Manhattan Painted Cobalt

                                                                                                                                    Photo by Katherine Sharp ©

A friend sent along a photo she took recently on Central Park South at the end of a cold January day. It seems to just capture the moment when the city passes through the earth's penumbra before the full onset of night. Except for the presence of the brightly lit Bloomberg tower, it evokes Manhattan in the 1970s with its oily sheen and silhouetted skyline. Back then, this spot was the intersection of fashionable and dangerous. Central Park South was fashionable to live on then. Now, it is not. Central Park at night was scary. Now it feels quite safe.

This corner of the city still has the ability to capture the imagination. It has always attracted a slick crowd and now it seems to have been taken over by foreigners. Taller and taller buildings financed by sovereign wealth are going up here and people coming from somewhere else are moving into them. The hair styles, clothing, body types are all different from what you see elsewhere in the city. It's all serious eyed, well dressed men with short cropped hair and black cars so you can't tell if they are bodyguards to the oligarchs upstairs, or just gay. In the 1970s it was taxi cabs and wavy-haired Midwestern hustlers like Midnight Cowboy, and executives wives and blond divorcées from the coast. The same skinny women promenade past the buildings now, updated in French twin sets and hailing taxis in their matching shoes as they check the hotel and restaurant windows to see who's inside.They pass in ones and twos, always on the building side of the street, never along the park. You never know if they are the real deal or just hangers on. Or prostitutes. For someone who is not impressed by all the dubious money and style that has flooded this place, it creates anxiety about income inequality. My own, in particular. How much better I could spend it.