understand why.
Life’s less exquisite in the usual “Manhattan way” but the quality of everydays is more alluring. Those who are ready to give up the row of chic boutiques, celebrity neighbors and absurdly pricy restaurants get taxi-honkless nights and days, relatively tourist-free environment, blue sky, green parks and fresh air. As Brooklyn Heights is rezoning, refurbished and reborn, an increasing number of Manhattanites with or without kids are set to make the trade-off. An average median price of $400-$500 per square foot sounds much better than the Upper East Side’s $1,100. Inevitably, the affluent’s migration, however, is gradually pushing up property prices over the river and might potentially spoil the distinctive ambiance of Brooklyn’s most adorable quarters. But that will be the problem of the next generation of the privileged.