PARK AVENUE SOUTH

In recent decades a forgotten stretch between Midtown and the start of Downtown (a/k/a Union Square), this expansive boulevard is today a frenzied real estate scene, an enclave of creative businesses (modeling agencies, PR firms, ad agencies, publishing houses), happening big-box restaurants (Barbounia, Asellina, and Dos Caminos, to name three), chic hotels (W New York, the Giraffe, the Gansevoort Park with its own rooftop bar cum swimming pool, etc.) and converted condos occupied by hip young careerists who fill the see-and-be-seen street scene through the day and well into the night with casual-chic style. In other words, on-the-go Park Avenue South—neither as traditionally elegant as the Upper East Side nor as relentlessly hipster-driven as Williamsburg—is an updated slice of quintessential, career-driven New York, our very own Boulevard St. Germain just minutes from the Empire State Building.