Neighborhood volunteers took turns watching out their windows, reporting any crimes to the well-meaning, over-worked and understaffed local police precinct. The neighborhood has lost many small businesses such as delis, bodegas, pizzerias, barber shops, candy & stationery stores. Via (Photo credit: Steven Siegel) A man wearing a placard on Times Square, around 1980. He lived on 75th Bet. Ernies, and the best pizza parlor in the city, Vinnys on Amsterdam between 73 and 74th. My wife and I had our first date there back in 85. It's China Fun now? 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 had delicious burgers. 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. Now its a zoo. At the time, I was going to high school a block away and walked every morning past the tenements from which the airmail had been dropped on Lyfords yard. I dont recognize the neighborhood at all. 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. Our parents let us run around unsupervised from the time we were like, 8 or 9. It went badly. When I moved to West 83rd Street, pushers hid their crack vials in the planters outside the building I lived in. The area continues to be among the nations most integrated. Always had a good meal there. Sure, it isnt the fanciest bar in the world, and if you order a sazerac here, you might get a weird look - but its a nice little place to hang out with a beer, and theres a sitting area in the back with a couch and some armchairs. If you dont feel like staring into pint glasses and wondering about fermentation processes, you can play darts or foosball instead. Finally, the kind of restaurant the Upper West Side has long been starved for. First founded in Ohio in 1980, the 1950s-style restaurant grew quickly, with about 100 locations at its peak. I remember Charivari well. I remember Gleasons, and ONealsand the Flower Shop next to ONeals. About fifty of us stood across the street and watched, as though we were attending a wake. 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. Once the Jets are down by 24 and you want to focus on something else, start working your way through the huge menu of bar food. That said, it isnt the sort of place where you have to whisper and swirl your glass before you take a drink. And there were a great deal of elderly poor people many of them the refugees who fled Europe after WW2 who wound up on the streets with shopping wagons filled with stuff after losing their apartments for whatever reasons that happened. I lost the gold watch my father gave me for my college graduation. . 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. Long gone is the divine Eclair Bakery on W. 72nd St. and the Royale. I think it and she was gone by 1975 or 76. I also remember that the Upper West Side was a true neighborhood, and I remember the slow and then really fast gentrification of the neighborhood in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I lost touch with them (Joe, the owner, and Mark the pharmacist) about 4-5 years ago. 80s Night Clubs in New York City, NY About Search Results Sort: Default All BBB Rated A+/A Coupons View all businesses that are OPEN 24 Hours 1. (The church had become a hangout for drug addicts.) If you're heading to the Upper West Side to see a Humperdinck fairy tale opera at Lincoln Center, you might just need a drink beforehand. Amazing roast chicken at Amsterdams. -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. Its a little spot decorated like a living room in a very nice apartment, and they serve top-notch cocktails. Here's a spindly, stand-alone piece of the High Line that has since vanished . West Side Story restaurant on 95th Get there early (around 9:00 p.m.) to experience it because it gets a bit crowded near the stage later in the evening. Today is tomorrow's yesterday . After my second date, I knew I was going to marry him. A) become playgrounds for East Village New Wavers. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. The UWS was terrible then. Usually the small cities in America that never change are the ones whose best days came half a century or more ago and are now literally rotting away before your eyes, their once-handsome houses mottling, their fences akimbo, their storefronts boarded, their grass untended, their gas stations abandoned on windblown corners. jeannine.j@gmail.com. Theres a bar in the middle of the room, some banquette seating, and a few tables - plus floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on 72nd Street. I grew up on riverside drive at 104 street. Its a good spot to day drink with a big group, but theres no table service - youll be notified by a buzzer when your order is ready at the counter. I was 14 in 1977 and went to see laser rock at the planetarium with a girlfriend. Eventually the projects were built, but by this point the displaced residents of West 84th and others like them had been moved like chess pieces around the New York City board to other neighborhoods, worsening them. Everybody got mugged. Some of that was due to the destruction of housing not only by the citys own slum-clearance policies but also by the ravages of rent controls that led to the abandonment of hundreds of thousands of apartments. Some similarities within 1970s and 2015 and much change.Miss Most: John Lennon and Yoko Ono walks and talksMick JaggerMiles Davis..Bruce Willistending barJoan Allenhostess at Shelterbunch of artists, actors, musicians at The Only Child on West 79. It was known for its burgers, hot dogs, and milkshakes. Restaurant 222 - on 79th St. The infamous Upper East Side murder has yet to fade from public memory. Yellow Rose of Texas. Particularly the buffalo wings, which are some of the best in the city. I dont agree with the statement that no one went above 72nd if they could help it. Lost your password? Les Routiers on 89th Its hard to keep up now, tho! But not to know when a store closed? Here are the nine places to get your fix: Dive Bar NYC. When? Sarabeth was a friend and I too loved her pastries and coffee. 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 . 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. By 1990, there were 5,641 felonies. Today: About 90% of the mom and pop stores on Broadway between 91st and 85th St. have closed. It is the same one in which I grew up four decades ago, and its buildings and landmarks and topography are almost entirely unchanged. If you want anecdotes, thats one thing; Im happy to provide them. As we mentioned, the UWS has no shortage of sports bars - but Blondies is our favorite. The Loft sounds right. Police flooded the area. Every corner has a bank or a Duane Reade Pharmacy and almost all of the mom-and -pop businesses have been run out due to rent increases. Yes, it was called Amsterdams and it had great chicken, pork, beef cooked on a wall-sized rotisserie. 210 W 94th St, New . Big flat-screen TVs behind the bar show lists of what theyre currently pouring - and there are also a few other TVs for watching sports. 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? This seasonal (May-October) outdoor bar has a bunch of umbrella-covered tables that might make you think youre in Madison Square Park, except for the fact that you can see the Hudson River and New Jersey. And every effort to cure them through large-scale government action only made matters worse, in one of the most potent demonstrations of the law of unintended consequences. She shares some memories below, and asks for some of yours. RESERVE A TABLE. I well remember the Woolworths on Amsterdam, but am at a loss to recall just when it was demolished. From the outside, this place looks like a very normal pub - and on the inside it looks pretty normal, too. The big open room is filled with tables, and the service is about as friendly as we imagine it would be in a neighborhood pub in Ireland. There was also Lamstons on 102 street. 133 E. 65th St, New York. I loved that they were open 24 hrs. To hell with nostalgia. 3) Back in the 80s, H & H Bagels (well known demise some years ago) had lines out the door, and nicer prices for their delicious bagels. But over the past 20 years in particular, the Upper West Side has turned into the most affluent shtetl the world has ever seen. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. Every few years I will take my 20 block walk from my old apartment to 84th and Columbus. When we came outside onto west 81 street the person who was supposed to meet us and take us home had not shown up. 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. I would love more stories. I bought an expensive ($90) hoodie, which lasted about 20 years. May 6, 2009. These are the moments, large and small, recounted by 36 writers, artists, fashion designers, musicians and more who. They also have jello shots, so your night here can either be very tame or full of colorful, gelatinous alcohol. The streets were full of prostitutes and Johns cruising for them. This big bar on Amsterdam Ave feels like the kind of place you might have gone junior year, complete with foosball, pool tables, and, yes, intense games of beer pong. .I could not get the police or the sanitation department to stop the airmail so I collected it. Last Spring, a year ago this month, I watched as a staple of the neighborhood closed, Food City. There was a really cool restaurant on NW corner of 94th st, whose name escapes me but the name was carved out of the building itself. Columbus and Amsterdam avenues were to be avoided though we had to cross them to hang out in Central Parkmostly by the fountain. You can walk down the street . Learned how to ride my bike down there. Bar in Upper West Side Add to myNY One of the smaller venues on our list is Bodega 88. They dont linger and they dont talk to their neighbors or bother to know the names of the doormen in the lobby. But in 1976, when my parents moved to Broadway and 79th street with their three small children, no one in Manhattan lived above 72nd street if they could avoid it. And "Mambo Mouth" in the days before STOMP took over the Orpheum Theater on 2nd and 7th. A Manhattan townhouse complete with a 33-foot lap pool has hit the market for $17.5 million. You want to watch sports with some friends, and maybe share a couple pitchers of beer - ideally something other than Hoegaarden or Goose Island. A short-lived club in the 1980s East Village. 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. 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. Good luck with your project and I would be happy to talk if you like. I am happy that they also identify with being true upper west siders! They had several boutiques and I spent a lot of dough there over the years, The folded in the early 90s I think. A neighborhood in which people think nothing of tossing their garbage out the window is a neighborhood both literally and spiritually diseased. Pretty good ice cream place in the early 80s. 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