Monday, December 11, 2023
Rainy. High 54 degrees.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
NYC Hotel Week is just around the corner and there are Upper West Side establishments currently participating in the deals. You can save 24% when you book rooms at select hotels from January 3 to February 4, including Arthouse Hotel and Hotel Beacon in the neighborhood. You can find out more — HERE.
Hanukkah ends on Friday.
Upper West Side News
By Gus Saltonstall
This past Friday was the 43rd anniversary of the death of John Lennon, who was shot and killed on the corner of West 72nd Street and Central Park West in 1980. Lennon, the music icon who famously lived in the Dakota on West 72nd Street, has been making headlines recently in an unexpected way.
One of his songs released in 1971 with wife Yoko Ono, not with the Beatles, reappeared last week within Billboard’s top-10 rock-streaming songs. Lennon’s holiday tune — “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” — performed with the Plastic Ono Band and the Harlem Community Choir, is expected to continue to climb the charts through the holiday season.
Ono, who still has the apartment in the Dakota but now spends more time in a farmhouse upstate, has previously said that she focuses more on the anniversary of Lennon’s birthday on October 9 than on the tragic day in December — and she hopes other people do the same.
Plans were released last week to turn a shuttered prison near Central Park on West 110th Street into affordable housing.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced that plans would be moving forward to transform the former Lincoln Correctional Facility at 31-33 West 110th Street into 105 affordable homes for purchase.
The prison has been closed since 2019. The governor recently selected a team of developers and nonprofits for the $90-million project to create the “Seneca,” which pays homage to Seneca Village, a predominantly African-American community that existed within Central Park in the mid-19th century, but was destroyed to create the park.
“This announcement brings us one step closer to transforming the former Lincoln Correctional Facility in New York City into a vibrant, mixed-use development with more than 100 affordable new homes,” Hochul said in a news release about the project.
The affordable housing plan still needs to go through the public review process before it gets final approval.
You can find out more about the plan — HERE.
The landlord of an Upper West Side pizza joint sued the city recently under the claim that the city’s failure to take action against unlicensed street vendors operating outside of the storefront hurt their tenant’s business, as reported by The Real Deal.
The lawsuit argues that the city did not crack down on street vendors operating near Bravo West Pizza at 2345 Broadway near West 85th Street, which allegedly resulted in the pizzeria losing business and halting their rent payments.
The lawsuit is now seeking nearly $1 million in damages.
The landlord singled out a food truck that its lawyers say started operating on the corner of Broadway and West 85th and 86th streets in September of 2022.
You can read more about the legal battle on The Real Deal’s website.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that Mayor Eric Adams has the lowest approval rating of any mayor since the school first started polling New York City voters nearly three decades ago.
Adams scored an approval rating of just 28 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week. It is the lowest score for any NYC mayor since Quinnipiac first started surveying the city in 1996.
The poll comes shortly after a difficult few weeks for Adams, who recently had his cellphones seized by the FBI, had a woman accuse him of sexual assault, and announced budget cuts for the city.
The mayor’s team responded to the low numbers by saying “incorrect polls come out every day,” and that Adams was delivering for the people of New York.
You can check out the Quinnipiac poll for yourself — HERE.
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Doesn’t seem like 43 years since John’s murder. Yet in other ways, it seems like forever. The world certainly hasn’t improved.
I had naively assumed that food trucks are invariably licensed. An unlicensed truck’s contributing to the failure of a legitimate, regulated, tax-paying business? Sounds like another front on which the Adams administration is not enforcing the law. And that failure is detrimental to the generality of citizens.
We need a better city government.
Lack of enforcement seems to be the root cause of so many of NYC’s problems, certainly hasn’t improved under Adams
No fan of Adams, but in all fairness, I’m guessing the food trucks arrival preceded Adams election.
No, I didn’t say his admin first allowed them in. We all have seen food trucks for decades. Enforcement now is the issue – and I agree with your being no fan of Adams.
VOTE!
I didn’t realize the pizza place was closed. I live near there and go there periodically but obviously not recently. I have noticed that truck and assumed it was permitted. There should be a mechanism for taxing the food trucks and carts so that businesses that actually do pay taxes are not penalized, and they should not be allowed to just park wherever they want. WSR readers are constantly whining about free parking spots for cars, but this is even worse.
That restaurant would also be helped if it was not a hang out for those living in the supportive living facility next to it. Whenever I go in there, there are usually a bunch of people just hanging out both inside and outside. The owner seems like a good person but I guess he can’t do much.
I am more supportive of the police than most but it would be nice if they could more often tell people to “move along” like they did in the old days. Unfortunately, they are no longer permitted to do so.
Adams worse than DeBlasio ?? Really Is that even possible
His handling of the migrant crisis did it.
Hard to do but he accomplished it.
Complaint is here: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=vR6184pRzj40dAmj3ak51g==
My first reaction is that this is quite a stretch, legally, but weirder things have happened.
A little investigative journalism would show that that there are no food trucks. licensed or otherwise. on Broadway between 85th & 86th Streets. There is a Mexican food vendor on the corner of 85th St., & Broadway, and another food vendor on 87th & Broadway. Also, the space in front of the former pizza place is a MTA bus stop.
I had a comment that was not posted where I mentioned that there are street vendors who come at lunch time and set up on the corners of 86th and Broadway and 85th St and Broadway on the West Side of Broadway They bring coolers and hot packs and sell lunch. They are only there for a couple of hours. They don’t even bring a cart. No food vending license there. And the Pizza Place is still in business.
I made a reply that has not been posted. i shall just ask, on what basis we should believe what you write over what online newspapers have reported? Are you relying on a distinction between food trucks and food vendors?
yes, what about all of the ladies selling tamales? They’re all unlicensed. Nothing is done about that. They also block the sidewalks