The Park where Cheryl Barnes sang...

I think it may be Washington Square Park but it doesn't look like that anymore.

It is Washington Square Park. Here is a YouTube link with the scene from the movie along with a story of the day they filmed the scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmAj4Y8hC-c

Washington Square Park. Mostly shot facing east dead ending on Broadway near Tower Records, showing to the right the doorman elevator building where my uncle's aunt in 1985 paid less than $350/mo for a high floor rent stabilized alcove studio with a sunken living room, arched entry to the bedroom alcove, windowed kitchen, and a huge cast iron casement window with spectacular unobstructed views of the Con Ed clock tower on Irving Place and 14th Street - click here to see that tower:

https://cornerbycorner.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/conedtower.jpg

I believe also this was the building where former mayor Ed Koch famously had a rent stabilized apartment (penthouse?) which he refused to give up. Under New York rent stabilization law he'd only be allowed to sublet two years, or otherwise not use it for his primary residence for two years, but as an elected official - or maybe as MAYOR - he may have somehow avoided that. Or maybe that's why he wound up moving to a coop at #2 Fifth Avenue, I can't quite remember.

What I DO remember, and remember every time I see this Cheryl Barnes scene, is that when my uncle's aunt died he said I should try to get her apartment by saying I was a relative (which I was).

I was only 24, naive and pretty excited. But I was in for a rude awakening. Life wasn't like "Friends" (in that sitcom, Monica inherits that apartment from her grandmother, which is impossible, only if she'd lived at least two years with her grandmother in it would she have had any claim). My uncle's aunt's body had barely left the building before the managing agent was alerted by the doormen. What happened to that apartment?

The building was owned by New York University. I later met someone who was a higher up in NYU's real estate department who told me that to skirt rent stabilization laws NYU gives their prime low rent apartments to faculty as inducements (presumably taking the difference between the low and market rent out of their salaries).

"Easy To Be Hard?" More like "Hard To Be Easy."

* THE MORE YOU KNOW *