📌 From the archives: Missed these? Your neighbors didn't.
☕The Weekly Scoop
The stuff your neighbors are already talking about.
🥯 There's Nothing to Eat Up Here? Nine Restaurants Beg to Differ.
You've heard it at every dinner party since the Obama administration: "There's nothing to eat on the UWS." Gothamist's Robert Sietsema has finally published the rebuttal, gleefully and with receipts: "the neighborhood has one of the most impressive and diverse collections of dining establishments in the city." Nine picks. From hot dogs to herring. Screenshot the list. Win the next dinner party.
Bar Masa — 10 Columbus Circle, 4th floor. Masa's little sibling. Still a splurge, still a flex, still worth it.
Old John's Diner — 148 West 67th Street, near Amsterdam. The diner that remembers when Lincoln Center was new.
Charles Pan-Fried Chicken — 146 West 72nd Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus. Charles Gabriel's legendary cast-iron fried chicken, now on your block.
Gray's Papaya — 2090 Broadway, corner of West 72nd. The hot dog argument. Settled. Always.
Saravanaa Bhavan — 413 Amsterdam Avenue, near 80th. South Indian vegetarian so good you'll forget you came for the dosa.
Barney Greengrass — 541 Amsterdam Avenue, near 87th. The Sturgeon King, since 1908. The only place where "smoked fish" is a personality.
Moon Kee — 2642 Broadway, between 100th and 101st. Sichuan, upper Broadway. Bring tissues.
Hinds Hall — 949 Amsterdam Avenue, near 106th. Pitas hot out of the oven and a mansaf big enough to share. Bay Ridge's Ayat finally made it to our block — and brought the ambition.
Bahn Shop House — 945 Amsterdam Avenue, between 106th and 107th. They served pho dry — broth on the side — and suddenly every other pho in the city had something to prove. Beer-battered fried chicken banh mi. Peanut pesto. A whole menu of "wait, you can do that?"
Save this. Text it to the friend who keeps saying "there's nothing to eat up here." Then make them buy dinner.
🎨 10,000 sq ft Mural, Painted by the Neighborhood it Hides
Lincoln Center just unveiled a mural along Amsterdam Avenue and West 62nd called The Future We Create. It was designed by Spanish artist Vanesa Álvarez and assisted by Derval Fairweather — who grew up in the Amsterdam Houses directly across the street. He called the project "a homecoming." Álvarez ran design workshops for two years with NYCHA residents, high school students, and neighbors. In other words: the community drew itself.
Here's why it's actually a story: the mural is wrapped around the fencing for a $335 million rebuild of Lincoln Center's western edge. They're finally tearing down the wall that has separated the campus from Amsterdam Avenue for decades, and adding a 2,000-seat outdoor venue, a park with an interactive water feature, and free performances when it opens in 2028.
Translation: for the next two years, this side of Lincoln Center is a construction site. Thankfully, instead of bare plywood, we have original art to celebrate what Lincoln Center is — finally — turning toward. Walk past it. Then remember what it's hiding, and what's coming.
🐝 12,000 Bees. A Shoebox. $210. On Broadway.
One of your neighbors walked home last Saturday with 12,000 live bees. On purpose. By choice. Possibly on the 1 train.
The NYC Beekeepers Association — founded by UWS beekeeper Andrew Coté, who has been keeping hives on rooftops all over Manhattan for more than 20 years — runs a bee pickup every spring. Beekeepers from across the five boroughs come to collect the worker bees and queens they ordered for the season. A three-pound shoebox, queen included, runs $210. Yes, this happens every year. Yes, rooftop hives are legal — and actively encouraged — across the UWS.
If you've ever wondered where your local honey comes from, the answer is probably a few floors above your apartment. Your upstairs neighbor isn't loud. She's just got 40,000 bees.
🦖 A Real-Life Indiana Jones Opens at AMNH
"Fossils of the Flaming Cliffs" opens at AMNH this week, and it reads like a movie script that took 100 years to finish.
In 1922, Roy Chapman Andrews drove a fleet of Dodges into the Gobi Desert with a camel caravan of gasoline, looking for early human fossils. He didn't find those. He did find — at a red sandstone outcrop he named the Flaming Cliffs — the first dinosaur eggs ever identified by science. He's widely cited as a real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones.
The new show honors Mark Norell, the AMNH paleontologist who returned to the Flaming Cliffs in the 1990s and kept the story going. He died last September at 68. The exhibit features 12 of the museum's most important Gobi fossils and 27 photos across a century of expeditions. Opens in a gallery next to the dinosaur halls. Runs indefinitely.
For: the dinosaur kid in your life. The adult who was the dinosaur kid. Anyone who's watched Raiders and thought, "wait, that's a real job?”
📋Roll Call
Who showed up, who left, and who’s on the way.
Gif by Insaka on Giphy
Opened: 🧋 Molly Tea — 2857 Broadway (110th–111th). The Chinese jasmine tea chain with 2,000+ locations worldwide just landed on upper Broadway. Premium Chinese-grown tea, fresh fruit, and cheese foam toppings for the curious. The boba wars continue. Pick a milk, pick a temperature, and report back.
Opened: 🥪 Upside Deli — 2424 Broadway at 89th (the old Tal Bagels space). Breakfast, sandwiches, salads, smoothies, juices, pastries. The entire "what do you want for lunch" argument, under one roof.
Opening TODAY 🥣 Pure Green — Columbus Avenue, in the former Pinkberry space. The guy who has served you martinis at Prohibition for 30 years, Ken Halberg, is about to sell you açaí bowls two blocks away. Opens at Noon. Be there.
📆 This Weekend
Your weekend, planned.
Jacket or No Jacket? ⛈️☀️🌧️ — Friday: 80°F and thunderstorms (spring's way of saying "pick a lane"). Saturday: 67°F, partly cloudy, and the only day that matters. Sunday: 56°F and raining, which is just April being April. Saturday is for the free outdoor stuff. Sunday is for the ticketed indoor stuff. Mother Nature scheduled your weekend for you.
Friday, April 17
📝 NYPL National Poetry Month Workshop — Bloomingdale Library 3–4:30pm, and Friday, April 24, 3–4:30pm. FREE. April is National Poetry Month, which means for thirty whole days, writing in second person counts as therapy. Bring a pen, a memory, and a mild willingness to be emo about it.
🥃 Prohibition's 30th Birthday Weekend Kicks Off — Prohibition, 503 Columbus Ave at 84th. Through Sunday. It's the '90s again. For three days only, Prohibition is celebrating 30 years with 1996 pricing and live music every night. Think $8 martinis, a little Fiona Apple on the speakers, and a crowd that remembers what "dial-up" sounds like. Teetotalers always welcome — the band doesn't care what's in your glass, and neither do we. Go early, stay late, tip your bartender in 2026 dollars.
🔮 New Moon in Aries Astro Workshop — Friday, 6:30–8pm. $37.65. New moons are fresh starts and Aries is the start of the zodiac — which means this is the cosmic "new year, new me" that actually has a chart to back it up. Expect an astro breakdown of what's coming, a journaling exercise, and a guided intention-setting ritual. If your group chat has been doom-scrolling about Mercury retrograde, send them here instead.
💘 NYC Professional Singles 30s & 40s Speed Dating — Central Park Tavern. Friday, 7–9:30pm. A bar, a timer, and a lot of small talk about Peloton. You already know if this is your thing.
🎙️ Friday Cabaret with Grace at Joanne's — Joanne Trattoria (affectionately: "Joanne's"), 70 W 68th St. Friday, 6:30–8:30pm. $35 minimum spend per person. Yes, the Germanottas' place — Gaga's parents' Italian spot, where the meatballs are famous and the photos on the wall are famouser. Grace Romanello brings Broadway and pop elegance alongside dinner service. Dinner and a cabaret is a very particular New York thing, and this one's five blocks from Lincoln Center. Reserve via OpenTable.
Saturday, April 18
🎻 NY Phil Young People's Concert: Shall We Dance? — David Geffen Hall. Saturday, April 18, 2pm. Tickets from $28. The gateway drug to the orchestra, scored for short attention spans. Age 6+.
🎶 New Wav Fest: NYU Student Music Festival — Saturday, 7pm. Pay what you wish — suggested $5. More than a dozen brand-new songs, each written in 24 hours this month by NYU students from across all majors (not just music), with guest judges, trophies, and real stakes. It's hosted by CWP — the Café Wha? Project, Lincoln Center's youth-arts partner that turns the original Village music room into a launchpad for students. You'll watch the next Lorde figure out her voice in real time, for five bucks. Yes.
🎭 Saturday Favs at West Side Comedy Club — 201 W 75th St. Saturday, 7pm (doors earlier). $28.10. Lineups change weekly — comedians you've seen on Comedy Central, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, and late night. Order Playa Betty's to your seat so you don't have to choose between tacos and punchlines. 90 minutes of actual laughter and a short walk home.
🎻 NY Phil: Dvořák's Seventh & Sibelius's Violin Concerto — David Geffen Hall. 7:30pm. Tickets from $122, sometimes less if you check the box office. Dvořák's Seventh is the symphony he wrote the year his mother died — dark, driving, Bohemian. Pair it with Karen Gomyo on the Sibelius concerto (brooding, Finnish, arguably the hardest violin piece in the repertoire) and you've got a Saturday night that earns the babysitter.
Sunday, April 19
🕯️ Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial — Der Shteyn (The Stone), Riverside Park at 83rd/84th. Sunday, April 19, 1pm. FREE. Rain or shine. The 83rd annual memorial at the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Monument in Riverside Park — one of the oldest Holocaust memorials in the United States. Remarks, readings, and an artistic program of music and poetry. Co-sponsored by YIVO, the Congress for Jewish Culture, Friends of the Bund, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Workers Circle. Full program and speakers →
🎻 CMS: The Shanghai Quartet — Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. 5pm. $41-$99. Haydn's "Rider," Dvořák's "American," and Tan Dun's Feng-Ya-Song — three quartets, three countries, three composers away from home. The Shanghai Quartet's only New York stop this season is shaped like a passport.
🎤 John Oliver & Seth Meyers at the Beacon — Beacon Theatre, Broadway at 74th. Sunday, 7:30pm. Tickets start at $128. Their ongoing UWS residency: 45 minutes of standup each, followed by a joint Q&A. They've sold out 21 shows at the Beacon and counting. This is late-night TV minus the commercials, and someone in the room is heckling Seth. Go.
🧠 Something to Chew On
🛗 A New Elevator at Columbus Circle. Finally.
We have stared at that plywood F-O-R-E-V-E-R. It's done. A new elevator at 59th Street–Columbus Circle is officially in service. That's a good day. It's also the exception.
Here's the catch. The UWS has one of the highest concentrations of retirees and stroller-pushing parents in Manhattan. It also has some of the least ADA-accessible stations in the city. The 72nd Street station elevator has been out of commission for the foreseeable future, which means anyone with a walker, stroller, or injury has exactly two choices: wait for the bus (good luck with that) or pay up for a car service (cool, subway fare plus $15). That's not a small inconvenience. That's the local 1 train, partially unusable for the people who need it most — and a city tax on anyone who can't climb stairs.
So — which station gets the next elevator? And would you actually sign a petition?
Which UWS station should get the next elevator?
Would you sign a petition to the City Council and MTA/DOT ?
Results next week. If enough of you say yes to the petition, we'll make one, and we’ll make some noise.
🌳 Park Notes
What’s growing, what’s open, and where to go to touch grass.
🌷 The tulips are still tulip-ing. The West Side Community Garden at 123 W 89th St (between Amsterdam & Columbus) is still doing its thing. Each bloom lasts about a week, so this weekend's garden looks nothing like last weekend's. Information Days with volunteers giving mini-tours: April 18–19 and 25–26, 10am–6pm. FREE. Dawn to dusk. Dogs on leashes. It is the place to see and be seen.
🌿 Spring Community Celebration at The Green — The Davis Center, north end of Central Park. Saturday, April 18. All day. FREE. The brand-new seasonal lawn that replaces the Gottesman Rink opens with its first-ever spring party — music, games, art, food, and activities, with both indoor and outdoor spaces (a blessing for any parent who has ever chased a toddler through wet grass). In the Conservancy's own words: "Bring neighbors, families, and friends!" Consider this your permission slip. Pack snacks anyway.
🥾 The Great Central Park Hike: Earth Month Edition — Sunday, April 19. 10am. 4 hours. 4.5 miles. Starts at Charles A. Dana Discovery Center (110th & Lenox). Tickets from $28.05. Four hours. Four and a half miles. One park, top to bottom. A Conservancy expert walks you through the ecology, architecture, and hidden history of every landscape — from the North Woods to the Pond. It rains Sunday (add a rain jacket to the pack). You leave the park with sore calves, 12,000 steps, and approximately 90 minutes of Central Park trivia to deploy at brunch. If you've ever said "I should walk more," this is the Sunday.
🏛️ Seneca Village Tour — Tickets from $17 ($10 Conservancy members). Meet inside the park at 85th & CPW. ~75 minutes. You live a few blocks from what was once the largest community of free African-American property owners in pre–Civil War New York. By 1855, roughly 225 people — Black families, Irish immigrants, a few Germans — lived there between today's W 82nd and W 89th. Then the city used eminent domain, paid them pennies, and by 1857 the whole village was gone. Take the tour, walk home the long way, and never look at Summit Rock the same. We promise: you will leave smiling — at a story you're glad you finally know.
🌸 Cherry blossoms: round two. The Reservoir loop and CPW are still putting on the show, and Riverside is starting to peak. Golden hour is the stuff of dreams, but anytime is a great time - get out there.
🧸 Little West Siders The under-4-foot edition. 🎧 = Bigger kids
Small People, Big Plans
Friday, April 17
🐊 NY Historical: Little New Yorkers — A Voice for the Everglades — 170 Central Park West at 77th., 3:30 - 4:30pm. Pay what you wish. Ages 3-6. Why swamps matter, explained at a 4-year-old's level. Future environmental lawyers are born at this program.
🎧🎤 Teens Urban Stages — Spoken Word with JR Rose — Bloomingdale Library, 150 W 100th., 3:30 - 4:30pm, FREE. With JR Rose, queen of slam poetry. Hand-off for skeptical teens: Colleen Hoover's debut novel Slammed — yes, that Colleen Hoover. All the angst. All the rhythm. Let them find out they like poetry before they have to admit it.
🎨 NY Historical: Crafts & Classics Club — Little Women Edition — 170 Central Park West at 77th., 5–6pm. Pay what you wish. All Ages. In the spirit of a classic quilting bee, your kid will design and sew their own appliqué quilt square — learning to pick fabric, cut shapes, and hand-stitch them into a collective quilt that the group will finish over a five-week run. While their hands work, a staff reader cozies up and reads aloud from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women — Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, their neighbor Teddy, all of 1860s Massachusetts. It's crafting, it's literature, it's one hour without a screen. (Wink. Wink.)
Saturday, April 18
🌱 CMOM: "Great and Growing" Earth Week — Readaloud of I Hate Honey — Children's Museum of Manhattan, 212 W 83rd. 10:30am & 11:30am. Museum admission required. A grumpy bear cub learns why bees matter. (You read about the real bees in the Scoop. This is the illustrated, cub-friendly version. It hits.)
🌍 AMNH: Earth Fest — American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West. Saturday, April 18, 11am–4pm. Free with Museum admission. Here's the part we didn't think was real until we looked it up: your kid will get to walk through a 46-foot inflatable replica of the JOIDES Resolution, a real ocean-drilling research vessel that has pulled rock cores from miles beneath the Pacific and Atlantic. Inside the inflatable ship: interactives, videos, and staff explaining how we figured out the Earth is what it is by pulling dirt out of it. This is the only day of the year this thing is parked at the museum. They'll leave asking when they can be a paleoceanographer. You'll leave googling what one is.
🎭 St. Agnes Library: Theater Games — St. Agnes Library, 444 Amsterdam (81st–82nd). Saturday, April 18. 4-5pm. Ages 6-12. FREE. Kids build confidence, make weird faces, and learn how to be loud on purpose. Your library card already paid for this.
Sunday, April 19
📜 AMNH: Origami Class — American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West. Morning session 10:30am–12:30pm (arrive by 10:15am), afternoon session 2:30pm–4:30pm (arrive by 2:15pm). Tickets from $20.Once a month, real origami experts teach your kid to fold paper into cranes, dinosaurs, and things that should not be geometrically possible. The $20 ticket gets you two hours of no-screen focus and a child who now wants an entire ream of printer paper. Experts deserve to get paid.
🎧🎮 Create-athon: Game Making — Lincoln Center, David Rubenstein Atrium. 1-4pm. FREE. Build a video game in a day. For the kid who would rather be on Roblox — and who can be convinced, with snacks, to make the Roblox.
Monday, April 20
🎧 ♟️ Girls' Chess and Math Workshop — 4–6pm. FREE. Chess is applied math with better costumes. Run by Rooks and Roots, K–6 girls welcome.
Tuesday, April 21
🧱 Morningside Heights: Let's Go LEGO — Morningside Heights Library, 2900 Broadway at 113th., 3:30 - 4:30 PM FREE. Drop in, build, leave. No instructions, no judgment, no LEGO on your own living room floor.
Wednesday, April 22
🎓 Morningside Heights: Power Up Pre-K! — Morningside Heights Library, 2900 Broadway at 113th., 3:30pm–4:30pm. FREE. One hour of themed stories, skill-building, and social-emotional play for Pre-K explorers. Every 2nd and 4th Wednesday. Basically preschool, on a drop-in basis.
♟️ Storytime Chess — St. Agnes Library, Community Program Room. 3:30pm–4:30pm. Works for ages 3–7. FREE. Chess taught via the famous Chesslandia method — where pieces have names, backstories, and kingdoms, and the knight is literally a horse named Zippy before he's a tactical weapon. Turns out "the pointy one moves diagonally" was never going to work.
Thursday, April 23
🎧📚 Comic Creator Chat: More Than One Way to Break Into Manga — St. Agnes Library, Community Program Room 4 - 5:30pm, Ages 13-18 FREE. For the kid with the sketchbook under their bed and one-word answers at dinner.
Ongoing
🌂 Big Umbrella Festival @ Riverside Library (& all of Lincoln Center) — Through April 26. FREE and choose-what-you-pay. Lincoln Center's festival for neurodiverse audiences — relaxed performances, fidgets on hand, chill-out rooms. Genuinely one of the best things happening on the UWS right now for families with sensory-sensitive kids, and a beautiful experience for any kid. One week left.
‼ On your radar: Next week
Don’t say nobody told you.
Monday, April 20
🎸 Waxahatchee & MJ Lenderman at the Beacon — Beacon Theatre, Broadway at 74th. 8pm. Start $226, almost sold out. With special guest Brennan Wedl. Per Rolling Stone, they opened their Atlanta tour with a surprise acoustic cover of Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas" — currently the #1 song in the country — with Katie Crutchfield on lead and Lenderman on harmony. This is the show of the week.
🎤 Symphony Space: New York Proud — Stories from the City of Immigrants with Waterwell — 2537 Broadway at 95th. Monday, April 20, 7pm. Starting $10. A Waterwell-produced evening of New York stories, told by New Yorkers, about how our city keeps writing itself in other people's voices. Not a dry panel — a staged production.
Tuesday, April 21
🩰 NYC Ballet: All Balanchine III — Firebird Premieres — David H. Koch Theater, 7:30pm. Tickets from $77.Runs through May 3. A prince, a firebird, an evil sorcerer, thirteen captive princesses, and Marc Chagall's sets bathing the whole thing in red and gold. Balanchine choreographed it. Stravinsky wrote it. You just have to show up.
🔬 AMNH: The Weirdest Thing — A Radiolab Science Gameshow & Dance Party — American Museum of Natural History. 7–10pm. $15. Radiolab's Latif Nasser hosts a gameshow where AMNH scientists go head-to-head over the strange true stories behind objects in the collection — then you move to the Gilder Center for a Climate Solutions Dance Party hosted by marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson with tunes by DJ Mamoudou. Yes, you are encouraged to dress as your favorite climate solution. No, we are not kidding.
Wednesday, April 22
🎤 Kiki Andersen: Professional Un-Professionals Comedy Show — The Speakeasy at The Gin Mill, 442 Amsterdam. 8pm. $15 at the door or 2-for-$10 advance (math that works).
Thursday, April 23
🎭 Symphony Space: Uptown Showdown — Dining Out vs. Eating In — Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway. 7pm. $18. A comedy debate series where two teams of stand-ups and late-night writers argue high-stakes questions (tonight: restaurant reservation or leftovers on the couch?). The audience decides the winner. 90 minutes of sharp nonsense.
📚 Megan Garber: Screen People — Book Launch at Barnes & Noble UWS — Barnes & Noble Upper West Side. 7pm. Book purchase required to join the signing line. TThe Atlantic's Megan Garber drops Screen People — a sharp read on how our media diet turned everyone around us into characters in a show we didn't agree to watch. Her argument: the loneliness, the mistrust, the cynicism, the politics-as-entertainment hellscape — all downstream of treating each other as content. She'll probably ruin your next scroll session, but in the best possible way. Call ahead to reserve your copy (required for the signing line).
🎷 Symphony Space: Squirrel Nut Zippers — Jazz from the Back o' Town — Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway. Thursday, April 23, 8pm. $40–$70. The '90s swing-revival heroes are still swinging — this time a tribute to New Orleans jazz featuring Jelly Roll Morton's "Animule Ball" and Louis Armstrong's "Back O' Town Blues" alongside their own catalog reimagined. If your parents played Hell on repeat in 1997, bring them.
🤝 Give back
Small acts, big block energy.
🦛 Hippo Spring Fair — Sunday, May 3. Riverside Park. The hippo playground throws its spring party. If your kid has ever climbed on a concrete hippo, this is their Super Bowl. Volunteer a 2-hour shift, get a free unlimited wristband per slot. Two hours of your time for a full day of not hearing "can I go on the bouncy house again?" is the best trade on the UWS this May. Sign up now!
📸 Your West Side
You share it. We publish it. That’s how this works.
Shawna B. on the Camp Guide: "So resourceful for a parent of a child who needs more support." Shawna, "resourceful" is exactly the word we whispered to ourselves at 2am formatting that guide while crying. Thank you for noticing.
Shari K.: "It already feels like that 'in-the-know neighbor' we all want in our inbox." Shari, we're framing this. She loves: Central Park South Pure Barre. Filed under the UWS fitness & wellness map we're building next.
Sandrea B.: "I'm new to town — open to exploring and meeting new friends!" Sandrea, welcome. Your inbox is about to get very helpful. Consider this your intro to the block.
Kiriti M. on Black Press Coffee: "Coffee, matcha, staff, vibe — all great." Noted, mapped, ordering a matcha today.
Your turn. Quick homework assignment (no grade, no deadline): What do you like about The West Sider? What are you loving about the UWS right now? Bonus points for photos. Reply to this email or send it to [email protected]. We screenshot the nice ones and read them to each other.
That’s it for this week.
📣 SHARE THE WEST SIDER Forward responsibly. Or irresponsibly. We're not picky.
That's Issue #7. Give yourself a round of applause! Molly Tea. A new elevator. 12,000 bees. A Chagall-level mural on a construction fence. A real-life Indiana Jones at AMNH. Tulips still tulip-ing. Prohibition at '96 prices. John Oliver, again. Never a dull week up here.
You keep forwarding this thing. We keep writing it. Keep showing up.
See you next week.
— The West Sider
P.S. If you've been here since Issue #1, thank you. If you joined last week, welcome — you picked a good one. If someone forwarded this to you and you're still reading at the bottom, just subscribe already. We don't bite. We just write a lot.