Every time I find myself on Delancey street I have to do a double-take to make sure I'm not on Houston, or even 14th. It sounds foolish, but there are many striking similarities. While the other doppelgangers are far more polished thanks to the past 20 years of gentrification, Delancey still remains a bit rough around the edges. Regina Spektor's song "That Time" has a lyric:

"Hey remember the time when I found a human tooth down on Delancey?"

...which is seems very appropriate, but less and less plausible as time goes on.

While the nearby Tenement Museum celebrates the neighborhood's questionable past, the new SVA Ludlow Residence seem to give a glimpse into the future. A controversial building, the brown-brick-mosaic facade is a strange addition to the skyline. Personally, I don't mind it. It's nice to see something that isn't glass and steel. The blocky structure isn't anything thrilling (It reminds me of a telco headquarters that you'd find in the 1960's – especially with those narrow window columns), but I have to commend the architect for the clever use of color. It certainly doesn't appeal to everyone, but I'll be very interested to see how tastes evolve as time goes by. There are also plenty of complaints about the influx of "snobby art students". I can't comment on that assessment (I was one of said snobby art students), but personally I'd much rather have a group of artists than a group of miscellaneous NYC undergrads.

A block away from the tree-filled oasis of Ave A and Tompkins Square, the decidedly different First Avenue shares only a handful of things in common with it's eastern cousin. While much of the "indy" village feeling it present, the overdevelopment of the past decade or so has left this stretch of blocks looking like a battered line of trendy storefronts, each catering to another fad of the past 10 years.

Cutting right through St. Mark's Place, the street is lined with a rainbow of colorful storefronts–mostly restaurants. A few surprises along the way, such as a used record store, help to remind you that you're in the east village, where a premium is placed on impractical businesses simply for the sake of nostalgia and authenticity.

How is it that a neighborhood generally personified by its unchanging landscape and classic architecture finds itself overtaken by a series of superblocks at the very last moment? These large housing projects feel so utterly out-of-place amongst the shorter tenements that dominate the rest of Alphabet City that it made me wonder whether or not the neighborhood began before or after Avenue A. In a strange way, I would feel better if these buildings weren't considered part of the same neighborhood but rather were simply a block away in a different world.

The middle of this block is home to a classic-looking New York school, P.S. 751, which is also known as the Manhattan School For Career Development. Right next door to the school is McKinley Playground. Now, maybe it's me, but would you name a place of recreation after a man who looked like this? Like several other streets in the area, this wide open block allows for an abundance of street parking, making it feel more like a garage than a street.

As the dizzying rate of gentrification continues along the Bowery, it becomes more and more of a spectacle to watch the changes. Many parts of the historically-depressed Bowery are home to specific industries such as lamps or furniture, or in this case commercial restaurant supplies. In the age of online retailers providing everything you could ever imagine, it's strange to see 10 or 12 shops in a row all selling the same basic supplies – yet here they are. But while old grease traps are being power-washed on the sidewalk for resale, across the street strange buildings such as the New Museum sit as if they had always been there.

South of Houston it's still possible to see remnants of the neighborhood's former self, though they're very quickly being turned over to developers. The past decade has seen the whole area north of Houston transformed into something entirely unrecognizable to anyone who hasn't visited since the early 90's. 

Stranded in a bar-filled wasteland between Houston and 14th Streets, this block has plenty of character, but it seems that decades of relentless commercialization has left it soulless. There's a lot of positive things to be said for the quirkier features here, but at the end of the day you're still looking at a stretch of road that's utterly overrun by bar-hoppers once the weekend comes – demonstrated by those ubiquitous "Please respect our neighbors" signs.

A series of indistinguishable Indian restaurants sit on the south side of the street, which as a fan of curry both excites and confuses me. Is there really so much demand in the neighborhood to warrant three seemingly identical locations? 

I'm a fan of much of the architecture around here, though many of the buildings don't seem too well-cared-for. Some newer apartments can be found, though as to be expected they don't bring much to the table as far as striking physicality goes.

Up until recently this street was just another in a series of nondescript blocks which feed from the Bowery deeper into the East Village. That, however, all changed when the 21-Story Cooper Square Hotel barged its way into the neighborhood. Seeming more at-home in iRobot than the East Village the hotel features a design which, unfortunately, looks like a sore thumb in this location (It's very thumb-like in shape). While the new Cooper Union building two blocks to the north seems to echo this architectural mentality, this one just doesn't feel as good.

The hotel seems unsure of its position in the neighborhood. On one hand, it features a large blank wall which has a rotating body of street art (currently Shepard Fairey)- which at least pays homage to the area's roots. However, the building seems to want to act as an oasis from the street - the very street it appeared to be celebrating. The arrangement of the hotel bar's patio is such that people living in the century-old apartment buildings behind it are now assuming the role of zoo animals: Put on display for the upper-class patrons of the Glass Thumb to gawk at. Perhaps worse than the gawking (they have blinds, dontcha know) is apparently the noise. After opening last summer a war of words, music and dirty laundry began - ending in no resolution as the weather began to chill.

The rest of the block is as one would expect: Quaint, chock-full of trees, and just a teeny bit dirty...but not too much. You can feel the community all around you. By the time you exit onto 2nd Avenue, it's as-if you just walked out of some secret neighborhood no one knows about. I'm rather certain that of the thousands of people who traverse this street every weekend as they make their way from the dive bars on 2nd Ave to the Cooper Square patio from hell, hardly any of them notice the humanity all around.