(Photo: Joshua Kristal)
While Williamsburg-Greenpoint copes with Murray Hill types pouring into Berry Hill, downtown Manhattan is dealing with its own infestation: “gaggles of Muffys and Thurstons wearing Lilly Pulitzer are invading neighborhoods below 14th Street,” The Times giddily reports. The trend may just “portend the end of Manhattan’s few remaining bastions of bohemia.” (Uh-oh: better tell the guy who’s “one of the East Village’s last standing bohemians.”)
Here now are the obligatory cringe-inducing quotes.
“Downtown is livelier — we feel as though we have been in Milan for the weekend” —a chairwoman of the Whitney Museum and trustee of Lincoln Center
“You are seeing people ask themselves: Do I have an affair, get a divorce or get a downtown apartment?” —the president of an uptown-oriented brokerage
“You can live in a building downtown now that has Upper East Side amenities, and still put on your flats, walk into small shops and live that easygoing lifestyle.” —a developer
“You can go out to dinner and you don’t have to be dressed. You don’t have to wear jewelry.” —a rich person
If all of this terrifies you, breathe easy: the piece is mostly about luxury condos in the West Village and TriBeCa, and doesn’t mention any Nino’s regulars suddenly discovering the East Village or Lower East Side, or even NoHoEaoNoHo. Plus, the brokerage-firm prez thinks uptowners might eventually get sick of slumming it. “They may find themselves constantly going uptown to get their nails and hair done,” she says. “It could be that the excitement wears off.”
Okay, if hair salons are really that exciting, don’t anyone tell these folks about the “custom hair shaping studio” in Bushwick.