Photo by Bette Kerr of a protest at the Met Opera last week.
Check out some stories written about the neighborhood in other news outlets in the past week.
A neat map of all of the new animals discovered in Central Park’s recent census. “The BioBlitz, as this decennial census is called, identified 173 species that were either newly spotted or returning after an absence.” Among the exotic creatures: a diamondback terrapin (turtle) that was probably once someone’s pet. (New York magazine)
A Community Board 7 committee voted to rename part of West 97th street after Ariel Russo, the fouer-year-old girl who was struck and killed by an SUV this summer. Her mother Sofia Russo spoke at the meeting: “I got my first pair of shoes at Harry’s Shoes on 84th. Ariel got her first pair of shoes at Harry’s Shoes on 84th, and my mom wanted me to share with you guys that Ariel embodied the Upper West Sider,” Russo said, through tears. “She was that girl who loved to go to Harry’s Shoes. She went to Symphony Space every Saturday. She was an Upper West Side girl.” (Columbia Spectator)
The Sikh professor who was beaten up by several young men on bicycles last week said he would like to educate his attackers about his religion. Police released a grainy surveillance video of the suspected young men gathering before the attack. (Daily News)
If you’re like me, you’ve been approached numerous times in the past week by Jews who are part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement asking “Are you Jewish?” But how do they seem to know I’m Jewish? The Forward investigated… “For the thousands of Chabadniks who comb city streets in pairs over Sukkot, efficiency is paramount: They aim to discern who is Jewish before they even broach the subject: ‘Excuse me….’ But it’s not easy figuring out who is a member of the tribe and who is not, even in the most Jewish city in America.” (Forward)
City Opera may go bankrupt. They’re now trying a Kickstarter campaign. (NY Times)
Retail acquisition: “Trevi Retail, a privately held real-estate operating company, has just completed its purchase of the retail condominium at 101 West 87th Street. The property is located in Manhattan at the northwest corner of West 87th Street and Columbus Avenue in the Upper West Side neighborhood.” (BusinessWire)
Cockroaches tend to stay in their own neighborhoods, sort of like humans: “A cockroach found on the Upper East Side is genetically different than the Upper West Side and Roosevelt Island cockroaches, Dr. Stoeckle and his team have found. On the Upper West Side, about 80% of the American cockroaches belong to the same gene pool. On Roosevelt Island, it is 90%.” (Wall Street Journal)
Masonic temples, including one on the UWS, have been reborn as luxury condos. (Wall Street Journal)
Re: “A cockroach found on the Upper East Side is genetically different than the Upper West Side …. On the Upper West Side, about 80% of the American cockroaches belong to the same gene pool….”
One wonders if archy, the famed literate cockroach of the “archy and mehitabel” stories created by Don Marquis for his newspaper column, could have lived on the UWS. From this Wikipedia description it certainly sounds possible:
“In 1916, Marquis introduced Archy, a fictional cockroach, into his daily newspaper column at The New York Evening Sun. Archy (whose name was always written in lower case in the book titles, but was upper case when Marquis would write about him in narrative form) was a cockroach who had been a free verse poet in a previous life, and took to writing stories and poems on an old typewriter at the newspaper office when everyone in the building had left. Archy would climb up onto the typewriter and hurl himself at the keys, laboriously typing out stories of the daily challenges and travails of a cockroach. Archy’s best friend was Mehitabel, an alley cat. The two of them shared a series of day-to-day adventures that made satiric commentary on daily life in the city ….”
Making satiric commentary on daily life in the city certainly seems very UWS-ish, don’ it?
Does renaming West 97th street after Ariel Russo make sense on any level?
Who does it hurt? I’m sure it provides the family some comfort. If you’re really opposed… get a life!
I did not ask if it hurt – or state that I was opposed – I asked if it made sense. Do we do this with every pedestrian death? Just pedestrian deaths under the age of 10? 12? 15? How does a municipality manage this? Is the Community Board’s function to as you stated, ‘provide comfort’? These are valid questions.
Three things trouble me about being stopped on every street corner to be asked “Are you Jush?”, beyond the simple fact that my religious choices are none of their business.
First, I remember too well the days when you could not walk on an avenue without being stopped by a follower of the Reverend Moon. I didn’t appreciate being confronted relentlessly by the Moonies and I don’t appreciate now being unable to walk on Broadway without being confronted by the Chabad-guys. (I wonder why we have heard nothing from the vocal opponents of stop-question-and-frisk about this inescapable religious interrogation.)
Second, even if I were to tell them that I am “Jush”, I know that, by their standards, I might just as well be going to Church on Sundays. It is a quandary of modern Judaism that people can self-identify as “Jewish” without following any of the strict rituals by which the Chabad define their daily lives — but since the Chassidim do not acknowledge modern Judaism as Judaism, they would not acknowledge me as Jewish. So why bother asking me when, to look at me, you already know the answer?
Last, if I wanted to shake a lulav or put on tefillin, I could, in this city, find a way to do so without the intervention of Chabad. If I choose *not* to do so, why can they not respect my choice? What if, in response to their question, I offered them a ham sandwich for their troubles?
During the recent descent of the Chabad on our neighborhood, with at least two of these men planted on every single street corner for block after block after block, it was impossible to go about one’s business without (or even *with*) being stopped constantly with repetitions of the same intrusive question. Maybe if they succeed in bringing their Messiah the rest of us will once again be allowed to walk on Broadway?