Where political extremes come together in the weirdest of ways

Leave it to the Lower East Side to have the ultimate architectural paradox: a statue of Vladimir Lenin gracing the top of a luxury apartment building. What a way to bring old-school immigrant politics and current gentrification together.

The LES is all about the smallest quirks, the tiniest details that can escape your eye if you keep your head down and your I-pod earbuds in. There's street art everywhere, ancient 19th century advertisements peeling off tenement walls, and Stars of David engraved on buildings that now house Chinese bakeries and Hispanic hair salons.

One of my favorite oddities of this neighborhood can only be glimpsed if you lift your eyes skyward at the corner of Avenue A and East Houston Street, to the top of a 13-story apartment building called Red Square.

It was built in 1989, the same year as the fall of the Berlin Wall, by urban developer and former NYU professor of radical sociology Michael Rosen. Atop it stands Lenin, hero of many Eastern European immigrant workers who started promising, but underpaid/overworked lives in this neighborhood. Paradox much? Check out Lenin's stance. He is raising his right arm in the direction of Wall Street, a "**** you" to the triumphant capitalists of the late 1980s. Such defiance becomes more confusing with the building's purpose as a luxury apartment complex. I love this part of town.