I would agree that the author should be careful not to stereotype new residents as unfriendly and uninterested in the neighborhood. That mugging was nothing unusual. The circle of progress. Its a little spot decorated like a living room in a very nice apartment, and they serve top-notch cocktails. I raised two daughters here. The Upper West Side, or UWS as it is often abbreviated, is a large neighborhood or series of smaller adjacent neighborhoods in northern Manhattan, extending from 59 th Street northward to 110 th Street, with Central Park to the east and the Hudson River to the west. As an 80s kid, the name cracked me up, it sounded so dated, and even then I could see they where from another time, and I appreciated that. I know Im not imagining it existed. .) After fire damage temporarily shut down the place earlier this year, e's Bar is back in business, boasting new banquettes and the . Hey, Scooter Stan, they are often a pain in the neck. They have an enormous scotch selection, a large number of snifters, and plenty of Irish and American whiskey as well. .css-gdccrc{font-family:var(--chakra-fonts-condensed);font-weight:700;font-size:1rem;line-height:0.9;letter-spacing:0.08em;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-0);margin-left:var(--chakra-space-0);margin-right:var(--chakra-space-0);margin-bottom:var(--chakra-space-0);text-transform:uppercase;}@media screen and (min-width: 20rem){.css-gdccrc{line-height:0.9;}}@media screen and (min-width: 23.4375rem){.css-gdccrc{line-height:0.9;}}@media screen and (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-gdccrc{line-height:1;}}Bryan Kim & Matt Tervooren.css-1a7ccww{font-family:var(--chakra-fonts-body);font-weight:400;margin:var(--chakra-space-0);padding:var(--chakra-space-0);font-size:0.6875rem;letter-spacing:0.1em;line-height:1;text-transform:uppercase;}@media screen and (min-width: 37.5rem){.css-1a7ccww{font-size:0.75rem;letter-spacing:0.12em;}}October 4, 2018. But I had to wear my old prescriptions and couldnt see very well. And it was where I chose to live when I moved to Manhattan from Canarsie in 1972. I remember Charivari well. Social workers divided the block into three play sectors, with adults playing volleyball, teenagers playing inside at a youth center, and younger children the east end. Six months later, the Times declared that the problem had been managed: Worst Is Over on West 84th Street. The solution was depopulation and destruction: The Department of Real Estate reported that 709 families had moved or been relocated from buildings due to give way for new schools. Only then it was called slum clearance and urban renewal. On that very block in 1972 (probably two years before my mugging), a 10-year-old boy named Jimmy Wallace was found in the hallway of his apartment house with stab wounds in his back and neck. This reminds me that the loan sharks and drug dealers never left the city, only they now dress in corporate suits and lobby for loopholes in D.C. instead of paying off morally corrupt citizens in dilapidated buildings. 5) There was a little magazine stand on the west side of street around Columbus and 83 or 84 was it called Johnnys? Probably the first high-end shop on Amsterdam Ave. Upper West Sider here. With a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other, and various critical parts of his body glued to a dark-haired woman with whom he is ostensibly dancing, Michael Barrett looks . DSNY 'Snow Alert' Runs From Monday at 4PM to Tuesday at 9AM; Here's What it Means Dog Slips From Collar and Runs 34 Blocks in Traffic; Wait Till You See Where She Ends Up (1982) Bodega 88 Night Clubs Bars Brew Pubs (19) 8.6 Website (212) 799-1602 573 Columbus Ave New York, NY 10024 CLOSED NOW 2. Rescued Estates, before the "Crazy Landlord" rented the place to The Bean coffee shop. Kyle: When I moved here, the hotspot was 8 th Avenue between 14 th and 23rd. There are cocktail bars with live music, lots and lots of sports bars, and wine bars with people on first, second, and fiftieth dates. Loved growing up there. Japanese. Sadly, the older residents are slowly dying off and being replaced by younger couples who only stay two or three years. Find next available. Left for dead, he lived, the only surviving victim of a serial killer who prowled the neighborhood for a year. Im trying to remember the name of the bar/restaurant that opened in the late 70s/1980 on the corner of 79th and Columbus with the funeral parlor next door (in the space where Laura Ashley once was located) and in the old building before the skyscraper apartment building went up. November 24, 2013 | 1:16 PM - Updated on June 5, 2022 | 11:30 PM, Womens History: Augusta Stetson and the Church at 96th Street and Central Park West, WEST-PARK CHURCH LEADERS WIN VOTE, PLEDGE TO REVITALIZE BUILDING, WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN: COLD SHADOWS, ANCIENT OBELISKS, A MASSIVE MENORAH, & CHRISTOPHER WALKEN, A TRIO OF JUILLIARD PERFORMANCES ON MONDAY (SPONSORED). The destruction and construction took years, leaving behind rubble that became at-hand weaponry for kids and gangsters and boarded-up tenements that became crime sites and drug dens. Yorkville, Upper East Side Manhattan in the 1980's, all photos by Gary Lenhart. Imagine such a thing today. You want to watch sports with some friends, and maybe share a couple pitchers of beer - ideally something other than Hoegaarden or Goose Island. Get some house cocktails at the bar, and if you end up wanting a break from the music (or you come before the music starts), hang out at one of the sidewalk tables out front. Ernies, and the best pizza parlor in the city, Vinnys on Amsterdam between 73 and 74th. Another location of The Mermaid Inn, another perfect first date spot. There was a reason Verdi park was called Needle Park. Start your risk free trial with unlimited access. I have lived on the UWS side (I rent) and I have no plans of moving to a big house in the burbs. 1) Frusen Gldj. You make it sound like the wild west which it was not. That room and the first-come first-served bar area both have lots of TVs playing games at high volume, but what really sets Blondies apart from other sports bars is the food. The space is about the size of a studio apartment, so we wouldnt recommend bringing a group, but its a decent place to watch sports alone or with a friend, especially before 7pm when drinks are half off. Further back, in the 50s and 60s there was food-o-Rama, Daitch Shopwell, Nedicks, Orange Julius, and so many mom and pop shops. Arts & Entertainment. That one of NYC's best sushi restaurants would also be among its most expensive is mostly expected, but it was surprising when . It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. It went badly. A fellow life-long UWSer and Harvard doctoral student. In Lyfords celebrated 1966 account of the Upper West Sides decline, The Airtight Cage, he writes of the airmail that landed in the backyard of his brownstone on 92nd between Columbus and Central Park West from the windows of the row of tenements on 93rd street: My first introduction to airmail was a bag of rotten food that landed in my back yard a week after I bought the house.. . Also The Golden Pan restaurant, Levy Bros Stationers, Universal Health Center, the New Yorker Theater and, upstairs, the New Yorker Bookshop. I bet your cute daughter will look back at this decade as the magical Upper West Side, like you remember. That is the ambiguous power of nostalgia, as the jagged recollection of hitting a tiny child with a bicycle still has the power to catch like a rusted nail four decades later and open a fresh wound. Vanguard is one of the best first-date spots on the Upper West Side. On the first morning after I arrived I saw a man murdered in broad daylight in the Village. the 90s were considered pretty scary back then, but the 70s and 80s were lovely. Tiny place, sweet lady from down south. Amsterdam Ale House plays sports on a few TVs, but it feels less like a sports bar and more like a casual neighborhood spot than any other place on this stretch of Amsterdam Ave. Also, there are many Duane Reades and banks, but the claim that almost every mom-and-pop business has been shuttered is simply false. Those were the days. That said, its equally good for a drink with a few coworkers, or a catch-up with a friend. I was mugged the one time I walked from Broadway and 80th to Columbus and 80th because I crossed Amsterdam Ave. and went east on the block. All the small stores have had to vacate once their leases were up and the rents were jacked up to unaffordable rents. Vin sur Vingt | Best Things to Do Upper West Side. Today the Upper West Side is cleaner with higher rents and upwardly mobile folk who seem to rent for a couple of years before buying big houses in Montclair or Maplewood. They have an enormous scotch selection, a large number of snifters, and plenty of Irish and American whiskey as well. Friday's location on the Upper East Side. St. James Gate is very much an Irish pub, but not in a cheesy kind of way. They had delicious burgers. I grew up on riverside drive at 104 street. Named after the famous landmark apartment building nearby, The Dakota Bar possesses a vibrant energy all of its' own. They are socializing, flirting, establishing their creds in a nice middle-class neighborhood BEFORE they have to get on that subway once again and go home to a neighborhood which may or may not be as sparkly-shiny as the UWS and, for anyone between 12 and 25, very possibly gang-ridden and dangerous. My building was surrounded by SROs; one on 92nd btwn Riverside and West End, one directly across the street from us and one on 92nd btwn Broadway and Amsterdam. New York, in general became much safer when Rudy Guilliani became mayor, and even more so under Mayor Bloomberg. Another one had South American clothes but the name has vanished from mind. "Ever since I moved out of my parents' house in Astoria to live in the city, I've always lived within the same two or three blocks of the Upper West Side. Upper West Side Perfect For: First/Early in the Game Dates $$$$ 424 Amsterdam Avenue, New York Earn 3X Points Caledonia is, above all, a whiskey bar. . Lyford then dumped the refuse over his fence onto the concrete apron outside the offending tenements so that their superintendent could collect it, bag it, and leave it for the garbage men. I recall the Woolworth on 98th st, with its food counter and spinning stools, their comfy turquoise cushions and steel bases bolted to the checkered tile floor. I only have one photo taken on the street in the1970s but I do remember alot of the old stores. Back in the days prostitues freely roamed Broadway, drug addicts shot up in our basement, wed look out our living room window And see prostitues making their deals. This live HD webcam overlooks the cityscape and Coolsingel, a major street in the city centre of Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands, as shown on the map further down the page. Rubell's maxim: "The key to a good party is filling a room . Sure there were some muggings (mostly stealing our bus passes) but nothing serious. This has always been a congenial neighborhood. The broken windows theory propounded by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in 1983 has entered into the realm of clichthe idea that if you dont replace a broken window on an abandoned building, more of the windows will be broken and the area around them will decay as well. To read a similar account of growing up in the 30s and 40s, click here. My car was broken into 3 times in my first year here. May 6, 2009. Today: About 90% of the mom and pop stores on Broadway between 91st and 85th St. have closed. Over the course of the next four years, 20 houses on the block would be demolished and replaced with a high school named for Louis Brandeis and a relocated elementary school. What else. Neil Simon movie and yes a movie, but does show the charm and grit of the 70s. As first Columbus Avenue, then Broadway, and finally Amsterdam Avenue began to gentrify we were gratified to witness a steadily improving quality of life, but sidewalks teem[ing] with alcoholic homeless and residents knew to be inside their locked apartments by nightfall? However, the Upper West Side has a higher percentage of housing that falls between $500 and $6000 per month, while the Upper East Side has more housing above $9000. In the photo, the corner shop on 73rd was an upholstery shop, and aside from the (not so good) pizza shop, I cant remember any other store on that side of the street as being memorable. A fine and forgotten 1975 book by Barbara Gelb called On the Track of Murderit reads like a nonfiction version of Ed McBains glorious 49-year series of police procedurals about the 87thPrecinct, a lightly disguised version of the real-life 24th Precinct on the Upper West Sidetells the story of the homicide squad formed to catch Charlie Chop-off. The SROS were filled with mentally ill people. The doormen were alert and ready to menace unwelcome visitors with a baseball bat. Three conservative synagogues in a 15-block radius from 100th Street to 86th Street had fallen into decrepitude and near-dormancy. 114 tips and reviews. Columbus and Amsterdam avenues were to be avoided though we had to cross them to hang out in Central Parkmostly by the fountain. I finally made the right connection when I discovered several glass ampules and hypodermic needles. Does anyone remember a clothing store on Amsterdam Avenue around 75th Street that was huge, with floor-to-ceiling windows, that catered mainly to gay men back in the 1980s? Abandoned West Side Highway, circa 1980. We were absolutely terrified. so i guess we are 3 black kettles since i am being pretty snarky, too. While any such demolition of livable housing stock would be greeted with cries of horror today from poverty advocates and landmarking experts, the policy was stronglyadvocated by neighborhood clergy, who had high hopes that the struggling poor could make a better life in public housing. They took my empty wallet and the little folder containing the invaluable pass that afforded me free access that month to that bus line. 29 Second Ave. (between 1st & 2nd St.) The owner was bought out by the Love Store chain, then the pharmacist went to work at a Duane Reade. Does anyone remember, like i do, the little grocery store on the corner of 74th and Amsterdam, owned by Dom?wonderful man, full of stories and gossip about the neighborhoodwhen the subway fare went up in 74 or 75, he bought me a bag of tokens so that i wouldnt have to stand in line at the 72nd St. station that Monday morning when it went into effect and everyone had been caught unawareDom always looked out for his customersa real UWS personality. Indeed, everything suggested it would be. Located on the Upper West Side on West 70th Street, the residence is less than a block from. Miss all of the mom and pop shops. Lifelong UWSer, born 1970 and raised on 81st between CPW and Columbus. I live on 72nd and would guess off the top of my head that it contains around 50 small businesses just between Columbus & West End. 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