Upper West Side Tots Get Mad Play

A tenant war broke out recently when one Upper West Side co-op was considering taking a common area and fancifying it into a new playroom for the buildings' kids, nowadays apparently too good to just hide inside the Hamburglar's Head all day. The spat pitted the classic battle of Mommies versus Bodies, the contingent of self-improving residents who wanted to put in a gym. Throw in one crank calling to "get rid of it! It’s a waste of money and it’s taking up storage space that we need," add a touch of winning rhetoric on the parents' part that apparently included an "Obamaesque way of phrasing things," and it sounds like a classic battle in yuppieland. Apparently this kind of madness is becoming more common in the high-stakes world of children's playrooms in buildings, which can cost up to six figures and include amenities such as trapezes(!).