May 18, 2003 - When business took me to New York earlier this year, I decided to avoid the usual tourist spots in interesting-but-predictable Midtown Manhattan. 

I chose an old section of New York that has stood for years as a national symbol of urban decay. Sort of like Detroit, without the front lawns. 

But just as Detroit has many charms that belie its bad reputation, this New York neighborhood -- so I had heard -- is bouncing back from years of high crime and abandonment. 

That was why I found myself leaving the southbound F train and emerging from the subway along East Houston Street on the Lower East Side one afternoon. 

I was looking for my hotel. The first thing I saw was a really ugly vacant lot. I had second thoughts. I thought of New York magazine's description of the old Lower East Side, where "expiring hipsters would quietly drink themselves to death in downtown's last-ditch demimonde of derelict, drug-laden depravity." 

Almost immediately, though, the neighborhood began to grow on me. 

I noticed how New York City looks different on the Lower East Side. There are no skyscrapers, and you can see large expanses of sky as you walk along Houston (pronounced HOWston). Looking uptown, I could see the distant spire of the Empire State Building, which was bathed in green light after dark. 

The New Yorkers on the sidewalks here look like they work for a living, maybe even with their hands. The neighborhood is worn and even shabby in spots, and there is little of the glitter or the glitterati you see in other sections of town. 

I could see that the area had changed. Thirty years ago, I spent a few nights in a friend's apartment on the Lower East Side. I remember junkies, trashy streets and cockroaches in the kitchen. 

This time, I was struck by the energy and creative spirit. The area is a jumble of small shops, discount outlets, art galleries, busy bars and tempting restaurants. True, what is happening seems like the G Word -- gentrification -- but the transformation has not reached critical mass. For the moment, the Lower East Side is a neighborhood whose streets are partly mean, partly radical chic, partly hip, partly working class. 

The landscape of five-story apartment buildings -- fronted by zigzagging fire escapes -- is enhanced by the tangible sense of living history: The neighborhood is more than 150 years old, and pre-Civil War synagogues sit around the corner from buildings sporting Puerto Rican flags, next to stores selling the latest in Italian ice cream. 

Since the 1850s, the Lower East Side has been one of the principal portals through which Italians, Russians, Romanians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Hungarians and Poles entered the New World. 

By the turn of the last century, the area became the unofficial capital of Jewish America. The arts and radical politics flourished. Famous residents included Jimmy Durante, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and the Marx Brothers. 

Today, the American Dream continues to play out before your eyes, as Latino and Asian immigrants stake out their lives among the old landmarks, and New Yorkers of all persuasions frequent the stylish new joints. 

Most interestingly, in this petri dish of social experimentation, this outpost of the avant-garde, this ancestral home of poets, squatters, performance artists and anarcho-syndicalists there is the ultimate oasis of Middle America. 

A new Howard Johnson. 

I booked a room. The price was $109 a night, a tremendous bargain for New York. 

The six-story hotel, on the corner of Houston and Forsyth, appears cramped from the street. The lobby is tiny, and I opened the door to my room with apprehension. It was barely bigger than the bed, but clean, quiet and comfortable, a great deal for someone planning to use it only at night, for sleeping. It brought to mind the old saying, "You get what you pay for." 

I quickly went out to explore the neighborhood. 

Next to Hojo is the Yonah Shimmel Knish Bakery. Since 1910 it has turned out the traditional doughy pastries filled with everything from chocolate to mushrooms. 

The knishery was only the beginning of the food adventure of the Lower East Side. Within a short walk of Hojo along East Houston was Oliva, an intimate spot specializing in the Txangurro (crab stew) and carajillo (liqueur coffee) from the Basque region of Spain. And nearby was the 89-year-old Russ & Daughters Appetizers, a white-tiled store -- staffed by employees dressed in white coats -- selling smoked salmon, chopped liver, herring, caviar, olives, sardines, whitefish and sturgeon. A clipping from a guidebook pasted on the window called it "the epitome of an old-time smoked fish emporium." 

There also was Berket, a 24-hour Turkish kebob house, a pizza place and a Mexican restaurant. Some Middle Eastern restaurants could have been in Dearborn, but Pomme-Pomme reminded of nothing I had ever seen: A snack palace devoted to Belgian french fries and other munchies. 

Nearby was a Japanese restaurant and a 24-hour dispensary of hot bagels, and, on the corner of Houston and Orchard, one of the Lower East Side's treasures, Katz's. 

Katz's, which opened in 1888, claims to be the oldest deli in New York. A man at a turnstile hands tickets to customers upon entering, and a waitress throws the menu down in front of you in a world-weary way. Katz's brags that it takes 30 days to cure its corned beef, so I ordered a $10.50 sandwich. "You got it, hon," she said. It was the definitely the best $10.50 corned beef sandwich I ever had. There are pickled tomatoes and two kinds of pickles on the table. 

A sign marks where Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan sat during Ryan's famous fake orgasm scene in the film, "When Harry Met Sally," although I didn't see anything marking the spot where undercover FBI agent Johnny Depp met a fellow fed in "Donnie Brasco." 

I did more than eat. 

A couple of doors from Hojo is the five-screen Sunshine Cinema, a beautifully renovated vaudeville theater. I saw the critically acclaimed film "Adaptation" at a late-night showing. Many of my neighbors were laughing extra heartily at the inside jokes about screenwriters. It was if they were screenwriters themselves, which was possible, as this was New York. 

As everywhere in New York, the Lower East Side is great for wandering. On Clinton, I passed the Freakatorium, a museum of weird objects from sideshows like shrunken heads and photos of dog-faced boys, run by a sword swallower. On Stanton I passed the Living Room, a small performance space where multiple-Grammy winner Nora Jones launched her career. I passed the local Kinko's, decorated with a grillwork sculpture. I saw shoes tied together, hanging from a street sign. I think it was art. 

At 97 Orchard, near Broome, I toured one of the neighborhood's most unusual buildings, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. It tells the neighborhood's master narrative, the story of immigrants becoming Americans. 

I saw and felt and smelled the cramped, humid, almost suffocating world of our forebears who lived and worked in this five-story brick building built by Lucas Glockner, a German-born tailor, in 1863, years before indoor plumbing, electric lights and modern housing laws. 

Between 1863 and 1935, about 7,000 people from more than 20 countries passed through 97 Orchard. The apartments could be home to as many as 15 people and averaged about 325 square feet. 

The guide on my tour was Peter McDermott, an immigrant himself, from Dublin, Ireland. Well informed and entertaining, McDermott told us stories about one family, the Levines, Russian Jews who lived here for 15 years late in the 19th Century. 

Some of the Levines worked in the garment industry, assembling clothing in their apartments, pressing them with 18-pound irons 10 hours a day, six days a week. "It was appalling work," McDermott said. 

The homes of these immigrants were essentially sweatshops, and as we walked down the stoop onto Orchard, McDermott pointed out nearby buildings where white steam coming out of exhaust pipes shows where immigrants are working in sweatshops today. 

Around this old building is the new Lower East Side: A gallery, a fancy shoe store and Il Laboratorio de Gelato, an Italian ice cream store with an in-house lab that invents new flavors. A dish of prune-Armangac, anyone? 

Around the corner, on Broome Street, I ducked into Lolita Bar for a beer. It's a dark, comfortable place with brick walls and mellow music, but with no discernable connection to Vladimir Nabokov's young temptress. The owners, it turned out, are immigrants, too -- from Michigan: Clyde Rennie, of Howard City, and Katie Kutscher, of Grosse Pointe. 

"I've lived in the Lower East Side for four years," Kutscher said. "It's totally groovy. You won't see a Gap or Starbucks, but a lot of mom-and-pop stores. We have a close-knit community. We're the last neighborhood in Manhattan that hasn't gone commercial." 

I hesitated to tell her about Hojo, but she was basically right: You can find Gap stores and other brand names in neighboring Soho and Greenwich Village, but the Lower East Side -- for the time being -- remains a throwback to a less corporate and funkier America. This ain't no Disneyland. The Lower East Side is not for everyone. But if you are a frequent visitor to New York, and you've been to the top of the Empire State Building, I'd highly recommend the view from East Houston and Forsyth. 

For more information on Manhattan's Lower East Side, go to www.lowereastsideny.com , the neighborhood chamber of commerce. 

-----To see more of the Detroit Free Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.freep.com 

(c) 2003, Detroit Free Press. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. CD,