By Charlotte Hampton
Isabella, Lily, Alyce, and I all live between 96th and 105th streets on the Upper West Side. We became a group of friends at MS 54 on 108th and Columbus, went to public high schools in three different boroughs, and are now scattered from coast to coast at college. I attribute our enduring relationships to zip code 10025.
My friends are all deeply involved in our community. If you have a dog that you walk in Riverside Park, you probably know Isabella and her lagotto, Lua. She and other dog owners take strolls in Riverside at an early hour when most 20-year-olds aren’t awake. Isabella is the only person below the age of 50 who knows what pitbulls have been adopted and who has a new doodle puppy.
Lily has a knack for capturing neighborhood moments of candor and quietude on her analog camera. She pulls out her Canon discreetly every time, so we now have a long photo history of secret moments that otherwise would have been forgotten: Isabella and Alyce laughing together on Trivia Night at Fred’s, munching on dinner after work, and me gazing mournfully into the distance at Metro Diner, before I was set to leave my friends for a study abroad program.
The walls of Alyce’s bedroom are covered with colorful index-card drawings of our neighborhood. For my 20th birthday in April, she mailed me a drawing of us throughout the years, and the doodled figures situated themselves easily in my mind. We are walking to MS54 through Straus Park, crying or laughing on a swing set on 113th, and now sitting for coffee to catch up at the Hungarian Pastry Shop.
We shared little adventures of high school on the Upper West Side. We had first kisses on the Columbia Quad and sipped cups of hard lemonade, initially mistaken for non-alcoholic. Isabella and I started a short-lived band called Rockfowl in her apartment — and forced Lily to videotape our performances. At the start of every summer, the four of us rode our bikes down the Riverside bike path and through playground sprinklers while no little kids were around.
Writing this from Hanover, New Hampshire, I feel a distinct itch for home. It doesn’t matter that old haunt Yakitori Sun-Chan has closed and been replaced by Come Say High a few storefronts down: I miss the people who were shaped by the same sunny mornings in Riverside Park and $1 ICEEs after school, when our little hands got purple and sticky with melted sugar. It seems that every time we come home now, it’s to introduce a new boyfriend, girlfriend, or close friend.
Still, we’re all thoroughly Upper West Siders, and now commiserate about the one thing New York didn’t give us: the ability to drive at our rural colleges.
Plus, there’s always FaceTime!
Do you have a story about friendship you’d like to share? At least one of the friends (counting you) must be an Upper West Sider in this occasional series, meaning we’ll post interesting stories as often as they come in. (We got two this week.) Send your stories to info@westsiderag.com with the subject line: Friends of the Upper West Side.
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Beautiful story that has a long way to go! Let’s hear it for 10025.
Sweet. Thank you for sharing.
Just judging by the photos (and yes, being a bit judge-y) these girls look like they’re eating at one of the restaurants Anya Schiffrin criticizes in her article elsewhere in the Rag about the lack of “Quiet Restaurants on the UWS.” Deci-belles, let’s call them.
Mark: points for “deci-belles”. <You should get residuals because I'm gonna be using that term…