Thursday, February 11, 2016

Back to 85th Street

My new apartment is in a much more attractive building
than the one on the East Side too.

Well I considered so many different locations to move to - Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, Ditmas Park, the Financial District, Chinatown - even freaking Jersey City. And in the end, I got an apartment on 85th Street in Manhattan. I lived on 85th Street in 2009.

Except this time it's WEST 85th Street - the Upper West Side is much more my kind of people, for as Wikipedia says:
Like the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side is an affluent, primarily residential area with many of its residents working in more commercial areas in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. It has the reputation of being home to New York City's cultural, intellectual hub (with Columbia University located at the north end of the neighborhood), and artistic workers (with Lincoln Center located at the south end), while the Upper East Side is traditionally perceived to be home to commercial and business types.[4]

Although I make my living with business types I'm definitely by temperament an artistic worker. Also my East 85th Street apartment was close to the East River, but now I'm half a block away from Central Park - including the fairly obscure Arthur Ross Pinetum - pronounced pie-NEE-tem. Don't believe me? Ask Martha Stewart!

I discover the Pinetum in 2011 and blogged about it here.

Now of course I no longer have an excuse not to get up early in the morning and go for a run before work - the park is right there. Plus, it turns out my favorite Manhattan restaurant Machiavelli Trattoria is right around the corner. With all that amazing wine and Italian food so close by I will need to get as much exercise as possible.