UWS Weekend: 5 Great Things To Do in (or Near) the Neighborhood

By Tracy Zwick

Welcome to UWS Weekend, your curated list of five neighborhood (or nearby) things to do over the weekend. Get ready to beat the heat with ice cream, which the UWS has in spades, watch a movie outdoors at Lincoln Center, ring in the Summer Solstice, or sit in the shade or air conditioning and read your UWS neighbor Paige Williams in The New Yorker. As a special treat, Williams shares a few of her own UWS “key faves.” 

Let’s weekend!

June 21 – 23, 2024

Music: Rosanne Cash, Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City, Sunday at 8 p.m., Free

She’s received four Grammys, but also death threats after she performed with Jackson Browne and Eddie Vedder in the Concert Across America to End Gun Violence in 2016. Cash is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and she and her husband, John Leventhal, are celebrating the 30th anniversary of her landmark album “The Wheel.” Those celebrations bring Cash to Damrosch Park this Sunday for a free concert. It’s first come, first served, so you can just show up, but Lincoln Center also offers a free Fast Track option that opens the Monday before many of its summer events and gives guests priority entry.   

Eat: Ice Cream! 

You’ve been sweating it out all week. Get some ice cream this weekend! I wrote an objective guide to the UWS’s ice cream-scape yesterday, but I’ll weigh in here with my personal top shop and one ice creamery that wasn’t included in the round-up because it’s technically in Harlem, but it’s UWS-adjacent and worth a short walk. First for me on the UWS is Pressed Juicery (2857 Broadway). It has a refreshing, not-too-sweet chocolate “freeze” (non-dairy) that’s great alone or made more decadent with optional toppings. But if you want the real creamy deal, take a walk to the east in the late afternoon or early evening and sample summer in Harlem as you make your way to Sugar Hill Creamery (West 119th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard). With flavors assigned socially aware names (“Sweet Socialism” is a milky vegan chocolate sorbet; “Andy Griffith” is classic vanilla ice cream) and portraits of local changemakers on the walls, this place hits with several senses. Nick Larsen, Sugar Hill’s co-owner, was service director at Blue Hill under Dan Barber, then general manager of UWS favorite Telepan. He lives down the street from this location, which he co-owns with his wife, Petrushka. Sugar Hill also sells at the Metropolitan Museum’s American Wing Cafe and at four other stand-alone shops in NYC. Next time I’ll try “Chairperson of the  Board” (blueberry cheesecake) or “Buggin’ Out” (malted vanilla, raspberry, chocolate, and Rice Krispies). You might want to go for the “Brown Bombshell” (milk chocolate, blondies, pecans, and caramel swirl) while it’s still available. I was told it’ll soon be gone. 

Attend: Summer Solstice Celebration & Concert: Saturday from 4:30 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. at Cathedral of St. John the Divine; $45 -$65/person

“Summer Solstice is one of the great turning points of the year, when the sun is at its peak, and the days abound with the promise of life’s fullness,” says Paul Winter, artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and leader of the Paul Winter Consort, which has been celebrating the solstice for 29 years. This year the summer solstice was Thursday, June 20th, but this celebration of it takes place Saturday. You’ve gotta get up early for this one, but that only gives you more time to enjoy these daylight-filled days. As Winter puts it: “In the early morning there’s a sense of timelessness and possibility.” Winter and his consort will be premiering “Adventures in the Universe,” a new musical work inspired by composer Charles Ives’ “Universe Symphony.”

Movie: “Before Sunset,” Friday at 9 p.m., Damrosch Park; Free 

Richard Linklater’s latest film, “Hit Man,” was the most-watched streaming original this week, having been bought by Netflix after premiering to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival last year. If you’re not familiar with Linklater’s canon, which includes “Boyhood,” “Dazed and Confused,” and “Slacker,” you can get a free introduction on Friday night at Lincoln Center. “Before Sunset” is the second in Linklater’s “Before” trilogy, which tracks the romantic relationship of Jesse and Celine, played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, at three-year periods in their lives. First come, first served or Fast Track this flick, then watch “Hit Man” at home on Netflix.

Read: “Ghosts on the Water” in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, by Paige Williams

If you can’t make it to the shore this weekend, let UWSer Paige Williams tell you a story about the Maine coastline, where jackpot payouts for illegal transnational poaching have transformed the livelihoods of locals and the future of beautifully translucent glass eels, aka ghosts on the water. Williams has had two stints living on the UWS, “the first time for several years in the early 2000s and this current (and final) time for about a decade, so far,” she said via email. Williams was a student, then a teacher at Columbia University, and started writing for The New Yorker in 2013. “Weirdly enough I think of The New Yorker almost as a magazine whose heart is the UWS,” Williams wrote. She shared some of her “UWS key faves,” including Zabar’s, Westsider Rare & Used Books, The Hamilton Whisky Bar, The Sill for plant shopping, Charles Pan-Fried Chicken, Hallett Nature Sanctuary in Central Park, “anything AMNH (the minerals and gems are my favorite, despite my having authored a book on dinosaurs), the birds of the Ramble (and the dear pet-memory tree at Christmas), and the Sunday Farmer and Flea Market at 77th & Columbus. And that’s just off the top of my firehose of a memory.”

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