{"id":6443,"date":"2017-06-06T13:14:36","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T18:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=6443"},"modified":"2017-06-06T13:14:36","modified_gmt":"2017-06-06T18:14:36","slug":"the-parc-lincoln-is-now-the-amstrdm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2017\/06\/06\/the-parc-lincoln-is-now-the-amstrdm.html","title":{"rendered":"The Parc Lincoln Is Now The AMSTRDM"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tI just got a call from an evidently incompetent paralegal looking for information about someone living at the Parc Lincoln. She said she found my phone number \u201cthrough the website\u201d. She must have done a web search for the Parc Lincoln, rapid-fire glanced at whatever washed up first on a search engine, then looked for a \u201cContact\u201d link. That’s… kinda weird.<\/p>\n

Strangely enough I was just thinking about the Parc Lincoln last week. I decided to vacate this apartment for the second time in a month to make way for the last stage of a renovation of the bathroom. This turned out to be like a mini-vacation in Brooklyn, where I stayed at a friend\u2019s place for a couple of nights while he was out of town.<\/p>\n

But before settling on the Brooklyn arrangement I looked at Airbnb for the first time. Just for the hell of it I checked to see if there were any rooms available at the good old Parc Lincoln. How interesting it would have been to stay there again, after all these years. Could it still be as bad as I remember? Would roaches still crawl into my mouth as I tried to sleep? Are pigeons still sticking their filthy selves through the windows? Does the elderly woman who lived upstairs from me still get off the elevator on the wrong floor and attempt to open the door to my former room thinking it is hers? Does the worst opera singer that ever lived still squeal out arias like he has any business doing so? And what of the choking, gagging dude across the hall with emphysema? Is he still hacking up internal organs 24 hours a day?<\/p>\n

Alas, as best I could tell there was nothing listed at the old Parc Lincoln. Still, looking at other availabilities around NYC opened some intriguing possibilities to keep in mind for future jaunts.<\/p>\n

Prices for NYC rooms through Airbnb are all over the place, as are the characteristics of the accommodations. For $44 a night I could have rented a single bed in a place shared with up to 8 other people. Or for hundreds of dollars a night I could have rented relatively palatial multi-room apartments. For $50 a night I could have rented what looks suspiciously like the building in which I lived for a couple of years up in Inwood, on Broadway at 216th Street. For even less than that ($42 a night) I could have scored a room in what is definitely the Washington Heights building where I lived for about a year in 1992. That place abutted the George Washington Bridge, traffic from which produced an endless river of noise.<\/p>\n

I lived at the Parc Lincoln for about 9 months. That was 26 years ago. That span of time partly accounts for how random it feels to get a seemingly genuine inquiry about the place, and from an apparently legitimate law firm at that. I don\u2019t think this is some kind of phone-phishing scheme. Nevertheless I do have to question what decision making process went through the mind of the person who contacted me thinking I had any knowledge of the building or its residents.<\/p>\n

To revisit my memories of the Parc Lincoln I did what that misdirected law firm worker did. I hit up the search engines. It appears that the building has finally been converted to something more hospitable after years of failed attempts by various real estate developers to shed the property of its SRO past. As of late 2015 the place is now called The AMSTRDM. At this moment it looks like apartment #304, which should be down the hall from where I used to live, is available for $2,630\/month. That\u2019s a long way from the weekly rent of $90<\/a> I paid for the closet-sized Room 317<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Cityrealty

Cityrealty Listings for 166 West 75th St., June 6, 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

I would think that the tiny Room 317<\/a> that I knew has either been merged with adjacent units or turned into a utility closet. There might not even be a Room 317 anymore.<\/p>\n

In the third-to-last paragraph of this story<\/a>, which is mostly about another hotel in Los Angeles, the author references my comments about a sign in the shared bathroom that was down the hall from my room. That sign implored Parc Lincoln residents not to urinate or defecate in the sink.<\/p>\n

At the moment the web site for The AMSTRDM<\/a> does not convey a particularly classy vibe. Maybe that is by some kind of grand design, a nostalgic attempt to evoke the spirit of what it was like living at the Parc Lincoln. It\u2019s a dead end:<\/p>\n

\"AMSTRDMNYC.COM\"

AMSTRDMNYC.COM<\/p><\/div>\n

If Yelp reviews<\/a> are to be believed then it would appear that the renovation of the AMSTRDM has not been much of an improvement. One- and two-star reviews describe the place as \u201cdungeon like\u201d with frequent water outages and elevator malfunctions. It can\u2019t be as dismal as when I lived there but those reviews make it sound pretty close.<\/p>\n

From WalterGrutchfield.net<\/a> I learn for the first time that the place was built in 1922, and called the New Emerson Hotel. According to this advertisement from the October 7, 1922, edition of the New York Times<\/em> the building originally offered a \u201cPrivate Bath with Every Room\u201d, a luxury not available to me unless you count the sink.<\/p>\n

\"New

New York Times Ad for New Hotel Emerson<\/p><\/div>\n

Plans to convert the building into a hospital never panned out. In 1959 the name of the building changed from Emerson to the Hotel Lincoln Square. I was actually never clear when I was there about whether the building was officially called Hotel Lincoln Square or Parc Lincoln. If my receipts are any indication it might be that the name of the place changed in 1991. My receipts from 1990 said \u201cHotel Lincoln Square<\/a>\u201d while receipts from January, 1991 going forward said \u201cParc Lincoln<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Memories of the Crap Lincoln do not torment me like they used to. Years after I moved out the lobby of the building was converted into a nice restaurant called \u2018Cesca. I had dinner there once<\/a> in 2011. I kept looking at the ceiling of \u2018Cesca, wondering if the lives being lived just 15 feet above this luxurious dining environment were as tortured as mine was in 1990 and 1991. I hope not.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just got a call from an evidently incompetent paralegal looking for information about someone living at the Parc Lincoln. She said she found my phone number \u201cthrough the website\u201d. She must have done a web search for the Parc Lincoln, rapid-fire glanced at whatever washed up first on a search engine, then looked for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[75,406],"class_list":["post-6443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-181-2","tag-amstrdm","tag-parc-lincoln","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/cityrealty-166-west-75th-listings-1024x444-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C444&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-1FV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}