You are currently browsing the stories about the Upper West Side neighborhood
A True Life Fish Tale
by Susan Volchok 04/11/2011Neighborhood: Upper West Side
I thought I’d been having a bad year—chewed up and spit out after a couple of months in the New York City public school system (which is a whole other story I was advised by my attorney not to write about until after our lawsuit was resolved)—but then I met the saddest, sorriest creature I’d [...]
Inventorying Hidden Spaces
by J.W. Rogers 03/07/2011Neighborhood: Harlem, Upper West Side
In the basement of the Museum of American Indian there was a caretaker’s apartment. You got to it by walking down a side stairwell, beyond the main entrance of the museum, or by going past the work space beyond the gift shop, through a utility room, and then down a side hallway. The door was [...]
The Fat Jiggling Machine
by Roberta Allen 01/25/2011Neighborhood: Upper West Side
One Sunday afternoon when my father suggested we go to his health club in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel, I said, “No, why would I wanna go there?” I made a face. “Come on,” he said, as we walked through the lobby and stood under the awning outside our apartment building on West 76th [...]
It is Easy To Speak Chinese
by Lily Shen 01/08/2011Neighborhood: Upper West Side
At the 96th Street subway station, a Hispanic man with a graying beard hopped on the train. He immediately launched into a barrage of loud, incoherent ranting, which made me wonder if he was freshly sprung from the Bellevue psych ward. After several minutes of rambling in English and Spanish, he finally hit upon a [...]
Guns Guns Guns
by peter nolan smith 12/19/2010Neighborhood: Featured, Upper West Side
Kids in America are supposed to like guns. Our movie heroes majestically wield weapons on the silver screen and TV cops dance through primetime gun ballets. Armed with air rifles and plastic weapons my friends and I played WAR in the woods behind my house. Imaginary bullets tore holes through the make-believe Nazis and Japs. [...]
Adopting a Pint-Size Pocketbook Pooch
by Martine Byer 10/26/2010Neighborhood: Upper West Side
As I am walking out of yoga class, an acquaintance asks, “How’s Rio ?” She is referring to the two pound poodle puppy I had mentioned I would be getting. At this point, I’ve had Rio a few days. “He’s great,” I say, “But it’s way more overwhelming than I thought it would be.” Her [...]
Riding With Ellen DeGeneres
by Gretchen Wiker 10/25/2010Neighborhood: Upper West Side
For the past several minutes, I've been watching Ellen DeGeneres drive a cab around Columbus Circle behind a camera crew. The cab is old fashioned, with a big square grill and black-and-white checkerboard sides. Businessmen rushing by don't notice her or don’t care if they do, and I stand with a few foreign tourists ready [...]
Celebrating the American Revolution
by Debbie Nathan 07/04/2010Neighborhood: Featured, Upper West Side
Young white man with large backpack, heavy French accent, and reasonably capable English: Excuse me, is there a local Number 2 train? It comes on this track? Middle-aged white New York woman with long, dangling earrings: No. This is the Number 1 track. Number 2 trains, they're all express. Over on that track. A Number [...]
Ride the Lightning
by Edward Mullany 07/04/2010Neighborhood: Upper West Side
Outside the shop where we'd just bought ice cream, my wife and I were sitting on a bench against the window, my wife with a cone and myself with a small cup. It was sunny. We'd just come over from Riverside Park, where we'd been leisurely biking, and where people were already starting to gather [...]
You Bet Your Life
by Roberta Allen 06/19/2010Neighborhood: Upper West Side
After work, my father usually went to the racetrack or played poker with his pals in the Ansonia Hotel, a few blocks from our pre-war apartment on West 76th Street, so my mother and I were surprised to see him home early one evening. It didn’t take him long to tell us why. “Turn on [...]
Covered Heads
by Brian Schwartz 06/03/2010Neighborhood: Upper West Side
I have been to exactly one rabbinical student graduation party: Jewish Theological Seminary, class of 1998. The party was held outdoors on the rooftop of a pub on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and the balmy May night helped create the illusion that the bar was somewhere outside the city—a mountaintop perch under an oddly starless [...]
Mrs. Graham, the White Ghost
by Carl Schinasi 03/08/2010Neighborhood: Beechhurst, Upper West Side
As a teenager, I lived with my dysfunctional family in a modest but comfortable apartment in Beechurst, Queens. One Saturday morning, too fried to suffer any longer the slings and arrows of my sorry-assed teenage life, I decided to run away from home. I told my mother I was going into Manhattan to spend the [...]
