Recently, I was on the Upper East Side to meet a close friend. I had taken a bus up Madison Avenue, and when I looked out the window, I saw that though some stores have expanded and new stores continued to open — like Manolo Blahnik and the MYKITA Shop — there were still many shops for rent. The empty stores tended to subvert the usual atmosphere of this grand and luxuriant walking street. They were vacant spaces that failed to offer the pleasure of window-shopping or, for some people, the opportunity to buy expensive objects and fashionable clothes.
Madison Avenue had been hit hard by the pandemic, and, in addition, grand larceny was up 45% on the Upper East Side, encompassing prime shopping streets like Madison and Third Avenue. Organized rings of shoplifters had been targeting high-end boutiques on the avenues and were a prime cause of the crime spike.
Still, it’s the privileged Upper East Side and Madison Avenue that still have shops like the Ralph Lauren men’s store, whose striking building, the Rhinelander Mansion, is dominated by steep roofs and balustrades. Everything on the Avenue — shops, residential buildings and hotels — looks extremely well cared for. The earth pits where the London plane trees grow are free of garbage, a rarity in the city. The people who pass by are rarely Black or Hispanic (except for one security guard, though a number of Asian-Americans pass by) and dressed in expensive casual clothes. Most of the women look fit, as if they work out each day and take meticulous care of their appearance.
From where I am sitting, I see a new luxury boutique building going up. Other buildings are in process or being completed all over the neighborhood. The buildings are not ones that offer affordable apartments, but typically one of them contains a collection of two- to five-bedroom units. The house’s residential amenities include a party room, fitness center, bike room, package room, and storage. All that somebody with money, or aspiring to live like the moneyed, would want.
If you live in sections of the Upper East Side, you live in a bubble. But it doesn’t quite remove you from all the city problems. You may never take the subway, where at least 23 people were injured in a murderous shooting during Tuesday’s morning rush hour, by a man whose behavior can’t be explained. However, you can’t avoid being aware of how often precarious the city you inhabit is.
Still, the Upper East Side feels safer than other parts of the city. And though not the kind of neighborhood I would ever want to live in, in old age it feels comforting. There are fewer threatening people in the street ready to explode, and, in general, less feeling of the socially problematic. To make an analogy that seems apt, it’s like living in Great Barrington or Lenox rather than Pittsfield. The odds of being mugged or assaulted on the UES are just smaller, and the world is easier to negotiate, if that’s what you want from a city.
