A long search for a Manhattan home, a surprisingly inexpensive East Village brownstone and memories of Tompkins Square Park.<\/p>\n
By Kathryn Nocerino\u00b7October 12, 2026<\/p>\n
It took me well over a year of dedicated searching to find a residence in Manhattan. I suspect that this journey would take even longer today.<\/p>\n
I did not wish to acquire roommates; I had heard too many horror stories. I also did not wish to find myself inside something that looked and felt like a set from \u201cBlue Velvet.\u201d<\/p>\n
People I meet today with the same goal are clueless. One of them actually asked me what \u201caffordable housing\u201d is. Another was unaware of the United Nations.<\/p>\n
This past week, I heard a TV commentator say that ownership wins over renting. This became apparent to me in the late \u201970s. You do not need a doctorate in economics to realize this. The trouble with ownership is money. Do you have it? Can you borrow it? Can you team up with reliable people?<\/p>\n
Sometimes something really is too good to be true. A while back, the economist David Gordon, who owned a brownstone on the north side of Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, tried to snag me as a neighbor. The building next to his was selling for $6,000. I actually visited it. The former home of a dentist, it still had the chair smack in the center of one room (I wanted it).<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I knew a little too much about the area. A friend rented a huge place on the south side of the park, and I never quite felt secure inside. A hipster paradise, the nabe had businesses like the Psychedelicatessen to the north. It also saw frequent riots conducted by homeless encampments, complete with armed and helmeted police, smudge bombs, etc.<\/p>\n
Everyone living there could routinely expect that his or her home would be tossed at least once, with or without property damage. A guy murdered and cooked his girlfriend, serving the park\u2019s denizens the meal out of a stewpot. Her name was Monica Beerle, and she was a modern dancer from Switzerland. One wag taped a message on the apartment door reading, \u201cIs it soup yet?\u201d<\/p>\n
One year, I enjoyed taking photos of Wigstock. The park served as its original headquarters.<\/p>\n
But somehow, I thought better of it. Now the whole place is gentrified.\u2014Kathryn Nocerino<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A long search for a Manhattan home, a surprisingly inexpensive East Village brownstone and memories of Tompkins Square…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-371718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}