I am still amazed thinking how that now-pristine block was so different. Via (Photo credit: Steven Siegel) Store signage at New York Times Square, around 1985. Dont really remember the scary place others have described on UWS- but Central Park and the Subway were indeed scary parts of New York in those times. The Continental Baths!!! New York, in general became much safer when Rudy Guilliani became mayor, and even more so under Mayor Bloomberg. You couldnt walk down my side street without seeing at least one car window smashed. Over 25 years, we lived in 3 apartments, none more than 4 blocks from Fairway. 7388 reviews. Girl Scout's Cookies Are a Hit at West Hollywood Gay Bars February 16 2023 5:27 PM. I remember Zabars being a nice little store to buy deli and grocery items. Let me correct myself for Sarabeths Kitchen was between 79th and 80th Streets on Amsterdam across from Macs. He struck on 104th and 103rd. Very different West Side. It is an expensive place to live, but then it always was. Here's a spindly, stand-alone piece of the High Line that has since vanished . That said, its equally good for a drink with a few coworkers, or a catch-up with a friend. Prohibition has live music every night, so its a good option for all kinds of situations, from first dates when you want to avoid awkward small talk to quick solo drinks when youre killing time. To hell with nostalgia. I think it and she was gone by 1975 or 76. I think my brother got his first ever job scooping ice cream there. It's China Fun now? I remember when the only Mexican restaurant anybody ever hear of was Taco Rico on 72nd. .I could not get the police or the sanitation department to stop the airmail so I collected it. You can walk down the street . Where Fairway is there was DAgostinos, and a really good drug store, was it buy right or loves? I remember when the first Starbucks opened on 93rd and Broadway it was around 1996-1997 while I was in collegethats when we knew that the UWS of our time was never going to be the same again. Finally, the kind of restaurant the Upper West Side has long been starved for. 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.. . i graduated college in 1988 and came back to NYC, and i couldnt believe that my friends that went to work in investment banking all lived in a new building (the westmont) at 96th and columbus. The Loft sounds right. So they are finally free of their daily captors and, like all kids, act out without thinking of who or what is around. I moved up here in 1977. how times change! I would love more stories. But in 1972 and 1973, Charlie Chop-off had so little resonance beyond the blocks near me that when I made mention of it in a short story I read to my eighth-grade classin a school on the Upper West Sidemy classmates hadnt heard of it. One thing I have noticed of the UWS, which I find disturbing, is the influx of banks, financial storefront businesses and chain pharmacies on every street corner. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. Fancy. Abandoned West Side Highway, circa 1980. I bought an expensive ($90) hoodie, which lasted about 20 years. Friday's location on the Upper East Side. In 1964, the year the national crime spiral began, 3,228 felonies were committed. The SROS were filled with mentally ill people. Great projecthope it went well or is going well. But not a beer that all your friends have heard of. Booked 152 times today. I lived at 219 W 81st (corner of Broadway) from 1962 to 1967, when we moved to Queens because the neighborhood was becoming too dangerous! "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. I love being able to walk to Central Park and be greeted by many people I have met over the years. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. The reclamation of New York City from the forces of criminal chaos and social decay is a familiar tale by now. That was true between broadway and central park west. Vague memory of the window and lady on 83rd Street. Either way, it's there, and it's good. I miss them! I remember Marcys deli on Broadway, the barbershop next door with its old -fashioned spinning stripe pole. I finally made the right connection when I discovered several glass ampules and hypodermic needles. -CALL it what you wishneighborhood rebirth, urban renaissance, the latest emergence of city chicbut whatever you call it be sure to label it Columbus Avenue, the new Columbus Avenue. A neighborhood in which people think nothing of tossing their garbage out the window is a neighborhood both literally and spiritually diseased. Columbus and Amsterdam avenues were to be avoided though we had to cross them to hang out in Central Parkmostly by the fountain. Sounds like Jeannine should take that route. Yes, Jeannine, there have been major changes in the neighborhood mostly for the better but, alas, I truly miss some of the stores that have fallen by the wayside. 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. A fine and forgotten 1975 book by Barbara Gelb called On the Track of Murder it reads like a nonfiction version of Ed McBain's 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 Local artists sold their wares and the kids tried not to kill themselves in the slightly deflated Moon Bounce. It is the principal city of the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical . Theres solid bar food, you can get a good cocktail, and the space feels kind of like a long clubhouse with booths, darts, and board games. The Upper West Side of my youth was in no way a fabled or especially notable area. Once, after I was punched, my wallet stolen, my glasses (!) Based on the Canadian movie of the same name, this bar and grill has great food specials, a full bar, and laidback vibe. (Photo by Steven Siegel) Demolition began later that decade, which displaced the homeless who had by that point found shelter on the elevated roadway. West Side Story restaurant on 95th (There werent many rich people on the Upper West Side then, a situation much altered today.) I dont recognize the neighborhood at all. Coolsingel Street Cam, Rotterdam. As Lyford wrote in 1966, a twenty-block site of a multimillion-dollar urban renewal program laying between Eighty-seventh and Ninety-seventh streets and bounded by Central Park on the eastand Amsterdam Avenue on the west was the fulcrum of this massive slum-clearance plan, involving the loss of 6,344 households. Although the Upper East Side is generally considered the more expensive side, when it comes to renting in 2022, the Upper West Side takes the cake. The Arthouse Hotel is a bit of a hidden gem in the Upper West Side but not for long. In 1998, that number had dropped to 2,000; last year, in 2009, only 987 felonies were committed there. Learn how your comment data is processed. It would dominate news coverage in the country for weeks, if not months. There were prostitutes and drug dealers on the street. I bet your cute daughter will look back at this decade as the magical Upper West Side, like you remember. a retired 31-year veteran NYC high school teacher. People were afraid to ride the graffiti-streaked, crime soaked subways. Im so please that Calle Ocho (once around the corner on Columbus) has become attached to the hotel; that Zingones , the terrific and friendly mom & pop grocery store on Columbus btw 82 & 83 is still in business and doing better than ever; that Rose Liquor still is thriving one block down with the flower shop next door now run by the daughter of the man I used to buy my flowers from, and that the newsstand at the corner of Columbus and 81 is till run by my friend from Pakistan, who used to call his family to find out when my eccentric English husband used to ask him Whats the weather today in Karachi? I still run into my neighbors on the street, and sure, a lot has changed, but the heart of the neighborhood and many of the characters are still there! 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. Attended PS9 (I remembered a teacher who still smoked in class), and Brandeis. Williamsburg is like New York in the 70s. Bar in Upper West Side Add to myNY One of the smaller venues on our list is Bodega 88. I miss the 88 Noodle House, Woolworths, and Sloans. Vanguard is one of the best first-date spots on the Upper West Side. Good luck with your project and I would be happy to talk if you like. My second date with him was at The Copper (? Jacobs Pickles is great if you need an Upper West Side brunch spot or dinner meetup with someone you know will embrace the heavy bar food. Use them in commercial designs under lifetime, perpetual & worldwide rights. At the same time, community groups planted trees on every block and strove to make it all look nice. I love that my beloved UWS is a desirable place to live but NOT at the expense of those who came before, struggled, survived and created this complicated, beautiful neighborhood. Also if you remember what year the Woolworths on 79th and Broadway closed let me know. Raised on 104th. But in 1961, 84th Street was a nightmare, and something had to be done. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United States and the fifth most populous state capital. Tuesday's - you could get a rack of ribs, big salad with lots of fresh blue cheese, and a baked potato for $9.99. 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 . This is a consistently crowded restaurant on the Upper East Side that works for everything from date nights to fun group dinners, but the separate bar area up front is also useful when you're just looking for drinks. A rush hour scene at the New York City subway. Like Caledonia, the Hamilton has a very serious whiskey selection - although the focus here is more on American whiskey. 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. My children, who are very young, will know, as my sisters and I did, the oddity of being both entirely privileged and yet significantly poorer than most of their classmates and friends. 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? St. James Gate is very much an Irish pub, but not in a cheesy kind of way. A pair of cops who had been permanently assigned to the block because of previous incidents fired eight shots into the air in an effort to still the melee but were engulfed by the crowd.. Are the changes to the neighborhood for the better or for the worse? I dont understand the folks who insist the 70s werent terrible. What else. I raised two daughters here. I remember Fowad with its racks on the corner of 96th st and a Mexican restaurant across the street with Spanish tile decorating its exterior. Es Bar is one of our go-to spots in the neighborhood, because they do so many things right. Prohibition is a 20sthemed bar with quality live music every night. I too went to PS 166 and JHS 44 and remember John Gatto, despite graduating in the 60s Just wanted to drop some UWS names from then: Pick & Pay 87th and Bway- TipToe Inn Davega Sports Hermans Toys- and Sam Graham Hardware Mitchells Wines & Spirits Lichtman Pastries or Cake Masters were the places surrounding the Belnord Apts. 5) There was a little magazine stand on the west side of street around Columbus and 83 or 84 was it called Johnnys? When I come to NYC now, I stay in the Endicott (on Columb and 81, around the corner from my old apartment). Japanese. Homeless? In the late 1980s, many of New York's megaclubs closed down as a result of the economic crash of 1987. Eeyores bookstore, Woolworths, Greens, Morris Bros, Mancy pharmacy, Kandela pizzeria, Leroy pharmacy, The Library restaurant up our block, the movie theater on 89th and bway, Anchor savings bank, H & Hso many memories its crazy. I also take issue with your line that says no one in Manhattan lived above 72nd street if they could avoid it. I was born in 1963 and my parents moved to CPW and 92nd street a couple of years later. By the early 1970s, 20 to 25 percent of American couples had met at a bar, according to Stanford University research. 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