Like Downton Abbey but different

The appeal of Downton Abbey for most Americans is its quaintness—nostalgia for a bygone world. But for a certain class of New Yorkers, Downton Abbey is aspirational. Perhaps we don't long for footmen and butlers and maids and valets. But doormen and supers? Hell, yes.

 After living for 35 years in a little bohemian self-managed building, Other and I had finally had enough of flushing boilers and fixing water heaters and shoveling sidewalks and picking up litter. A couple months ago, we left our old Bowery neighborhood and moved to the Upper West Side, where rain is just weather and not a gutter crisis.

 We expected to have buyer's remorse, known hereabouts as the New York surprise—the discovery that whatever due diligence you did was inadequate and your building turns out to be infested with bed bugs or roaches or black mold or totally insane neighbors or ... 

 In any case, it hasn't happened—so far. We've seen no vermin. And the neighbors seem sane.

 There's a wonderful map of New York that identifies every tree on every street of the city. And so, though it's too early in the spring for leaves or blossoms, I happen to know that I live between a silver linden (with leaves that taste like lettuce but have a gluey texture) and a honey locust (whose edible pods can be fermented to make beer). 

 Could there be a better situation?




Comments

  1. SusanApril 8, 2017 at 8:12 PM

    Your words. They matter. Love this. The trees. Everything. Bowery be damned.

    ReplyDelete

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