Today is Monday, December 22nd, 2025
The forecast calls for a breezy, cloudy day, with a chance of late-day snow showers. High 38.
More of the same tomorrow; the rest of the week, temperatures are expected to climb into the 40s, with the possibility of a wintery mix on Friday.
On this date in 1984, so-called “subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz pulled out a pistol on the No. 2 train and fired at four Black teenagers, who, he claimed, were trying to rob him. The case — one of the most infamous in city history — ignited nationwide conversations about race, crime, and the right to self defense. Goetz faced multiple charges, including attempted second-degree murder, but was convicted only of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. He was sentenced to a year in prison and released after 8.5 months. All four of the teenagers survived, though one was paralyzed and suffered brain damage when the bullet severed his spine.
On a lighter note, here’s some holiday-related trivia: On this date in 1882, the first string of Christmas tree lights was created by Thomas Edison. And in 1958, “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” by the fictional singing group Alvin and the Chipmunks, hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts, making it the first holiday song ever to take that slot.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Looking for holiday gifts? Check out the Rag’s brand new online shop, where you can order WSR T-shirts, coffee mugs, hoodies, teddy bears, tote bags and more. You’ll find the shop — HERE.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
This isn’t so much a news story as a holiday coincidence: Recently, managing editor Gus Saltonstall was walking down West 82nd Street when the hot pink holiday decorations on this brownstone caught his eye. He snapped a photo which we initially planned to use as the lead photo for last week’s Monday Bulletin (we’re always searching for photos for that slot — hint, hint!) but wound up subbing in a snow picture at the last minute; we knew the snow photo wouldn’t keep, but a holiday photo would.
Between then and now, however, the festive brownstone also caught the eye of the YouTube channel Homeworthy, founded in 2019 by former Good Morning America producer Alison Kenworthy. The channel showcased the house in its most recent episode and interviewed the owner, interior designer Hillary Wallace, who described her approach to this year’s holiday decor: “The interior is classic, traditional, lots of greenery … The outdoor theme is ‘Wooooh! Its Candyland with a little twist, and I really wanted it to be happy and bright and vibrant, and bring people in.”
More details plus a tour of the brownstone’s equally (but more traditionally) bedecked interior — HERE.
To stage or not to stage? That’s the question many people face when putting their apartment on the market. Here’s the story of a three-bedroom UWS apartment which recently was featured on the lifestyle blog Apartment Therapy; it had been on the market for a whopping 779 days before apartment-stager Jason Saft, of Staged to Sell Home, entered the picture.
The problem: A quirky layout, odd-shaped rooms and general run-down condition, which were off putting to prospective buyers.
“Saft describes how he ‘fell for it instantly,’ even though the walls were scuffed and the air was stale,” author Shifrah Combiths wrote in the piece. “He saw past the desolate condition of the interior and got to work showcasing its features: the ‘rambling rooms, molding [that went on] for days, long hallways, quiet corners, little places to get lost in.'”
Saft told the blog “it was shocking” to see an apartment, located in the Clebourne at West End Avenue and West 105th Street, sitting on the market for so long, especially because it was priced at only $823 per square foot, compared to the UWS average of $1,336 per square foot.
Though the apartment needed a gut renovation — beyond a stager’s scope — his goal was to do enough to make prospective buyers see the possibilities. That meant repairing cracked walls, repainting, brightening dark kitchen cabinets with high-gloss white paint, updating fixtures to improve lighting and then — the fun part — furnishing the apartment to show off its livablility.
The result? Thirty-five days after the staging was complete, the apartment, priced at $1.89 million, was under contract.
Read the full story and see the before-and-after photos — HERE.
Since real estate seems to be the theme of this week’s bulletin, here are a few more items rounded up from other sources, all of which could appear under the headline “The UWS Luxury Market is Hot!”
For starters, two apartments in 15 Central Park West, designed by the late architect Robert A.M. Stern, recently topped the list of the most expensive homes to sell in Manhattan — and both sold in the same week, reports Mansion Global, a site that covers the high-end estate.
“The priciest deal was a three-bedroom apartment at 15 Central Park West that was last asking $26.8 million,” according to the publication. “Spanning 3,347 square feet, it has a living room, a formal dining room and an office that faces Central Park.”
The second-most expensive contract was in the same building, with an asking price of $25 million, reduced from $27.5 million when it went up for sale in May. “The unit spans 3,364 square feet with four bedrooms, and the living room, formal dining room and primary bedroom face Central Park. Included in the sale is a studio on the sixth floor,” Mansion Global reported.
In addition, Crains New York Business reports two high-end sales in the West 80s near Riverside Park:
Business consultant and Democratic party operative Josh Wachs has closed on an $11 million penthouse in a co-op building facing Riverside Park at West 81st Street. The unit has three bedrooms, three and a half baths, and a wraparound terrice that’s the same size as the interior: 3,000 square feet, Crains reported.
And Alex Lasry, the executive who heads the host committee for the region’s upcoming World Cup soccer matches, recently paid $20.7 million cash for a penthouse on West End Avenue at West 86th Street, according to Crains, which cited the lack of any mortgage documents in the deed registry. The unit, which had been owned by a holding company, listed it in January for $26 million but dropped the price several times before finding a buyer, according to StreetEasy data cited by Crains. However, the publication noted that the apartment’s most recent asking price was about $19 million, which suggests that a bidding war broke out at the last minute and pushed the price up by $2 million. The unit has six bedrooms and six and a half baths, plus a 1,900-square-foot private terrace with an outdoor kitchen and fireplace, Crain’s said.
Read the Mansion Global story HERE and the Crains stories HERE and HERE.
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.)
BOOK REVIEW: A River Runs Through This Memoir by a Former 79th Street Boat Basin Resident
Meet the 2nd Busiest Person on the Upper West Side: Gale Brewer’s Scheduler
An UWS Mystery in the Riverside Park Foliage: Gift Bags, Backward Words, and Eggs
“who, he claimed, were trying to rob him” —what is that supposed to mean? That he shot them for fun?
One of Goetz’s attackers went on to rape and armed robbery, two continued a life of drugs and petty crime and robbery and one was paralyzed. To quote Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now, “I guess he got the right four people”.
defense couldn’t prove they were trying to rob him, coincidently the same four were involved in other criminal activities (see below). two of the four were carrying screwdrivers that were reported as sharpened.
.
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/01/10/nyregion/4-youths-shot-by-goetz-faced-criminal-counts.html
“early reports suggested that the teenagers had approached Goetz carrying “sharpened” screwdrivers; those reports, too, were found to be false: The screwdrivers—Cabey carried two and Ramseur carried one—were not sharpened and, based on the available testimony, were not removed from Cabey’s or Ramseur’s pockets—no witnesses reported seeing screwdrivers, and Goetz repeatedly denied he was threatened with them.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shooting
UWS disgracing itself as per usual, I see.
“ UWS disgracing itself as per usual, I see.”
Acting like you’re above everyone here and trashing the whole neighborhood says more about you than about the UWS—especially when you’re so quick to stand with criminals instead of innocent victims, as usual.
It means he claimed that. But that there may not have been evidence to support that they were trying to rob him.
No, they were just holding the tip of that screwdriver up against his body in a threatening manner because they were helping him from his seat.
Right… and their lives might have been hard enough to make them do it… allegedly
Right… and their lives might have been hard enough to make them do it… allegedly.
Thank you to everyone at West Side Rag!
Outbid again by a Democratic operative and a World Cup committee member! In the same week none the less — I’ll have to fire my broker and hire one of theirs for my next bidding war. Oh, the latte line is moving, — cha cha!
Ta ta for now! |
Thank you to the West Side Rag for posting the terrific photo of all of you! I so look forward to reading the Rag for neighborhood news, and especially the comments. I’ve lived here my entire life, first in 10024 and then 10023. It’s my home, and though I very much miss the past,I still feel embraced by it, in no small part because of all of you.
Bus is the market THAT hot if the price dropped from 27 to 25 million? Also. Wow. Those numbers really do seem unreal.
The Clebourne ‘befores’ don’t seem so bad—seems pretty typical for a lived in uws apartment—from the stager’s description I was expecting to see something that hadn’t been touched in 100 years and that’s clearly not the case—this stager seems extremely self congratulatory for something that with a few tweaks could be easily staged—not sure if the price was dropped—maybe I missed it
Since we are discussion real estate, here is a fun fact that I recently learned. In most of US states, sellers are not required to disclose if their property is haunted. HOWEVER, New York is one of a small group of states that has legal provisions around haunted home disclosers!
At least two of these very expensive apartments were bought by wealthy local New Yorkers and none by the dreaded “foreign billionaires who don’t even live here” that I was told buy every new apartment.
Chipmunks, first #1 hit? Gene Autry’s recording of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was a massive hit, reaching No. 1 on the U.S. charts in late 1949/early 1950, becoming one of the best-selling Christmas singles of all time, and cementing Rudolph’s place in holiday tradition.