Famous Ankles

Back to my talking about my old home grounds in the Upper West Side.

I really loved living at Trump Place.  I stared out onto the Hudson River virtually every day.  And this is from a guy who never opens his curtains nowadays.  I don’t have the need for natural light that virtually everybody else has.  But, when at Trump Place:  I opened those curtains real wide!

There were a variety of things I would watch from my old place:  the Hudson, New Jersey, the pier, and an old wreck of a loading contraption.

All three are still there.

The Hudson:

Yeah, there was a little marina just north of where I lived.

New Jersey:

The pier:

And the “loading contraption”:

That’s the pier behind it, of course.  The whole area here had been piers and an old trainyard before Trump bought it and started the development.  There are a variety of this sort of ruin up and down the riverfront, but this is the coolest looking of any I ever saw.  And I had a perfect view from my place.

When I decided to move from Trump (they raised the rent and I was hankering for my own place), I did look at a place behind Trump Place.  I was talking with one of the co-op/condo owners and started to hear a lot of vitriol against “The Donald” for having ruined their view by putting up the tall buildings where they before had only traintracks to look across before seeing the river.  I have to admit I didn’t feel too much sympathy.  They had made use of someone elses’ property and wanted to deny the owner the right to develop.

And, incidentally, my understanding is that “The Donald” was only one participant in a very large group of others.  He did get to stick his name on it to enhance its salability, though.

-H

This entry was posted on October 30, 2007 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Manhattan, Upper West Side, Wanderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.