📌 Pinned Missed these? Your neighbors didn't.

🍜 UWS Outdoor Dining + NYT 100 ✨ NEW: NYT 100 Added · 🌟 The Summer 10 ✨ NEW · ⛺ Summer Camp 2026 Guide · 🧩 Inclusive Camp Guide

🍽️ The New York Times dropped its 2026 list of NYC's 100 best restaurants. Per Se (three Michelin stars) didn't make it. Masa (two stars) didn't make it. Essential by Christophe (one star) didn't make it. You know who did? Barney Greengrass, #92 with zero Michelin stars. At 118 years old they're still slicing sturgeon with surgical precision and outlasting restaurants with better lighting and worse fish. Jean-Georges jumped to #5 with two Michelin stars, up 14 spots from 2024. And Tatiana slid to #12 after two straight years at #1, though good luck getting a table before August. The list changes. The Sturgeon King endures.

In honor of the occasion, we added every Manhattan restaurant from the NYT 100 to our outdoor dining map — 101+ UWS spots by cuisine, plus neon stars for NYT bragging rights. The map's been viewed nearly 50,000 times since it went live in April, which means either the whole neighborhood is eating out or somebody's planning a very ambitious crawl. The Times list comes out once a year. Our map gets updated constantly. Because nothing's sadder than showing up to a restaurant that closed three months ago and pretending you meant to get pizza.

🏅 Kevin Durant's 2024 Olympic gold has iron from the Eiffel Tower in it. The Seattle Storm's 2020 championship ring carries "Say Her Name" as a tribute to Breonna Taylor. Joc Pederson's pearl necklace became a rallying symbol for the Braves' 2021 World Series run. And Red Holzman's gold fob? 1973. The last time the Knicks won it all. (Still not saying the other word.) Starting today, AMNH puts all of it on display. 70+ objects. 15 sports. 150 years. Jesse Owens's 1936 gold. Tuck's Super Bowl rings. Shields's "T-Rex" belt. The Lombardi Trophy. Yogi Berra's Babe Ruth Crown. All inside the Halls of Gems and Minerals. Somewhere, a geologist and a sports agent are standing next to each other pretending they have things in common.

Then it keeps going. Goal Zone opens Monday: digital simulators, tabletop soccer, kicking challenges, goalkeeping. Something for everyone, including the parent who hasn't kicked a ball since 2003 and needed another reason to go to PT. It's a soccer space inside a dinosaur museum. Your kid will never want to leave, which is either the best or worst thing that's ever happened to your Saturday. Members get in starting Saturday.

🏠 The housing lottery application window is shrinking from 60 days to 21. The time between a building finishing construction and someone actually moving in? Cut in half — from 210 days to under 100. The pre-approval process for projects needing zoning changes? Two years down to six months. Mayor Mamdani's SPEED reforms dropped May 13, and for once the acronym isn't overselling it. No legislation required. All executive action. The full report is worth a skim if you've ever wondered why a finished apartment sits empty for seven months while someone processes paperwork. Credit where it's due: Vital City published eight concrete recommendations on May 7. City Hall announced most of them six days later. Coincidence is a beautiful thing.

🏀 The Knicks didn't just beat the 76ers. They put them to bed. Four games. 144-114 in the closeout. Miles McBride dropped 25. Brunson added 22. The team hit 25 three-pointers on 44 attempts, a franchise playoff record, including 11 of 13 in the first quarter. Through three quarters they were putting up 171.8 points per 100 possessions. For context, the all-time playoff record is 148.1. They pulled the starters with a 40-point lead and still nearly broke it. First sweep in a seven-game series since 1999. You know what else happened in 1999. We're not saying it. They're resting now, waiting on Detroit or Cleveland, like a cat watching two mice fight over who gets eaten first. Three issues. Three refusals. If this bit outlasts the playoff run, at least we'll have a tradition. If it doesn't, we'll have a parade.

Opened: 🏃 Salomon — 270 Columbus Ave (between 72nd & 73rd). The French running brand that sponsors ultramarathoners just opened between a Chase and a Blank Street Coffee. Third NYC store after SoHo and Williamsburg. In the old Johnny Was space. If you run, you already know the name. If you don't, now you know where everyone in Riverside Park got their shoes.

Opened: 🍣 Toro 7 Sushi — 103 West 70th St (just west of Columbus). Same owners as Raku on 76th. Smaller menu, same DNA. In the old Amber space. One Japanese restaurant replaces another Japanese restaurant. Columbus Avenue is consistent like that.

Opened: 🥞 Crepes & Breakfast — 366 West 110th St (between Columbus & Manhattan Ave), inside Miss Mamie's Spoonbread Too. The Crepes on Columbus team closed on 108th in February. A month later they resurfaced inside a soul food restaurant. Crêpes and collard greens under the same roof. Only on the UWS does nobody even blink.

Opening May 20: 🍷 Ghemo — 201 West 106th St (between Broadway & Amsterdam). Georgian wine restaurant and bakery. Khachapuri (cheese-filled bread you'll dream about), khinkali (soup dumplings that will ruin all other soup dumplings), and a wine program that traces back to 8,000 B.C. It used to be a beauty salon. Now it's a place where the bread has more cheese than your pizza and the wine predates the alphabet.

Reopening May 18: 🍕 Ray's Pizza — 462 Columbus Ave (at 82nd). Closed for weeks due to a gas leak. Coming back Sunday. The neighborhood survived, but just barely.

Coming 2027: 🥐 Radio Bakery — 463 Columbus Ave (between 82nd & 83rd). Brooklyn bakery crossing the river. In the old Park West Pharmacy space. No timeline beyond "2027." We'll wait.

Merging: 🎨 Neue Galerie — 1048 Fifth Ave (at 86th). The Neue is merging with the Met in 2028. Ronald Lauder, 82, wants his jewel box to outlive him. The Woman in Gold stays. Café Sabarsky stays. Museum closes May 25 for renovations, reopens this fall. As co-founder Serge Sabarsky always said: "If the coffee is no good, the museum won't be any good."

Now open: 🖼️ Old Masters, New Amsterdam — New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West (at 77th).What did life look like in the Dutch settlement that became New York? Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan Steen have answers. Many of these paintings have never been shown in New York. Through 8/30. PWYW Fridays 5–8pm.

⛅ Friday: 67°F, intervals of clouds and sun, 25% chance of rain. 🌞 Saturday's the winner: 79°F, mostly sunny, 3% rain. ☀️ Sunday pushes to 86°F and very warm. Plan accordingly. AccuWeather.

👗 Manhattan Vintage Spring 2026 Show — Fri May 15 – Sun May 17. Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th St.NYC's largest vintage event. 100+ dealers. All eras, all price points. Gothamist calls it "the Beyoncé concert of the retro clothing world." Fri 1–6pm, Sat 11am–6pm, Sun 11am–5pm. $25 for a day pass, $35 for all three days, $45 for preview access + all weekend. Students $20 with ID. If you've ever wanted to own something your grandmother would have fought someone for at a department store in 1962, this is your weekend.

🎭 Othello — Bedlam — Through May 31. West End Theatre at St. Paul & St. Andrew, 263 West 86th St. Four actors. 19 roles. One Shakespeare tragedy. Eric Tucker's Bedlam company does Othello with nothing but talent and speed — the NYT called it "electrifying" and said it moves faster than a freight train with broken brakes. Matinees and evenings. $22–$79 (students $22, under 30 $32, seniors $69). Broadway did Othello last season for up to $900 a ticket. This one starts at $22 and it's on 86th Street.

🎤 New York Comedy Club — UWS — Fri–Sun, May 15–17. 236 West 78th St. Six shows. Three nights. The kind of lineup where you show up for one name and leave talking about the opener. $39–$45+, $20 minimum at the table, ages 16+.

Fri 6:15pm: Marina Franklin, Alingon Mitra, Ahamed Weinberg, Jason Choi, Julia Kastner. Fri 8:30pm: Chuck Nice, Seaton Smith, Greg Stone, Liz Glazer. Sat 6:15pm: Casey Balsham, Sean Donnelly, Harris Stanton, Michael P Good, Patricia Dinglasan. Sat 8:30pm: Damien Lemon, Mike Feeney, Erin Maguire, Jamell Sirleaf. Sat 10:45pm: Adrienne Iapalucci, Tyler Groce, James Mattern, Phil Duckett. Sun 4pm: Next Gen Comics. Up-and-coming talent doing the thing before they're too famous to do it for $39.

🎤 West Side Comedy Club — Fri–Sun, May 15–17. 201 West 75th St. The other comedy club. Three blocks south, equally stacked. ~$28, 2-item minimum, ages 16+.

Fri 6pm: Adelphi Graduation Show. Fri 8pm: Fabrizio Copano, Adrienne Iapalucci, Brian Scott McFadden, Craig Gass.Fri 10pm: Corinne Fisher, Olga Namer, Cab Washington, Anthony Devito, Brittany Brave. Sat 6pm: FUNY New Talent Showcase. Sat 8pm: Mike Feeney, Marc Theobald, Brian Scott McFadden, Adrienne Iapalucci. Sat 10pm: Seaton Smith, Jenny Zigrino, Turner Sparks, JC Mendoza, Jilberto Soto. Sun 7pm: Comedy Idol.

Two comedy clubs, three blocks apart, running all weekend. This neighborhood has opinions and apparently they're all punchlines.

😂 Michelle Buteau: The Surviving and Thriving Tour — Sat May 16 & Sun May 17, 7pm. Beacon Theatre, 2124 Broadway (at 74th). Doors 6pm. Two nights. The Beacon. $55–$92. You know her from The Circle, Russian Doll, Survival of the Thickest, and the Netflix special Welcome to Buteaupia that won the Critics Choice Award and made this writer laugh until something pulled. She's a Jersey-born, Brooklyn-raised force of nature. If you haven't seen her live, fix that this weekend.

🎨 Harlem Art Crawl — Sat–Sun, May 16–17. Multiple Harlem locations. Two days, mostly FREE with RSVP. Art openings you can walk into. A Romare Bearden Foundation walking tour on Saturday. Solo piano at the National Jazz Museum. The Studio Museum for free on Sunday. And a stoop sale and dance party at Mt. Morris Park, because Harlem doesn't just hang art on walls — it throws a block party around it. This is the kind of event that makes a new match think you're cultured, a second date think you're serious, or a spouse remember what you two used to do before someone learned to say "mama" or "dada" 400 times a day. If you've never done the Art Crawl, this is the weekend your excuse expires.

May Is Bike Month. Here's What That Actually Means for You.

🚲 One in four NYC households has had a bike stolen, and lack of secure parking is the second-biggest reason people don't ride. NYC DOT is finally doing something about it — 500 secure storage locations coming citywide, and they want you to tell them where to put them. They also released the 2026 bike map, interactive for the first time. And the 72nd Street bike lane proposal is still out there doing what bike lanes do best on the UWS: making everyone an urban planner.

Want to ride, fix, shop, or just show up?

🛒 NYC Bike Jumble — Sat May 16, 10am–4pm. Park Slope. New and used bikes, parts, FREE repairs from Time's Up! volunteers. 🚴 Bike to Work Day — Wed May 20. UWS meetup at the Greenway at 72nd St. No bike? Request a FREE Citi Bike code on the registration form. 🚴 Social Cycling NYC — Thursday night group rides. This week: 7pm at the USS Maine Monument, SW corner of Central Park. Wheels down 7:30. More talking than pedaling. 💡 FREE Bike Light Giveaway — Tue May 26, 4–7pm. Hudson River Greenway at 97th St. Show up, get lights, stop being invisible after dark. ✊ Critical Mass Manhattan — Fri May 29, 7pm. Union Square. The monthly ride that helped build the infrastructure everyone's arguing about. ⛑️ FREE Helmet Fittings — Sun June 14, 11am–3pm. Tecumseh Playground, 77th & Amsterdam. Sponsored by Council Member Brewer. No excuse left.

Got a bike story? A favorite route? A near-death experience on Amsterdam Ave? Reply and tell us: [email protected]

🍑 Bad news from Jersey. That April heat-freeze cycle hit 90 degrees on April 15, then dropped into the 20s five days later. The peach trees had already bloomed. Some farmers lost half their crop. One cherry farm in Glassboro won't open at all this year. New Jersey is the fourth-largest peach producer in the country. There will still be peaches this summer — just fewer, pricier, and gone sooner. If you see Jersey peaches at the greenmarket, snatch them up — they're an endangered species this year.

🌿 Forest Bathing — Sat May 16, 10–11:30am. River Run Playground, 83rd & Riverside. Rescheduled from Thursday. Half-mile guided walk, slow pace. Bring water and something to sit on. You will hug no trees — unless you're dying to — you will simply stand among them and pretend the city doesn't exist for 90 minutes. It works better than it should. RSVP or walk in. FREE.

🚂 Locomotive Open House — Sat May 16, 10am–1pm. Riverside Park South. Once a month they open the renovated locomotive and explain how trains used to run where your jogging path is. Your kid will lose their mind. You'll learn that trains used to run where you now argue about bike lanes. FREE.

🎧 Teens Take The Met! — Fri May 15, 4–8pm. The Met Fifth Avenue. Teens 13–18 get free run of the entire museum. Art making, performances, music, teen-only everything. Bring a school ID, RSVP at the link. The adults have to leave. For once, that's the point. FREE.

🎪 Minty Fresh Circus — Fri May 15, 7pm · Sat May 16, 2pm & 7pm. Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway. Circus meets history meets live music. An ensemble cast tells a story rooted in the legacy of Harriet Tubman through acrobatics, movement, and original music. Saturday 2pm is the relaxed performance with ASL and audio description. The kind of show that hits different for every age in the row. PWYW.

🏖️ Sandsational 2026 — Sat May 16, 10am–1pm. Multiple Riverside Park playgrounds. If you've never done Sandsational, you're missing one of the most iconic playground days in the city. Fresh sand gets delivered. Kids lead a bucket brigade. Toddlers toddle. Six-year-olds act like they've never seen a shovel before. Parents haul. Everyone's filthy by 10:30. You'll be finding sand in shoes, pockets, and strollers for weeks. Playgrounds include Neufeld at 76th, Tot Lot at 110th, Tot Lot at 116th, and Discovery at 165th. Recommended: closed-toe shoes and clothes that can get destroyed. At least the water isn't on yet. 👀 FREE.

🐟 SUBMERGE Marine Science Festival — Sat May 16, 11am–3pm. Pier 84, Hudson River Park. Pier 84 turns into an outdoor science lab right on the water. Your kids can hold a seahorse, meet a tiny owl, try kayaking on the Hudson, and cast a line with catch-and-release fishing. There are live science shows, hands-on experiments, and enough marine biologists to answer every "why" your five-year-old can throw at them. Thirteen years running because it works: kids think they're playing, parents get a free Saturday activity that doesn't involve a screen. Worth the walk south. FREE.

🎭 Free Shakespeare in the Park: Romeo & Juliet — May 22 – June 28. The Delacorte Theater, Central Park.Nearly 20 years since Romeo & Juliet played the Delacorte. Saheem Ali directs on the newly revitalized stage. The twist: the play unfolds in English, but Romeo and Juliet speak to each other in Spanish, a private language for a private world inside a very public tragedy. The most performed love story in history, under the stars, in your park. Five ways to get tickets: in-park, lottery, borough pickups, TodayTix, or standby. Full details here. FREE but you know how this works. Plan ahead or pack your patience for the standby line.

🎷 West Harlem Jazz Festival — Fri May 22, 6pm. St. Nicholas Park (James Baldwin Lawn at 135th & St. Nicholas Ave). Opening night. Santiago Y La Orquesta, a NYC salsa ensemble led by Colombian vocalist Santiago "Sachy" Moyano that blends classic salsa with Afro-Colombian rhythms and jazz. The kind of band that makes strangers dance next to each other, and with each other, and no one is weirded out. Outdoor jazz on the James Baldwin Lawn. If that sentence doesn't make you want to grab a blanket and head north, we can't help you. Concerts run all summer. FREE.

🌳 Street Tree Care Clinic — Mon May 18, 5:30–7pm. West 63rd St & West End Ave. Council Member Brewer's office and Trees New York are teaching you how to actually take care of the trees you post on Instagram. District 6 has one of the biggest canopies in the city. It didn't get that way by accident. Register at the link. FREE.

🌿 PlacePartner: The Sweet Spot — Tue May 20, 9–11am. Riverside Park, 72nd–96th St. Weeding, mulching, pruning, ecological restoration. The kind of work that makes the park look like it takes care of itself (it doesn't). Meeting location rotates between Hippo Playground and River Run Playground. Tools provided. Bring water and closed-toe shoes. Existing volunteers: sign up through the Grassroots Volunteer Portal. New volunteers: email [email protected].

Be the neighbor you think you are.

🧹The stickers might be coming back. If you've ever watched a street sweeper swerve around a car that hasn't moved since Tuesday, Council Member Brewer feels your pain. She introduced Intro. 0092, which would let Sanitation slap warning stickers on cars that don't move for cleaning. The city used to do exactly this. It worked beautifully, so naturally they stopped. The Council Committee on Sanitation holds a hearing Tue May 19, 1pm, at 250 Broadway (8th floor, hearing room 1). You can testify in person or submit written testimony up to 72 hours after.

🅿️ ASP suspended Fri May 22 for Shavuot.

This week the UWS sounds like a city that never forgot it was a music town. Seven venues. Classical to salsa to jazz to choral to karaoke. All walkable. Pick your mood.

🎻 Bach Virtuosi Festival — UWS churches. 7:30pm. $50. FREE for students with ID. We previewed this in Issue #10. Now it's here. Tonight: Goldberg Variations on harpsichord (Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian, 152 W 66th). Tuesday: a staged Coffee Cantata + Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (St. Ignatius of Antioch, 264 W 87th). Bach wrote the Coffee Cantata in 1735 about a father trying to stop his daughter from drinking coffee. Proof that your family's group chat energy has been going on for centuries.

🎹 Smoke Jazz Club — 2751 Broadway at 105th. Billy Childs Trio all weekend. First trio recording in 25 years. Child prodigy discovered by Freddie Hubbard, has played with Yo-Yo Ma, Sting, and Wynton Marsalis. If that sentence doesn't mean anything to you, the music will. Multiple sets Fri–Sun. $25–$65. Dinner shows at 6 & 8pm. Next week: Grammy-winning vocalist Luciana Souza.

🎹 The Wallace Lounge — 242 West 76th St. The neighborhood's living room for live jazz. Three nights:

Fri 7–11pm: Matt Baker & Daniel Glass Trio. If you've never been to one of these nights, this is the one to start with. Sat 7–11pm: Jeff Franzel Trio. He's accompanied Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Mel Tormé. That's not a typo. That's a résumé. Sun 7–10pm: Izze Stein Trio. One of the rare artists they bring back again and again.

🎤 Sugar Bar — 254 West 72nd St. Four nights of something for everyone, including the person who swears they can sing.

Fri 8–10pm: ACDS Life. Sun 4–7pm: Sip & Sing Karaoke hosted by Nicole. No cover. Prizes. Judgment-free zone. Mostly. Wed 8–10pm: Jason Murden. Thu 8–11:30pm: Open Mic Thursdays hosted by Dermel Warren.

🎶 Encore Chorales NYC Concert — Sat May 16, 2pm. St. Paul & St. Andrew, 263 West 86th St. The East and West side chorales come together for a spring concert. These are your neighbors singing. Show up. PWYW.

🇺🇸 The Spirit of 1776 — Sat May 16, 7pm. St. Paul & St. Andrew, 263 West 86th St. Central City Chorus celebrates America's 250th. $30–$45. Same church as the Encore concert at 2pm. If you go to both, you'll have spent five hours in a pew on a Saturday and loved every minute.

🕍 Singing in Jewish Time — Sun May 17, 5pm. Ansche Chesed, 251 West 100th St. Four languages. Five musical styles. Cantor Natasha Hirschhorn leads the Shirei Chesed chorus through songs that span continents and centuries. You don't need to be Jewish to be moved by it. You just need to like music that means something to the people performing it. Registration required. FREE.

🌟 NEW: The Summer 10. We're looking for 10 UWS neighbors to feature this summer. Morningside Heights, Manhattan Valley, all of it. Everyone on the west side, between the parks, and nearby has a story and we want to tell the ones that make you proud to live here.

Not essays. Not profiles. The doorman who remembers your kid's name. The 90-year-old who's been on the same bench since the '80s. The couple who moved here last year and already knows everyone at the bodega. Tell us who makes your corner of the west side feel like yours.

Nominate yourself or someone you know: here. We'll pick 10 and run them all summer.

📣 SHARE THE WEST SIDER Forward responsibly. Or irresponsibly. We're not picky.

Eleven issues. The outdoor dining map just got the NYT 100 treatment and nearly 50,000 of you have used it since April. There's a Georgian restaurant opening on 106th where the wine predates the alphabet. Bedlam is doing Othello with four actors for $22. And somewhere in Riverside Park South, a kid is about to lose their mind over a locomotive. Nominate your favorite neighbor for The Summer 10. Check the map. See you next Friday.

— The West Sider