UWS locals fear neighborhood is becoming a trailer park

 The Upper West Side is facing a new scourge: trailers. Recently a few trailers have been spotted parked around the neighborhood casting fear into the hearts of well-heeled residents and local activists.

“Why is this ugly piece of junk here?” Gretchen Berger, an area activist, asked, referring to an old RV parked at Riverside Drive and 74th Street. “It just sort of creeps me out that somebody is living in a parking space, and this may give rise to other people thinking that it’s a cheap way to live on the Upper West Side, where the rents are high. Is Manhattan going to become a trailer park?”

But when confronted, the trailer’s resident, Queens-born Rabbi Steve Blumberg, had a very different take on his presence in the neighborhood:

“If you want a gated community, you should live in Creedmoor [Psychiatric Center],” he told the New York Post. “Otherwise-liberal West Siders have very serious middle-class scruples about what should or should not be in their neighborhood.”

However, leaving a mobile home on a city street for more than 24 hours is illegal, a Department of Transportation spokesperson told the Post.  [NYP] –Christopher Cameron