The desirables, who began to come back to New York in great numbers, made their headquarters east of Fifth. Lexington Avenue, though one of the narrowest, soon became the East Side's main drag, for many reasons. First, it has more hotels than any other, many of them new, modern and varied in prices. The subway runs under it. Furthermore, both Madison and Park are restricted as to types of window displays and advertising, and electric signs are, as on Fifth Avenue, prohibited. Third Avenue is still encumbered by the elevated railroad, the only one not torn down to make way for progress, and Second and First Avenues are not only too far east, but are dingy and slummy. So Lexington is beginning to take on the attributes of a Main Street. It has all-night restaurants and lunch stands, all-night drugstores, and most of the better night clubs are no more than two blocks away, east or west. Meanwhile, more and more chorus gals and show people, dispossessed by soldiers, sailors and bus-hoppers who have taken over the traditional theatrical hotels near Broadway, are moving to moderate-priced hotels on Lexington, and the Belmont Plaza lobby and drugstore are camping grounds where you can find that blonde, second from the left--the best pick-up spot in New York. In this eastward move to Lexington is a less glamorous aspect, as the streetwalkers followed in the wake of lonely men. You can see them, afternoon or evening, on the east side of Lexington, from 42nd Street to 57th--swinging big purses and whatever else they have to swing. Whereas the $5 sisters in sin have inherited Broadway, these are $10-and-upwards snobs. Another malodorous phase, which now seems the complementary concomitant of a big-town highway, is the horde of homosexuals who adopted it as their midway. They parade with mincing steps in pairs and trios up both sides of the avenue. Some are blondined, some act "masculine," Negroes mix with white ones, all on the make for strangers. Gotham's hard-boiled and efficient, but sadly under-manned, police force does its best to keep these misconceived creatures off the streets and out of bars, but there are so many drinking places on the avenue--in some cases ten to a block--it is impossible to make more than token arrests, of the most flagrant cases. The fame of Third Avenue, a block to the east, is so frequently sung these days in fiction and the movies, that it is not necessary to tell you much about it, except that the so-called sophisticated set has taken over its dingy, old-fashioned saloons under the "El" with the homey Irish names, and driven their former patrons, calloused sons of the pick and hod, far away and muttering. Here it is considered ultrasmart to drink at a bar where a self-respecting dock-walloper can't afford the new prices.