Monday, May 5, 2025
Sunny. High 71 degrees.
The spring showers are upon us. Rain is forecast for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week. Temperatures will sit between 53 and 75 degrees.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Monday is Cinco de Mayo. Sunday is Mother’s Day.
West Side Rag extends a heartfelt thank you for the many kind messages about the loss of West Side Rag’s co-owner Robert Tannenhauser. The family is moved by each and every one.
Upper West Side News
By Gus Saltonstall
Residents of an Upper West Side block are reportedly “afraid to venture out at night” because of “horror-movie-sized rodents,” as reported by the New York Post, which dubbed the street as “The Valley of the Rats.”
Multiple residents of West 109th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam, spoke to the Post last week about a years-long battle against rats on the block.
“I need to move out, because I can’t live in fear,” Ankita Brahmaroutu, 31, told the publication. “I’ve been so scared to go outside sometimes, I’ll just take an Uber to the subway because I don’t want to walk down the street.”
Residents of the Upper West Side street recently created the “West 109th Street Block Association” in order to better organize against the rodent problem. Among other noteworthy elements is that multiple buildings along 109th Street are owned by retired boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather.
For years, rat sightings within the 10025 ZIP code have been among the highest in the city, according to data from the city’s 311 call service, and 108th and 109th streets between Broadway and Amsterdam have consistently been pointed to as particular problem areas.
West Side Rag reported last month on the extension of a new high-tech trash bin pilot program, spearheaded by City Councilmember Shaun Abreu, that saw rat sightings drop by 60 percent in areas where the bins were deployed. But 108th and 109th streets fall just outside of where the containers will be installed within Community District 9.
You can read more — HERE.
The results are in for this year’s cycle of participatory budgeting within Council District 6 on the Upper West Side.
City Councilmember Gale Brewer announced the projects that received the most votes from residents, meaning they will now be funded in the coming years through the city budget.
Here are the projects that got the green light:
Tree Guard Installation: $160,000
- Install 100 tree guards around street trees through Council District 6.
Riverside Park Wall Repair: $100,000
- Restore the deteriorating retaining wall at West 72nd Street within the park by replacing mortar and reinstalling missing stones to improve safety.
UWS School Upgrades: $800,000 in total
- Bathrooms upgrade at P.S. 84, which will include renovating two student bathrooms in poor condition at the Lillian Weber School of the Arts. ($300,000)
- Gymnasium cooling system upgrade at the William O’Shea School Complex, which will include installing a new cooling system in the gym. ($250,000)
- Cooling system upgrade at Frank McCourt High School. ($250,000)
The Upper West Side Apple Bank building time and temperature display screen gets lots of attention when it comes to neighborhood bank clocks (and when it’s not functioning), but there is another local financial institution timepiece that has not been working.
For at least the last two months, the clock at the Chase Bank at the corner of 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue has been out of order.
West Side Rag reached out to Chase to ask when the clock might be restored.
“We have been waiting on a replacement part and anticipate the clock will be back up and running in the next few weeks,” a spokesperson from Chase told us on April 30.
The Rag will keep an eye out for when that fix takes place.
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does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About time?
you know, I can’t imagine why
Love this exchange!
This is the second time I am posting this but there is a club in Brooklyn called RATS, a group of terrier owners who literally go rat hunting. The residents of the 10025 neighborhood should coordinate with them.
When my building was undergoing renovations during the pandemic we had an invasion of mice. But I didn’t get any. Guess why? My cat lol. In fact she once got out into the hallway and caught a mouse! Thankfully they’ve been long gone now.
Ah, a human-created problem and the solution is to terrorize the rats? No thanks. Fix the garbage, and the rat population will subside.
Rat Lives Matter ?
uhhh, they’re rats….
I love that the Post called it a “ritzy” block. That’s absurd. It’s perfectly fine, but to call it ritzy is outlandish.
Can peppermint bushes be planted to deter rodents? Mint gets rid of rodents. I think it’s worth a try and it provides a nice aroma to the area.
I think it is a reproduction issue now.
The Chase clock on Broadway and West 73rd also does not work.
That pleases many of those on the UWS that are stuck in time.
Please Mayor Adams and our politicians, please address the rat problem on the UWS, especially on W 108 and 109.
It takes a rat to know a rat
Any time a city official claims the rat problem is reduced, invite them to walk any of the side streets in 10025, especially after dusk.
Just because 311 rat calls have decreased, it doesn’t mean that the rat population has decreased.
But I’ll bet you’re quite adamant that when 311 rat calls increase, the rat population has increased…
Is this the same Chase that took the long time outdoor clock away from their bank on w 90th st and B’way several years back.
PLEASE PLEASE bring those big trash containers to 108th Street and 109th Streets! My building has 8 plastics bins for 40+ units and pick up twice a week. The buildings do not manage their trash properly. because trash volumes have increased substantially with Amazon, etc. in the past few years. Also they don’t want to pay for full-time porters.
The rats immediately chewed through new closed top plastic bins and now gleefully dance on top of them under my neighbors windows. I don’t want to get bit throwing my trash away. It stinks. It’s unsanitary. Council Member Abrea hasn’t done anything meaningful after years of requests for help. The city runs “tests” but no solutions have been brought to my neighborhood. Tickets keep piling up on my landlord and are unpaid. The screaming by pedestrians is not funny and reminds me about the filthiness of my street! I guess no one will do anything about this until the plague 2.0 starts on the UWS. Yes. This situation has made a 25+ year resident of 108th street unhinged.
For the next roundup – Gale Brewer’s district built exactly 0 (zero) units of affordable housing. https://citylimits.org/heres-where-affordable-housing-was-built-last-year-where-it-wasnt/
Josh: has it occurred to you that affordable housing in the City is impossible ?
our city is too crowded and building should be OUT of the city. Manhattan is only so
big and we are already bursting at the seams
Overbuilding should be avoided.
Endless sprawl is not a solution.
upgrading school conditions should be left to the dept. of education.
isnt that disbanded now?
That’s the FEDERAL Cabinet level Dept. of Education, not state or local departments of education. Struggling to resist rolling back my eyes at this question…
Thanks for the terrific photo of the Tulip Festival, Gus. This community garden and the volunteers who maintain it are near the top of the list of what makes the UWS great. I think I was sitting on one of the benches when this photo was taken — and enjoying a scene that was full of people, dogs, strollers and kiddos, yet still so quiet and serene.
Do the rats attack people? When I see one it usually is running as far from me as it can. Why would one need to take an Uber to a subway because of rats who are equally afraid of humans as humans are of them?
You must be new here
Far from it. 28 years this month in the same UWS apartment. And how does my time here relate to this issue? Have you seen rats attacking people on the UWS, or anywhere else?
Not saying that they don’t, but personally I’ve never seen one attack. Back in the 90s I had a pet rat, and ‘Ike’ was one of the most docile pets I’ve ever had.
It’s hard to believe in modern times and
sophisticated chemicals this problem cannot
be solved in a reasonable time. What about
raising private money to hire an outside
exterminator who might be more effective.
AND of course more stringent waste mgmt
There was something on the news, maybe last year, about one block on the UES (in the 80’s?) where a new thing , well new for NY anyway was being tested. I think they said that it had been used possibly in Boston. It involved a device that puffed CO into the tree pits or something like that. Apparently not only did it work very well on the rats but it was also being touted post-Flaco as being harmless to birds, pets, or kids, for that matter, since the amount of the CO being used dissipated into the air afterwards, thus rendering it ok. Does anybody know what happened to this pilot experiment as far as trying it in other places around our own fair city?
While I’m glad the Apple Bank finally replaced it’s clock, instead of the using the previous font, they changed it to a thick one that is difficult to read at a distance. I get it that theoreticaly the thicker, bolder font should be easier to read, unfortunately, the opposite turns out ot be true. Unlikely it’s possible to replace it free of charge or that they would even if it didn’t cost them anything, which really is too bad.
What about calling a lot of negative attention to Floyd Mayweather, the owner of a number of buildings on that block? I’m guessing that shaming him isn’t likely to work, but there might be a next level up that might. In addition to this, isnt there any punitive action the city can take to get him to fix these violations? I’ll bet there are other violations he isn’t paying any attention to either.
Perhaps the city could pass a law that any landlord with more than X number of outstanding violations isn’t allowed to raise the rent until they are fixed. Possibly even grade the kinds of violations so that the most egregious ones carry more weight than the lesser ones. This way, a landlord can’t game the system by fixing minor violations in order to reduce the number of violations in order to evade the law.
Rat families abound in the tree pits on W 94th between Broadway and Amsterdam – especially in front of 200
It is terrifying and breeds disease.
Please, concrete action needed here.