It was finally a beautiful morning worthy of Spring today, so I stepped out for an early morning stroll around the neighborhood on my own. It being Memorial Day weekend ... or maybe it was just symptomatic of the early hour ... the streets were pleasantly bereft of traffic. You could leisurely walk down the middle of the road without fear of being run over by a car, bus or dreaded Citibike.
But as I was soaking up the open air on Astor Place, my eyes kept getting fixed on the new office complex (alternately referred to as "The Death Star" or a number of suitably ominous variations thereof). I couldn't stop myself from taking the picture above as I crossed over to St. Marks Place.
It seems like only yesterday that the block it now occupies was a flattened, open space, ringed with a fence speckled with the strenuously idealistic IMAGINE A PARK HERE! sticker campaign. An open patch of green grass sure would have been preferable to what stands there now.
I walked down St. Marks, snapping a few other pics, but remained keenly aware of the looming building behind me, which now stares down at St. Marks in silent anticipation. Everyone seems resigned to it now, but just wait. For lack of a better analogy, it's like a cliched sci-fi movie. The gigantic alien spacecraft has landed alright, but it hasn't yet completely lowered its doors. We're still waiting for the giant, steely, shiny egg to hatch.
If you think it's an eyesore now, just wait until the hundreds and hundreds of sharply tailored office drones, hedge funders, marketing executives and social media entrepreneurs move in and the gigantic facility becomes fully operational. What will that mean for St. Marks and the surrounding neighborhood? Will, say, Trash & Vaudeville experience a robust uptick in tartan bondage-pants sales? Will Sounds be flooded with new requests for out-of-print albums? Will Gem Spa need to hire extra staff to meet the Egg Cream demands?
We'll see.
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