My Favorite Place on the Upper West Side Is…My ‘Wild West’ (Rent-Stabilized) Apartment

By Rick Whitaker

My apartment at West 109 and Amsterdam is now my favorite place on the Upper West Side. That was far from true when I moved in at 22 in 1990 when its roughness matched both the building and neighborhood. Very late one night, with open windows and hardly any furniture to soften noise, a huge Rottweiler fought a tomcat below in the courtyard. I’ll spare you the outcome of that vicious fight, but it did not serve as a genteel welcome to the neighborhood.

I lucked into renting the Wild West apartment when Jenny McPhee, an UWS native from a legendary family  came up to me at work (we were both editorial assistants at Knopf) and said a friend was moving out of a rent-stabilized apartment, and if I would pay the landlord what her friend owed him, I could sign a lease and have my own place (I’d been sharing a small apartment on … Staten Island, so she figured I deserved it). Somehow, on my poverty-wages salary, I came up with the $1600 that same day and went up to 109th St. where I met the landlord, gave him the cash,  and signed the lease. I don’t know how I could’ve stayed in New York without the apartment, and I certainly couldn’t have adopted my son David for whom I needed, of course, a spare bedroom.

The neighborhood at the time was crazy dangerous, nothing at all like it is now. Barack Obama had lived down the block, but he’d gone on to greener pastures by then. After I was mugged the one and only time, I called the police and they put me in their squad car to look for the culprit. On the police radio there was an announcement of a major crime within a few blocks every 15 seconds: rape, murder, robbery, one thing after another. The detective assigned to my case — 6’5” with a necklace that said #1 DAD — sat on a stoop the next day until the thief walked by, robbing someone else with his broken gun and broken English. I went to the grand jury and testified against him, and he went to jail, but I felt  pretty bad for him. When he approached me and stuck his gun in my back he’d said he was collecting a $50 debt for someone else. So we went to the ATM inside the D’Agostino’s at 110 and Broadway. I took out 3 twenties  and  asked him for $10 change. He  said the extra $10 was his tip, and we both laughed. Then I used a pay phone to call 911.

Skip ahead a very quick 30 years to April 2020 when I found myself, like everyone else, spending an inordinate amount of time indoors, alone, befuddled, lonely, and anxious. Eventually, I realized that one thing I could do to make myself feel better was to improve my apartment, something I’d wanted to do for a long time, so I installed some vinyl flooring, some peel and stick wallpaper, and most importantly I bought a bunch of plants and would keep buying plants right up to the present. I’m at least as fond of my plants as I am of any… oh, never mind. I love them. They’re quiet and just the right amount of company. Then a friend inherited some furniture from an artist who lived downtown, and after she paid to store the stuff for a year she decided to give it away. I was the only one who followed through, so I got it all, including a beautiful mid-century dining table, a Hans Wegner rocking chair, some other furniture, and some paintings by the artist, the late Madeleine Gekiere. I had already been collecting art for a long time, and ever since working at Knopf I’ve collected books. So now my apartment is pretty well filled with good books, artwork, and plants, and I find myself reluctant to leave, even when I should, even when I have to go to work eight blocks away. For whatever reason I don’t feel lonely very much anymore and I love being home by myself though of course I also love being outside and doing things on the UWS as I have for 32 years at the same address. Where else would I live?