Special Debut: ‘Ode to the Upper West Side’; A Video Valentine in October

Editor’s Note: Phil Lerman, a former national editor of USA Today and producer of the long-running TV show America’s Most Wanted, has produced a video valentine to his new home on the Upper West Side. We’re debuting the four-minute movie – see the link below – and asked Lerman how he came to be here, and what inspired him to produce the video.

By Phil Lerman

As Edward Albee said in The Zoo Story, sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.

My wife and I are both native New Yorkers: I grew up in the Bronx, she moved to Manhattan as a teenager. But we both wound up in Washington D.C., where we met and started a life together.

We always knew we’d come back — we just didn’t know it would take 40 years.

When we sent the last kid to college, we decided it was finally time — and knew right away that there was only one neighborhood for us. (We did look at the Upper East Side but decided we didn’t quite fit in. For one thing, we’d need to buy all new clothes.)

From the minute we tasted the sable at Murray’s Sturgeon we knew we were where we belonged. Everything about the neighborhood – the way everybody talks to you on the street, the way there’s always too much to do, the way you can never quite bring yourself to go eat in the Village because there’s that new place on 76th Street that you read about in the West Side Rag – told us we were home.

I wanted to try to capture that feeling – the feeling we have every day when we walk out of our apartment – and started making up some funny rhymes, and thinking of video to go with them. Most of what’s in the video is just what I captured on the street; a few actor friends filled in a few blanks (and if you look closely, my wife and I do make a strolling-in-the-park cameo.)

As we said in the video: Should I grow old here with my best friend, this place will make us feel young again. The Upper West Side is the best side for me.

To view the video, click — HERE

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