[[{“value”:”The snowflake coming down on West 72nd Street. Photo by Dave Tannenhauser
Monday, February 17, 2025
Sunny. High 33 degrees.
Temperatures will remain cold this week, sitting between 15 and 39 degrees, with no expected snowfall.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Monday is Presidents Day.
Upper West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer is hosting her Town Hall for the district on Monday, February 24, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street. The event will include elected officials and representatives from the Upper West Side community board and city agencies. Residents should bring their questions, and there is no RSVP required.
A special guest for the night will be jazz great Wynton Marsalis, managing and artistic director of the Upper West Side’s Jazz at Lincoln Center.
“I invited him because I love him and have known him for a long time,” Brewer told West Side Rag. “He used to play basketball with his son at Amsterdam Houses. He does a lot for the neighborhood.”
When asked if Marsalis would perform at the meeting, Brewer said, “I don’t know. Sometimes he brings his horn.”
Upper West Side News
By Gus Saltonstall
Many publications have tried their hand at naming the best restaurants on the Upper West Side. Last week, fashion and lifestyle magazine Vogue took its shot at naming the best eateries in the neighborhood.
“It’s a place where brownstones are lined with dog-walkers and stroller-pushing parents, where pre-war apartment buildings house artists and academics, and where a certain kind of old-school New Yorker still clings to their rent-controlled one-bedroom with a near-religious devotion,” Vogue wrote. “In a city that often seems to reinvent itself overnight, the Upper West Side stands as a reminder that some things—especially a perfect pastrami sandwich or a well-shaken martini—are best left exactly as they are.”
Here are the local restaurants that earned a spot on the Vogue ranking.
Cafe Luxembourg
Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi
Barney Greengrass
The Leopard at des Artistes
Lincoln Ristorante
Zabar’s
Cafe Fiorello
Salumeria Rosi
Nice Matin
Dagon
The Milling Room
The 11-restaurant list has a few Upper West Side staples such as Cafe Luxembourg, Barney Greengrass, and Zabar’s, while also including newer popular eateries such as Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi and Dagon.
You can check out the full list and breakdown of each Upper West Side restaurant — HERE.
A Navy Seal who says he killed Osama Bin Laden will sell his branded marijuana on the Upper West Side, as first reported by the New York Post.
Robert O’Neill, a former Navy SEAL who says he is the gunman who shot and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, recently started his own cannabis brand called Operator Canna Co. The brand, which grows its marijuana in upstate New York, will soon sell its product exclusively in The Flowery dispensary locations across the city, which includes the recently opened outpost on the Upper West Side, reported the Post.
“I wanted to get into the cannabis business through my experience in the military and watching vets suffer from things like post-traumatic stress disorder,” O’Neill told the publication. “It’s a good way to take the edge off. It helps to get rid of the noise.” A portion of all revenue will go toward charity for military veterans, O’Neill said.
The company’s cannabis strain names include “Shooter-Hybrid” and “Warrior-Sativa.” You can read the full story — HERE.
“For me, New York’s most iconic architectural landmark is Lincoln Center,” reads the first paragraph of Town & Country writer Leena Kim’s recent piece, “A Love Letter to Lincoln Center.”
The story is an ode to Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side. It describes how Kim cherished her visits to the cultural hub as a child growing up in New Jersey, in the same way that she did on her daily walks through its campus during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We often love what we love simply because of the way it makes us feel, whether it’s because it delights our senses, or triggers dormant emotions, or provides solace during difficult times,” Kim writes. “Lincoln Center checks those boxes: it isn’t just a grand symbol of New York’s cultural evolution, it’s also a sacred space that holds so many personal memories.”
The piece also reminds readers that there were huge questions about Lincoln Center at the time of its construction, including in another Town & Country article from 1960 that featured the headline, “Is Lincoln Center a Flop?” The earlier story posed the question: would Lincoln Center “turn out to be a priceless addition to New York’s cultural life or a $150,000,000 blunder?”
You can read the full love letter to Lincoln Center, HERE.
Let us know in the comments your favorite architectural site in New York City, whether it is on the Upper West Side or somewhere else in the five boroughs.
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“}]] The snowflake coming down on West 72nd Street. Photo by Dave Tannenhauser Monday, February 17, 2025 Sunny. High 33 degrees. Read More
