Deceiving Appearances

In the East Village, things are not always what they appear to be.

Take this, for instance, on the Village View Apartments East 5th Street walkway. At first glance, it looks like dog poop:

Dog poop.

When you take a closer look, however, it turns out to be something else:

Bean pod.

It's one of those bean pods, from one of those bean trees!

Wouldn't that have been something, if it had been balancing on top of the edging-thing?

Edgy!

#eastvillage #villageviewapartments #beanpods #beantrees #5thstreet

Tracks

I was walking across East 4th Street recently, past the Village View Apartments, when I saw these tracks in the dirt:

Tracks in the dirt.

Wait a minute, what's that?!

A syringe.

It's a syringe!

East Village junkies have tracks too.

#eastvillage #syringes #dirt #4thstreet #villageviewapartments

Ditches

You don't usually see ditches when you're walking around the East Village, and yet, here is one, in the yard of the Village View Apartments on First Avenue, just above East 4th Street:

A ditch.

Look at all those bricks and scrap metal — you can't dig more than six inches before you hit debris from a previous building!

#eastvillage #debris #bricks #ditch #firstavenue #4thstreet #villageviewapartments

Mass Of Stuff

I was walking across East 4th Street recently, when I saw this mass of stuff in the parking area outside the Village View Apartments parking lot:

Mass of stuff.

Who knows what that stuff is even for, or why it's there?!

You would never think it to look at it, but it was right outside this beautiful new parking lot:

Beautiful new parking lot.

The parking lot itself isn't new, just the asphalt.

#eastvillage #villageviewapartments #4thstreet #parkinglots

Fence Painting

A couple of weeks ago, I passed by the Village View Apartments on First Avenue and East 3rd Street, only to find the corner of the fence missing:

Corner of fence missing.

Today, I passed by again, to discover the corner back, but the side missing:

On the First Avenue side was this:

Here's what I deduce: To avoid getting paint on the sidewalk, they're taking down the fence, painting it, and putting it back.

Now that's consideration… East Village style!

#first avenue #3rdstreet #villageviewapartments #paint

Department of Redundancy Department

I was walking across East 4th Street today, when I happened onto this sign at the Village View apartments:

Village View apartments sign.

"Cool" Village View? It's like white on rice!

#eastvillage #villageviewapartments #4thstreet

Yuppie Slum Lords

This isn't the kind of picture I usually post, because I don't want to promote this type of vandalism, or sentiments, but something came to me when I saw this: the Yuppie Slum Lords would be a great name for a band!

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Yuppie Slum Lords!"

I must say, though, who's a yuppie slum lord in the East Village? The East Village is anything but a slum.  Say what you will, even the things I discuss can be fixed with a little soap and water, and a trash compactor.

By the way, this scaffolding is beside the Village View apartments, a middle-income housing complex built in the 1960s.  Not a slum! And the people who live there are too old to climb up a ladder to get onto this scaffolding.

This is definitely the work of an outside agitator!

East 5th Street

This is East 5th Street, between Avenues A and B:

It has a lot of bars on it, and very little traffic. The reason it has so little traffic is that it doesn't go past either Avenue A or B.

On the Avenue A side is what's called a NORC, a naturally-occurring retirement community. The official name is Village View Apartments. They don't take applications for apartments; no one who's moved in has ever moved out.

On the Avenue B side is the Earth School. It's very groovy. The building also houses Tompkins Square Middle School, also very groovy. Because so many people want their kids to go there, and because the administrators don't know how to say No, class sizes are seriously high — over 40 kids per class in the middle school. The kids don't do well on state tests either, but then parents don't send their kids there to be educated, but to be groovy. You can see them walking around the neighborhood wearing black hoodies with TSMS printed in red on the front.