There a few people in New York who don't care for the recently opened phase II section of the hugely popular High-Line park. Its neighbors.
The New York Post reports today that a few residents living next to the High-Line feel like they're 'zoo animals'--their private lives on display as crowds pass by on the elevated walkway.
"Its absolutely horrible!" Ronni McFadden, who lives in an apartment eye-level to the park at West 23rd Street and Tenth Avenue, told the Post.
"People take pictures and wave at you when you're alone in your home. We have to keep dark shades up all the time. It's voyeuristic, and there's zero privacy. It's just really embarrassing."
Voyeurism, however, has long been a feature of the High-Line. The Standard Hotel, which straddles the walkway, has boasted before that its room's floor to ceiling windows "offer direct views to your most intimate moments." Meatpacking District resident, Ricky Sterling, told New York Magazine, "I’ve seen men and women, women and women, men and men [in the windows],” he says. “Lights, leather, chains. Everything.”
And in 2009, Shannon Brickner, who worked at a boutique on West 13th Street, told the Post that once in a Standard Hotel window she saw "a naked girl jumping up and down on a trampoline right in front of the window."
High Line spokeswoman Kate Lindquist told the Post that the park's creators "sympathize with those few who may feel they live a little too close. This is one of those tough issues that comes up when you're introducing new green space in a dense, urban environment like New York City."
Of course, lack of privacy is an issue everywhere else in New York as well, and as Gothamist notes sarcastically, "Surely this must be the only place on the quaint island of Manhattan where such squalid living conditions exist."
For more details and reactions, go to the Post.