Monday Bulletin: New Documentary Spotlights UWS Actress and Her Mother; Nation’s Oldest Synagogue Launches Kosher Food Pantry on the UWS; Emerald Inn Launches GoFundMe in Hopes of Staying Open

Today is Monday, December 1st, 2025.

The forecast calls for increasingly cloudy skies, with a high of 43.

The rest of the week calls for — brace yourself —  snow mixed with rain early tomorrow; flurries late on Wednesday; and ice changing to rain overnight on Friday. Highs aren’t expected to break out of the low 40s. Apparently winter has arrived, even if it isn’t official for another three weeks.

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks, sometimes called “the mother of the civil rights movement,” was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white man, as required by the South’s Jim Crow laws of the time. Her arrest led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for 381 days, finally concluding after a federal court found segregation on buses to be unconstitutional.

Notices

Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.

Every once in awhile, we can’t resist tooting our own horn, and this is one of those times: Last week, Rag co-owner Emily Tannenhauser and managing editor Gus Saltonstall sat down with FOX 5 NY’s Natasha Verma and Bianca Peters and gave them the scoop on, well, us. Check out the interview below.

A panel discussion (accessible only online) on the Fight to Save West Park, the landmarked UWS church that may be facing demolition, will be held tomorrow from 6 to 7 p.m. It’s sponsored by the Historic Districts Council, and panelists include Michael Devonshire, former NYC Landmarks Preservation Commissioner; George Janes, urban planner; and John J. Kerr, retired partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. For the Zoom link, register — HERE.

The West 79th Street exit ramp from the Henry Hudson Parkway is closed for construction on weeknights from 10 p.m. till 5 a.m., and on Saturdays from 12:01 a.m. to 7 a.m. through December 20th; exit at 96th Street or be charged a toll for exiting in the congestion zone south of 60th Street.

HousingCourtAnswers.org will hold a webinar on strategies for dealing with landlord harassment on Wednesday from 1 to 2:30 p.m. For questions, email mchardiwall@sinergiany.org. For the Zoom link, register — HERE.

News Roundup

Compiled by Laura Muha

Over the past five decades, actress (and UWSer) Carol Kane has made a name for herself in movies, television and stage, with roles in productions such as “Annie Hall,” the Netflix series “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” and the Broadway musical “Wicked.”

Now she’s co-starring in what’s surely her most personal film yet: “Carol and Joy,” a documentary short about her life with her 98-year-old mother, Joy Kane, with whom she shares an apartment on the Upper West Side. It premieres today on the Criterion Channel and is already drawing Oscar buzz, according to IndieWire, which announced the documentary.

“Carol and Joy” reunites Kane with independent filmmaker Nathan Silver, who directed her in last year’s comedy Between the Temples. In that film, Kane plays a music teacher who reconnects with a former student, now a rabbi at the temple where she is studying for an adult bat mitzvah. Kane told IndieWire that she based her character largely on her mother, who moved to Paris at 55 to start anew as a musician “in very humble circumstances and [who eventually] became considered a master teacher in Europe.”

Joy Kane, a pianist and jazz singer, continues to teach music out of the UWS apartment she shares with her daughter, and “[t]he documentary sees Silver visiting them with his 16mm camera for an afternoon of music and storytelling, capturing the mother-daughter relationship between two singular women,” reported IndieWire.

Carol Kane has had roles in many high-profile projects over the years. In addition to “Annie Hall,” she has appeared in movies including “Princess Bride,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Scrooged,” “When a Stranger Calls,” and “Addams Family Values,” and she was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for the 1975 movie “Hester Street.” Fans of the 1980s sitcom “Taxi” may remember her as the squeaky-voiced wife of cabbie Latka Gravis, a role for which she won two Emmys. And on Broadway, Kane drew accolades for her portrayal of headmistress Madame Morrible in the original cast of Wicked. She currently has a recurring role in the “Star Trek” spinoff “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.”

Read the full story — HERE and see the “Carol and Joy” trailer — HERE.

The oldest Jewish congregation in North America has announced plans to launch a kosher food pantry on the Upper West Side in partnership with the non-profit Masbia Relief.

It will be located in Congregation Shearith Israel synagogue, which is located at the corner of West 70th Street and Central Park West, and will serve all of Manhattan, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. But rather than participants coming to the food pantry to pick up groceries, the organization hopes to use DoorDash to deliver groceries to many of the families. The delivery service has been providing Masbia Relief with free delivery services since 2022.

The plans for the food pantry were announced on Thanksgiving during the Orthodox synagogue’s 11th annual pack-a-thon, where congregants — along with volunteers from other religious organizations — assembled 2,000 packages of food for distribution.

Louis Solomon, the president of Shearith Israel, said the idea for the pantry started to develop over the summer when the Orthodox congregation was looking for a way to mark the country’s 250th birthday next year. “It’s been a part of our culture for 3,000 years, but certainly a part of our culture in America for 372 years, to give back, to try to do what we can,” said Solomon.

So over the summer, Shearith Israel reached out to Masbia Relief, a kosher soup kitchen and food pantry with two branches in Brooklyn and one in Queens, and asked whether Masbia would be interested in opening a branch in the synagogue. The synagogue has pledged $50,000 in funding for what it is calling the new Masbia Relief Annex and hopes other religious organizations will collectively match the donation.

The food pantry is expected to open before Hanukkah. “The first week we’ll only serve a few dozen people, but then if it grows to hundreds, we’ll be very happy,” said Alexander Rapaport, the executive director of Masbia.

Read the full story — HERE.

For more than eight decades, Emerald Inn has been a fixture on the UWS, a place to grab a burger and a beer after work, or to catch a game on the weekend.

But without a quick infusion of cash to help pay back bills, the restaurant may have to shutter permanently by the end of the week, owner Charlie Campbell told the Rag in a phone interview.

“Like so many businesses in the area, we’re so far behind … when do we cut the losses?” he said. “It’s really looking like Wednesday or Thursday might be our last day.”

Late last week, he launched a GoFundMe in hopes of raising enough money to avoid having to close. “[L]ike many small businesses, we’re still recovering from the long-lasting impact of Covid-19,” he wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Our business has suffered significant losses, and we are now reaching out to our community for support. With your donations, you can help us stay open and continue serving the neighborhood we love.”

In addition to the lingering effects of the pandemic, Campbell traces the inn’s troubles to a health-department closure more than a year ago, after pests were found in the basement. The inn passed reinspection and reopened several weeks later, but by then, many of the regular customers had gravitated to new hangouts, Campbell said.

He’s hoping to raise $100,000, which he knows is a big ask, but, he said, “I’ve seen [GoFundMes for] sick cats raise that much money … so maybe this will be the answer. Maybe God’s out there listening. Who knows.”

The pub was founded in 1943 by Campbell’s great-grandfather. It originally was located on Columbus Avenue, but moved to its current location, 250 West 72nd Street, in 2013 after a rent increase. Campbell said that if he has to close, he’s less worried about himself than he is about his employees, a number of whom have worked for Emerald Inn for decades.

“It’s unbelievable that this is the way our story ends,” he said.

ICYMI

Here are a few stories we think are worth a look if you missed them last week — or a second look if you saw them. (Note that our comments stay open for six days after publication, so you may not be able to comment on all of them.)

STAMPED OUT! Have Notaries Vanished from the Upper West Side?

Ruthless Advice for Upper West Siders: All of the Answers With None of the Expertise

Theo Dixon, Mayor of West 71st Street, Dies at 100

Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.