By Caitlin Hawke

I want to offer some cheeky predictions for our beloved Upper West Side in 2024. Keenly aware that it’s an election year, I shall leave political projections to the professional pundits. That said, in no particular order, I predict that:

After congestion pricing takes effect, adding a surcharge whenever cars drive south of 60th Street, necessity becomes the mother of invention: innovative curbside parking takes off on the UWS, stacking parking spaces vertically.

Pickleball-mania grows. With little open space on the UWS for more facilities, courts spring up in the Broadway medians.

The United States Postal Service partners with the growing crop of smoke shops on the UWS; budding philatelists are able to buy stamps at dozens of storefronts without waiting in the weeds of long post office lines. Added bonus: the vibe while standing on line will be a lot more mellow. But you still will have to declare contents that are liquid, fragile, or hazardous.

Former Jeopardy! host Mayim Bialik steps in during the settlement of the late Metro Theater owner Albert Bialek’s estate, providing the financing to reopen the long-vacant Metro at West 100th Street as a cultural center in the Bloomingdale area with films, cabarets, open mics, and, yes, Jeopardy!-style trivia nights. When the Metro reopens, lines snake around the block. In honor of this long-awaited feat, and reprising his impromptu pandemic performances, Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell belts out “The Impossible Dream” from his fifth floor window across Broadway, and the waiting crowd goes nuts, having at last reached the unreachable dream for this old venue.

NYC pedicab owners grow weary of all the bad press and band together to launch the next fitness craze inspired by Montreal’s “Velofestif.” They call it The Big Apple Pushmi-Pullyu — a giant cycling party bike where 12 commuters ride at once and spin their way to work…together.

The MTA becomes alarmed by the raging success of the Big Apple Pushmi-Pullyu, which has siphoned off revenue, and looks into retrofitting the M5 bus line into a party bike lane the length of Riverside Drive.

Tesla takes things one step further snapping up most of Broadway’s unoccupied store frontage and creates “Supercharged Pelotonics” – a chain of spinning studios where all the energy collected by in-studio spinners leads right out the door to supercharging stations. The stations are soon adapted for delivery bikes thereby eliminating all in-building storage of hazardous e-bike batteries.

Season Four of the true-crime pastiche “Only Murders in the Building” is postponed not due to any Hollywood strikes, but because the “Arconia” (aka the beautiful Belnord), must undergo Local Law 11 façade repairs, leaving the characters to untangle the mysteries of the omnipresent NYC sidewalk bridge epidemic in a coming episode. Selena Gomez will return in the role of Mabel Mora and quip “if Ben Franklin really knew what he was talking about he would have said ‘death, taxes, and scaffolding.’”

Bob Dylan, alas, finally concludes his “Never Ending Tour” but takes up a never-ending Vegas-style residency called “Biograph at the Beacon” moving slowly through his various Eras, bucking his reputation as a shapeshifter by perfectly reincarnating each of his past selves at every juncture, satisfying not only longtime Dylan fans, but also the naysayers who live only for his jukebox recreation of each recorded album. He will be joined onstage by AI generated holograms of Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Ol’ Blue Eyes and Taylor Swift, the latter a wink to his forthcoming record of Swift covers.

Not to be outdone, Taylor Swift announces her crossover to opera and releases an album of Italian arias entitled “Crudele Estate.” Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb quickly casts Swift as Carmen. Critics rave and musicologists debate the connections between the flower in the aria “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée” and the red scarf in “All Too Well.” Fans flock to take it all in. Exceeding the Met’s board of trustees’ wildest dreams, Swift puts opera on the map for a new generation of audience members.

And speaking of Taylor Swift, my last prediction for 2024 sees her purchasing Central Park, gifting it back to the people of New York and thereby assuring the city’s solvency as it moves through the commercial real estate crunch. Queen Tay has just one caveat: a cattery must be installed deep in the Ramble. Bird lovers protest vociferously but because the cattery is fully enclosed, the birds just shake it off. The idea becomes so popular among cat lovers that Block Associations across the UWS raise funds to erect hyperlocal catteries and the rat population is reduced to near negligible numbers. Cats become the anti-heroes of Gotham.

Look what you made me do, my fellow Westsiders! Karma is the thought that we can make some of this playfulness come true.

Happy New Year!

Caitlin Hawke is an occasional contributor to West Side Rag. History buffs may appreciate her blogposts about the UWS Bloomingdale neighborhood here: https://www.w102-103blockassn.org/blog/category/history.