Upper West Side Sweet Spots: Do You Know Where Your Candy Is?

By Yvonne Vávra

Sometimes I lie in bed at night and get a laughing fit. It’s triggered by the most random things—and it’s not always funny. Something someone said years ago, a stand-up bit that still lives in my head, a face Ross made on Friends, or, the other night, something an Upper West Side boy yelled on Halloween.

I was walking up Central Park West when a group of boys ran past me, then back toward me, then hooked into 96th, only to return to the corner seconds later. Zigzagging, high on sugar, eyes wide and shining—pure happiness on the loose. Two of them darted across the street toward the park, and that’s when I heard it:

“What are you doing? There’s no goddamn candy in the park!”

Now, I understand why you might still be waiting for the funny part. It’s impossible to capture the hilarity of that moment. It was the boy’s voice, so full of earnestness and urgency, shrill with righteous panic and heartbreak. He was the lone voice of reason in a world gone mad. There’s no goddamn candy in the park! He sounded confident, but at the same time despairing at the thought that the others might follow the two clearly confused boys into the park … where there is no goddamn candy.

Everyone within earshot cracked up. A man walking by gave me a knowing nod and said, “He’s right about that, huh?” He was. Our boy had smarts, street smarts. There is no goddamn candy in the park.

He had the neighborhood figured out and knew exactly where to go to get what he wanted. We all do, right? Each of us has mapped the Upper West Side into a personal geography of meaning and desire. Of course, everyone’s map looks different, so the meanings shift depending on who’s looking and what they’re looking for.

Some of you might go to Riverside Park for rest, for air, for a bit of nature. I go when I’m feeling especially dramatic about the time I live in and would rather tuck myself into an old black-and-white photograph. The park is in full color, of course, but otherwise it looks like little has changed in a century. So if you choose to, you can edit the colors out in your mind and—boom—you’re walking through a time that surely had its own drama, but at least it’s not yours.

What else is on my map?

The block between Central Park West and Columbus on 74th Street, for when I want to feel like an utterly distinguished lady strolling past the most elegant Neo-Georgian townhouses. Trader Joe’s, for the satisfaction of knowing exactly where everything is. Anywhere along West End Avenue, for when I want to feel at home in a place where the rush stops and you couldn’t run an errand if you tried. Riverside Library, when I need a recharge from the best librarian’s smile in all of New York. The Chirping Chicken corner on 77th and Amsterdam, for the smell of comfort. The space under the whale at the Museum of Natural History, for when I want to feel completely safe. And a bench on The Mall in Central Park, where an endless stream of happiness passes by. I know, I know—tourists, right? But if you look with an open heart, what you see is pure joy. People who’ve looked forward—weeks, months, years, maybe a lifetime—to being right here.

I go to the Reservoir in Central Park when I need a reminder of how I felt when I first came to New York. Watching the joggers, I felt that jolt, a sudden click of recognition. Oh. I want this. This is the dream now. How spectacular it must feel, I thought, to live here and be able to just go for an ordinary run in this extraordinary place. It seemed unimaginable, unattainable, almost unacceptable to dream that big.

Now, fifteen years in, and what do you know? I’ve run around the Reservoir maybe twice. Because that’s what happens, isn’t it? We forget to be happy about the things we once ached for once we have them. The Reservoir takes me back to that first feeling, the first spark of the dream.

The boy, with his sugar-charged conviction, keeps popping into my head—he’ll make me laugh for a long time. I hope he gets to fill his neighborhood map with lots of sweet stories and moments that stick. As for me, I’ll keep tinkering with my own Upper West Side blueprint, moving meanings around like a restless urban planner who loves her job too much to ever call it done. Luckily, no matter what changes, I always know exactly where my candy is—and plenty of it is actually in the goddamn park.

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Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

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