Cool People on the Northern End of Manhattan

[RM1725]

I get tired of seeing interesting young professional friends and artists leaving the "nabe" for downtown. Any out there feeling like outcasts for living above W. 116th street?

Lets get together. It's the next frontier. Drop me a line.

I'm an architect and my friend is a professor and NYU. I grew up here and think the new blood needs to get together and stay here.

[ablarc]

It's that long train ride...

[RM1725]

It's that long train ride...

But it's also 7 room prewars, light and space. Guess everyone has to take their pick. Space, location. And you can actually park up here.

I'll keep trying all the same to get something started up this way......:)

In five years people will be begging. The best deals are going fast already.

[ablarc]

In five years people will be begging. The best deals are going fast already.
It's one place I'd consider if I were moving to Manhattan.

But oh, that subway ride: how could it be made shorter? If not for budgetary woes, could shorter trains be run twice as often?

[czsz]

It really does beg for express trains. The MetroNorth stop proposed for 125th on the W. Side might be helpful, if one would stoop so low as to consider a suburbanesque commuter rail ride downtown.

Beside the commute, that area suffers from several other ailments...it has pretty broken geography (which helps property values for those who prefer to be separated from Central Harlem, but hardly helps to create a contiguous neighbourhood full of services most people seek), it desperately cries out for commerce (there's nothing like the downtown shopping districts, or the big retail strips on Broadway or 3rd Ave. on the "sides" along Central Park, or even 125th in Harlem), it needs more concentrated nightlife (i.e. more than one or two bars scattered about its steep hillsides), it suffers from discontiguity from the rest of the city (where can you go from here? Jersey, if you like paying the $8 or so toll to get back over the bridge, or some of the more "interesting" parts of the Bronx), and, it may just be me, but I find that it lacks the sort of charm one finds in the architecture dating prior to 1914 or so (a 1930s building may be "prewar," but a lot of the building stock in Wash Heights/Inwood seems pretty stark to me compared to the UWS).

In short, living here one gains a lot of living space and (maybe) a nice view out over the city or rivers. Of course, you could always find that for less somewhere along the Palisades, or indeed in the Bronx with better subway connections. It's always had somewhat of a sleepy, isolated, suburban flavour to it, yet without the expanses which characterise, say, Wave Hill. It's definitely urban, but lacks what most move to the city for- excitement.

[ablarc]

It's definitely urban, but lacks what most move to the city for- excitement.
What? You mean the dealers are gone?

[LeCom]

Cool people on the northern end of New Jersey, anyone?

[RM1725]

Have to admit that is a bit of a drag to live up here without wheels. But up here at least you can have/park a car and take 30 mins by the W. Side Highway to the Village and 20 minutes busting it back uptown after a night of hanging out. It's also very convenient for hitting the Hudson River Valley towns on the weekend if you like. Wave Hill, The Pallisades and the Cloisters are 10 minutes away for me.

I also like the fact that the topography is not the typical flattened-out Lower Manhattan landscape. There actually IS a landscape up here.