"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. Find next available. In 1964, the year the national crime spiral began, 3,228 felonies were committed. Because The Smith is always there when you need it to be. Im pretty sure that Woolworths closed before 1990. 114 tips and reviews. So a volleyball net was erected. I worked at Sweet Asylum in the early 80s and have tons of memories about the old neighborhood: everything from the charred remains of Santeria rituals on the big rock ACROSS from the 79th st. RSD playground to routinely getting mugged. 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. 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. (I hope this continues . From melees to muggings to serial killers to a spiritual revival. The Times described it as a block of decaying tenements packed with poor Puerto Rican and Negro families and the gathering place of drunks, narcotics addicts and sexual perverts. It soon became known as the worst block in the city. Mayor Robert Wagner announced a shock attack, an all-out war on the forces of crime, slum blight and poverty on the West Side. 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. He struck on 104th and 103rd. Loved growing up there. Es Bar is one of our go-to spots in the neighborhood, because they do so many things right. My grandparents used to call the UWS a slum and would never sleep over instead theyd sleep in a room at the Greystone on 91st and Bwayha! By Craig Horowitz. New York, in general became much safer when Rudy Guilliani became mayor, and even more so under Mayor Bloomberg. Located on the Upper West Side on West 70th Street, the residence is less than a block from. In order to reduce traffic congestion in . 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. The citys population shrank by nearly a million people between 1960 and 1980, with 300,000 gone from Manhattan over the course of those 20 years. 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. never went in but loved that name was there til the 80s. For an interesting look at our neighborhood,check out the Goodbye Girl on netflix. 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. Despite the name, Dive 75 isnt actually that divey. Source. I remember when the only Mexican restaurant anybody ever hear of was Taco Rico on 72nd. Last Spring, a year ago this month, I watched as a staple of the neighborhood closed, Food City. Was the place called Amsterdam. I am still amazed thinking how that now-pristine block was so different. Arts & Entertainment. Zabars was open until midnight. Within 18 months, several more "singles bars" were opened on 1st Avenue. Its a little spot decorated like a living room in a very nice apartment, and they serve top-notch cocktails. The Ribbon has style and substance and does classic food right. Get the latest in beer, wine, and cocktail culture sent straight to your inbox. What they will not have to learn, as my sisters and I and our wealthier friends did, is how to accommodate and make normal an ever-present sense of everyday menace. I dont know what UWS Janet and Denton lived on, but it was dirty, dangerous and scary. It no longer does. Italian $$$$ Upper West Side. jeannine.j@gmail.com. QE 2 Club 1980s Central Ave, Albany ny by AlbanyGroup Archive the Elbo Room 1963 Albany NY (1960s) by AlbanyGroup Archive 2 288 lark, albany, ny 1984 1980s by AlbanyGroup Archive 1 jb's theater albany ny by AlbanyGroup Archive ginos collage albany ny . I would agree that the author should be careful not to stereotype new residents as unfriendly and uninterested in the neighborhood. Prohibition is a 20sthemed bar with quality live music every night. I always saw it as culturally vital and architecturally beautiful. 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. I grew up In 1998, that number had dropped to 2,000; last year, in 2009, only 987 felonies were committed there. At about the size of a one-bedroom apartment, this bar is a great place to catch any game, especially the Super Bowl! In 1981, I lived on 79th and West End; it was tiny but very comfortable. And I briefly lived on 85 street in the early 70s , so I was there a lot. Hey, Scooter Stan, they are often a pain in the neck. Residents sold their used household goods at White Elephant tables, others grilled hotdogs and popped popcorn. In the same way, standing on a Thursday evening in front of the building in which I was born and raised, I am suddenly in the hazy light of an early Sunday morning at the age of six and managing for the first time to right the bicycle from which the training wheels had lately been removed and then wobbling my way down the block and around the corner and around the second corner and then around the thirdand slamming the bike into a toddler who was wobbling his way forward in front of his building. #20. The Gin Mill is owned by the same people as Jakes Dilemma, which is less than a block away, and it feels very similar. Sometimes for the bathroom. Why should people be made to feel uncomfortable/unwelcome in a neighborhood they created over decades, with their hard work & fortitude? 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. .) People were afraid to ride the graffiti-streaked, crime soaked subways. Get a table or some bar seats at Dive Bar, a dimly-lit spot with over 30 beers on tap (most of which are available by the glass, growler, and pitcher). The free outdoor summer concerts at Lincoln Center were wonderful. . Don't worry though there is a bar in the front and back of the house in case it gets too crowded. 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. the 90s were considered pretty scary back then, but the 70s and 80s were lovely. 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. I well remember the Woolworths on Amsterdam, but am at a loss to recall just when it was demolished. Editors note: Lifelong Upper West Side resident Jeannine Jones is writing her graduate thesis on how the neighborhood has changed since she was born in 1976. The streets of my childhood were dirtier, and the people who lived there were poorer but I played on the street all day unsupervised by adults and we were safe. 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. The Upper West Side of Manhattan is sandwiched in between Riverside Park to the west & Central Park to the east. My sister and I used to walk down the street and try to remember what was there before. Left for dead, he lived, the only surviving victim of a serial killer who prowled the neighborhood for a year. John was a amazing teacher and he taught me to love learning! 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. Here is a nice trip down memory lane of the 1980's! MacAliers Pub was across the avenue. East of Broadway was a tough old neighborhood. 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. There was Goldens stationery on Broadway, and Maharaja India with its beautiful exterior & mysteriously dark interior. For example, claiming that people dont talk with their neighbors seems like little more than an assumption Im actually friends with several people in my building, to say nothing of those I merely talk with now and then. The entrance to this Upper West Side speakeasy is right inside Burke & Wills go to the back and open the green leather door. Im sure we all remember the coffee shop! Worth a read. Does anyone remember the trendy bar in 1981-84 at the corner of 74th and Amsterdam? Vinnys! It was 1990 on Manhattan's Upper East Side and, after the extravagant 1980s, the neighborhood . Its hard to keep up now, tho! My current UWS apartment still has the footings in the floor where a Police Lock fit between the door and the floor. People know me from getting out, and introducing myself, instead of planting my face in my smartphone. This map of the Upper West Side shows its location relative to the rest of Manhattan. I was also hailed from second story windows in Times Square by topless prostitutes. Awesome to read all the comments and Tnx to all my neighbors for taking time to reminisce West 72nd here from early 70s to 2012 Forgot so many places but this jogged a great deal to share nostalgically with my family I miss Eclaires, La Fortuna and laser rock of the early 80s and the many times I saw John and Yoko walking in the park as a kid .. Or the 72nd st Kung fu magazine store on the 2nd Memories are all we ever truly have. 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. Im coming into this conversation very late but I have lived in this neighborhood all my life.since 1953. And within those classes there was division as well. There is not a day that goes by when I dont miss woolworths! And Silk Road. 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