Rossie Turman   (interview 1999 photo 1999)

   Rossie Turman, a graduate of Columbia Law, is a corporate lawyer at Skadden Arps. While attending Columbia and living near the law school, he visited the Cloisters, and so was first introduced to the neighborhood in which he now lives. What follows are some of Rossie's comments on the buying process and the area.

   "Immediately after the bar, when I first started looking, my first stop was actually Hudson Heights . . . I had a pretty good understanding of real estate in the City before then . . .

   "I really bought because of the neighborhood. That was the driving factor . . . The apartment you can change, it's just how much money you want to spend . . . For an apartment, you want to have a certain amount of space, which I got, a pretty good-sized one-bedroom . . . I was much more focused on the neighborhood itself and then, the building itself . . . what I felt about how the building was going to be taken care of.

   "I'm a West Coast boy . . . I really like the pace of New York, but I like the openness, the natural beauty of the West Coast, and in the Hudson Heights area, anyone who makes a quick trip up to Fort Tryon, you forget you're in New York.

   "Sometimes you want to get a feel of the neighborhood, some of the vibrancy, and for that you have to drop down to 181st, catch people shopping . . . kind of get a different feel, the mix of cultures and stuff. That's nice.

   "I've done two or three roof-top brunches during the summer, when it was warmer, and they're a lot of fun. I've also had evening get-togethers, five or six times across the summer and had a decent amount who would make the trek, some of them begrudgingly. But then, once they get up there, they're like, 'Oh, it wasn't that bad,' and one of them came as far as way out in Brooklyn (laughs). That was a haul!

   "One of the things that was concerning me when I was looking was just really how long it takes . . . Your problem is if you come on the weekend by train. You know the trains will just break your heart sometimes on the platform. But once you get on the train, the "A" will move across Manhattan. I think from our stop at 181st to Fulton, which is the last stop in Manhattan . . . I timed it . . . thirty-five minutes."