Best Green, Then Spurned

The dirty secret of parks is that while they’re great for real estate values (and therefore a boost to city property tax revenue), the people who live next door treat them like the ornamental gardens they are:

[Arlene Harrison] has added to a list of regulations (no dogs, no feeding of birds, no groups larger than six people, no Frisbees or soccer balls or “hard balls” of any kind) that, in turn, have served to dictate how [Gramercy Park] is — and is not — used. Most recently, she helped pave the way for Zeckendorf Realty to redevelop a 17-story Salvation Army boarding house on the south side of the park, and for the company’s plan to convert the 300 rooms into 14 floor-through apartments plus a penthouse duplex. The company would not confirm the transaction.

. . .

She added: “It will change the neighborhood for the better. It will be less use on the park.”

Indeed, while a key to Gramercy Park — or, more precisely, an address that entitles one to such a key — is among the most coveted items of New York real estate, under Ms. Harrison’s stewardship, the park has become perhaps the least-used patch of open space in the city. Most days, in nice weather, one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the park at once, and few linger.

Gramercy is one of two private parks in New York City (the other, in Queens, is Sunnyside Gardens Park), and a key is required not only to enter, but to leave through a gate in its wraparound wrought-iron fence.

Each of the 63 lots on which the current 39 buildings sit gets two keys, which residents (and guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel) may borrow from their doormen. In addition, residents of those buildings — but only those — may purchase keys for $350 per year; the keys are all but impossible to copy and cost $1,000 to replace.

About 400 people now have keys, but many of them apparently sit unused in junk drawers in the grand foyers in the apartments overlooking the park. One sunny morning last week, as Ms. Harrison chatted with the Rev. Thomas F. Pike, rector of Calvary-St. George’s Church, there were three others in the park: a woman checking her BlackBerry, a custodial worker and a jogger. On a Saturday morning three days later, about two dozen people could be spotted in the park over the course of four hours, and never more than six or eight at a time.

“Honestly, we don’t use it that much,” said Gale Rundquist, a real estate broker who has lived on the park for five years. Still, she said, access “adds a lot to a listing; it’s panache.”

“Because we work during the day, and we leave town on the weekends,” she explained of her own nonusage. “But it’s beautiful to look at.”

Actual use of the park is not Ms. Harrison’s measure. “It was always an ornamental park,” she said. “A lot of people don’t even go in to enjoy it. They’re so thrilled just to see it. It’s like a hotel room with a view of the ocean.”

. . .

[Harrison] knows the rhythms of the park intimately. “Between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning, there are two people here,” she said. “One walks, the other breaks into a jog and stretches occasionally. Two women walk here at 7, and then a third joins them at 7:15. The nannies come in with the small kids around 11, and then again around 4.

“Saturday, it’s empty,” she added. “People are doing their errands.”

There is, to be frank, not much to do in the park. Music is forbidden. So are alcoholic beverages, bicycles and furniture. A gravel path around the perimeter provides the only opportunity for low-impact play, or, for that matter, running or walking. Ms. Harrison said parents constantly offer to donate playground components for the park, but she won’t have it.

“Too much wear and tear,” she said. “But do you know what? The children who grow up here learn to use their imagination.”

New Yorkers: They’re Just Like Us!

Even people in hip, post-cool Brooklyn line up days in advance for IKEA openings:

The doors to Brooklyn’s new Ikea have yet to open, but the madness has begun.

Shoppers in Red Hook were plotting ways to get their hands on a bargain Friday after hearing thousands of dollars of free furniture would be up for grabs Monday morning.

“I’ll camp two days for a couch,” said student Kashmere Square, 20, when he found out the first 35 customers would receive a $699 sofa, and the next 100 will be rewarded with a $199 armchair.

“It’s cool. I’ll definitely be shopping there. I need a computer stand, a table and chairs.”

Michael Malgonada, 17, quickly called friends to work out how they would take turns to secure a spot at the front of the line.

“For a free sofa from Ikea? [I’ll] definitely [line up],” he said.

“If you have to be 21, I’ll bring somebody older. We’ll do shifts.”

Ikea’s doors officially swing open at 9 a.m. Wednesday, and giveaways will be handed out throughout the day at the 346,000-square-foot store on Beard St.

Annotation: “Ikea Riot” (Gridskipper, February 10, 2005); “Three die in Saudi shop stampede” (BBC, September 1, 2004)

Welcome, Class Of ’08!

New tenement dwellers scraping by in new tenements:

Drinking and eating carry their own complications. Especially if you are, say, Noah Driscoll, a 25-year-old project manager for a Chelsea marketing company whose salary is comparable to what a rookie teacher might make.

“For a little while I only ate grapefruits for my lunch,” said Mr. Driscoll, who pays $400 a month on his college loans, “because they have a lot of nutrients and they got me through the day.”

Mr. Driscoll has since started packing two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch. Dinner might be two baked potatoes. On a recent Monday, it was franks and beans. On a good night, he might spend up to $6.

“To live like a human being on the salary that I make is very difficult in this city,” he said. “You’ve got to forget about brands, you’ve got to forget about, you know, what your mom made you growing up, and take what’s out there.”

Mr. Driscoll’s rent is reasonable: $725 for a room in a converted loft space that he shares with five friends in Gowanus, Brooklyn, near Park Slope. Most of his friends, however, earn far more than he does, and Mr. Driscoll is guilty of that quintessential New York sin: coveting thy neighbor’s salary. One recent night, his roommates went to Peter Luger Steak House. Mr. Driscoll waved them goodbye and stayed home.

. . .

Allison Mooney, 27, whose first job in the city was in publishing, often skipped dinner before going out, and instead took along mixed salted nuts in her purse. When things got really tight, she occasionally sneaked a flask filled with vodka into bars. Other times, she reluctantly resorted to flirting.

“I find in other cities guys are more apt to buy you drinks and expect nothing from it,” Ms. Mooney said.

“Here, if they do buy you a drink, which is rare, you have to suffer through flirtations. It’s true,” she said, adding, “It’s really cheesy.”

. . .

Sarah Avrin, a 23-year-old music publicist, said she was struck recently by the sacrifices that some people make to sustain their New York lifestyle when one of her friends endured the long, painful process of selling her eggs.

Cecily Von Ziegesar Has Blood On Her Hands (Even Though She Neither Invented Nor Popularized Adolescent Bitchery)

Which is to say, when they start imitating Celebrity Rehab, we should talk, but until then:

Life is imitating television on the Upper East Side, where an anonymous eighth-grade girl has founded a gossip Web log modeled after the one that is the backbone of “Gossip Girl.”

While on the TV show the fictional parents and school leaders appear oblivious to the catty Gossip Girl blog, the real-life provocateur, who calls herself Miss ITK (for Miss In The Know), has caused an incredible stir. School hallways are buzzing with the name of her URL; eighth-grade girls across the city are reportedly breaking down in tears, and, in the final climax, an unknown force has pushed the site offline.

Before it was shut down earlier this week, the blog had generated more than 300 comments, with some posters remarking on Miss ITK’s accuracy and others begging her to kill the blog, describing many tears shed and some friendships broken.

Miss ITK chronicled the social lives of what she described as the class of 2012’s “elite A-list.” One post described two girls’ attempts to revamp their images: one through eye-coloring contact lenses and another by dancing suggestively at a bat mitzvah. Another crowned a couple “our very own Queen and King.” Later, a post cataloged the class of 2012’s “A List” and “B List.”

Parents and students said the blog seemed like a deliberate copy of the one that is the heart of “Gossip Girl,” and whose author, Gossip Girl, narrates the show.

Like the television Gossip Girl, Miss ITK had her own signature salutation. On television, it’s “XOXO.” In real life, the line that reverberated with students was “Hello my butterflies.”

New Yorkers Beaten Down Into Submission After Years Of Crazy-Making Alternate-Side Parking Rules

And now they don’t know what to do now that alternate-side parking has been temporarily suspended while the Department of Sanitation replaces street signs this summer:

Park-Anywhere Day arrives Monday, with the indefinite suspension of alternate-side parking rules in Park Slope, and no one knows just what to expect, with bring-it-on bravado and it-can’t-get-any-worse resignation meeting just-you-wait-and-see predictions of the worst. The city announced the suspension in Park Slope this week, to give workers time to change 9,200 parking signs. In the meantime, drivers may park along the curbs of Park Slope without being forced to move their cars as they did up until now, often twice a week for three hours at a stretch.

Rosemary Fine, 47, a coffee shop owner born in Limerick, Ireland, plans to greet the new day in high style.

“I’m going to pop open a bottle of Champagne, sit in my car and celebrate!” she said on Thursday. “What if that’s what all the Park Slopers did on Monday, we went into the streets with Champagne?”

But elsewhere, outrage.

Another seasoned immigrant, Marlyse Henchoz, who did not give her age, stopped sweeping in front of her home and said, “Terrible.”

“Whoever thinks up these schemes, I don’t know what they are thinking,” she said. “That’s why I want to move back to Switzerland. They couldn’t do this. We have referendums and we vote.”

. . .

The Department of Transportation estimates that the suspension will last a few months. So after the Champagne is gone, there will be several lingering questions about what people are and are not allowed to do with their vehicles.

City law prohibits “street storage” of vehicles: “When parking is not otherwise restricted by posted signs, no person shall park any vehicle in any area, including a residential area, in excess of seven consecutive days.”

The police said Thursday that they did not have records of how often such a ticket was written, or how such a violation could even be tracked, short of cumbersome surveillance of every vehicle.

. . .

One benefit of the new signs in Park Slope will be that alternate-side rules will now be in force only 90 minutes once a week, down from three hours and twice a week.

But even that concept seemed to backfire with some residents, like Barat Ellman, 49, a university Bible instructor.

“I work out and plan my work schedule based on car parking,” she said. “Ninety minutes may be too short of a time to be able to get things done and move the car. We’ll see.”