Monday, November 20, 2023
Partly sunny. High 45 degrees.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Thanksgiving will take place on Thursday, November 23. It will be a busy few days for the Upper West Side, as the inflation event for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will happen on Wednesday, and the parade itself will march through the neighborhood the following day.
Upper West Side News
By Gus Saltonstall
There have been more homes sold on the Upper West Side in 2023 than any other neighborhood in New York City, according to a recent study by Property Shark.
The real estate website published a report of the “Top 50 Most Expensive NYC Neighborhoods in Q3 2023,” which also included data on home sales prices and the number of sales per community. While the Upper West Side came in as the 26th most expensive neighborhood in the city from July 1 to September 30 of this year, it led the city in a different statistic.
No New York City neighborhood has seen more home sales in the five boroughs this year than the 586 transactions that have happened on the Upper West Side. The Upper East Side was a close second at 583 home sales, and then there is a steep drop off to Chelsea’s 198 sales.
The Upper West Side and Upper East Side also had by far the most home sales in New York City in 2022.
You can check out the full study on Property Shark’s website — HERE.
Speaking of Upper West Side home sales, the owner of Chelsea Piers just listed his local townhouse, where Eleanor Roosevelt’s father once lived, for nearly $10 million, as first reported by the New York Times.
Roland Betts, along with his wife Lois Betts, listed their longtime home at 313 West 102nd Street for $9.5 million. The couple bought the home in 1972 for $150,000, according to the Times.
The single-family home has four bedrooms, four-and-a-half bathrooms, a balcony, gardens, a fireplace, and 5,100 square feet of interior space.
Along with his Chelsea Piers success, Betts served in the ownership group of the Texas Rangers with his Yale classmate and good friend President George W. Bush, who visited the home between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive on multiple occasions, according to the New York Times.
You can find out more about the property — HERE.
A Columbia University student filed a lawsuit last week against the nonprofit behind a truck that has appeared around campus over the past month, featuring a mobile billboard with the names and photos of students along with the caption — “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites,” as first reported by Patch.
Yusuf Hafez, 21, filed the lawsuit against Accuracy in Media, Inc., which argued that the nonprofit violated a section of New York Civil Rights law that bars corporations from using a person’s photo in advertisement without written consent.
The truck began appearing near Columbia’s 116th Street campus around the end of October and has featured multiple names and photos of students. The truck has appeared outside of other campuses across the country.
Accuracy in Media, Inc. did not respond to Patch’s request for comment.
You can read more about the lawsuit — HERE.
Gratitude.
West Side Rag put out the call on November 12 for readers to take part in our 2nd annual Thanksgiving contest. In the following days, scores of people sent in responses on what they were most thankful for over nine different topics related to the Upper West Side.
The Rag will publish the results and announce a winner for each category in an article later this week.
On the topic of gratitude, and in a week where we reflect on the things we are grateful for, it felt like the right time to give my thanks to West Side Rag readers for an overwhelmingly supportive first two-and-a-half months in my new position at the publication.
As in any career decision, there was a certain level of anxiety attached to my move from Patch to the Rag.
That anxiety dissipated in a matter of days, though.
I’ve been a first-person witness to the West Side Rag team’s unceasing commitment to Upper West Side news, and the strength, support, and knowledge of the Rag’s readership base.
To tie it back to our Thanksgiving contest, along with the Rag team and its devoted readers, I am thankful for the Joan of Arc Park on West 93rd Street and Riverside; the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich from Zucker’s at West 73rd Street and Columbus; the basketball courts on West 98th Street and Amsterdam; the ivy-covered building on West 91st Street and West End Avenue; the Arizona iced tea and bag of chips you can still get for $1.50 from the deli at West 103rd Street and Broadway; the Riverside Church on West 122nd Street and Claremont Avenue; and much, much more.
Subscribe to WSR’s free email newsletter here.
Gratitude for the MTA buses and bus drivers on West Side routes, especially the M66 and M79 🙂
The idea that individuals should be shamed with a billboard truck for their political views is abhorrent. The fact that the subject is a young 21-year-old person makes it even worse. Young people often change their minds as they mature and learn, don’t they? Yet people want to put a scarlet letter on anyone who doesn’t agree with them and in effect try and banish them?
The irony is that it was the left that started this trend by refusing to let people with differing points of view speak on campuses, calling employers, knocking MAGA hast off people’s heads etc. To now see conservatives including people like Bill Ackman adopting these tactics is very troubling.
Supporting Palestinians or even advocating for the elimination of Israel as a state does not make you an anti-semite. (Don’t people realize that Semites are Arabs also?) It doesn’t mean you’re advocating violence either. The way to combat ideas that you don’t like isn’t through an Ad Hominem attack but rather through vigorous debate.
Wow. Wiping Israel off the map doesn’t make one an anti-Semite.
Just wow.
Actually, advocating for the elimination of Israel does make you an anti-Semite. Because even if you swallow the myth of settler colonialism hook, line, and sinker, you’re not advocating for the elimination of America (or most of the countries in the Western hemisphere). So clearly that means you have a problem with the Jewish state, and no one else.
https://www.ajc.org/news/anti-zionism-and-antisemitism
Also, taking the term “anti-Semitism” away from Jews is a dog whistle that says that Jews don’t matter. Do better.
The term “antisemitism” refers only to Jews and not to all possible Semites. It was coined as a more “polite” term to replace “Jew Hatred”. Lets work for a world with less hatred.
But they are advocating violence and this protest have all ready cost the tax payers of NYC 6 figures from property damage and NYPD overtime.
They’re only shamed if what they did was shameful. Otherwise they should be proud, right?
You cannot seriously think that advocating the elimination of Israel as a state does not constitute antisemitism or advocating violence.
You cannot think that defaming a 21 year old college student who has nothing to do with political activism is a meaningful form of political action.
The truck is run by a wing of James O’Keefe’s project veritas. They’re the definition of a bad faith actor
What makes you think that Mr Hafez has nothing to do with political activism? If I understand correctly, he is calling for wiping a country off the map, if that’s not political activism, then what it is?
If they use a quote, it is not defamation.
Gratitude for:
Central Park
Graceful brownstones and pre-war buildings.
Cathedral of St. John the Divine and campus.
Local shops that have managed to remain like University Hardware and Stationery & Toy World.
The return of Fairway Cafe.
Silver Moon and Epices bakeries
Sorry Yusuf but you’re going to have a hard time proving that’s an advertisement.
If we can digress into “Church Chat,” for a moment, I note there was a fundraiser for the Center at West Park Presbyterian Church last week. The well known neighborhood philanthropist, Mark Ruffalo, was behind it, and he roped in Matt Damon and someone named Missy Yeager. Do we know much was raised?
“philanthropist, Mark Ruffalo gave the church a big fat check for …$1000.00 (one thousand.)
The owners of the church should be able to do with their property whatever they want. This is ridiculous, Orwellian situation possible only in New York where countless functionaries have an unchecked power over property rights.
As the preeminent legal scholar on this blog, I move that Hafez’s lawsuit be dismissed with extreme prejudice, and that deportation proceedings commence forthwith for filing a frivolous lawsuit, and for promulgating hate speech.
I also call on Letitia James and Alvin Bragg to initiate an investigation for possible RICO statute violations for any legally licensed professional who may have helped Hafez craft this spare-to-square legal pleading.