You’re Cold, I’m Cold, We’re Cold. But the UWS Still Feels Warm

 By Yvonne Vávra

Everyone seemed to be bowing this week on the Upper West Side. Not to one another, and not out of politeness, but to the cold. Heads down, shoulders forward, arms pressed to our sides like penguins, we moved through the neighborhood in a kind of collective submission. Weather wins. We’re cold.

But beneath all the low hoods and the scarves and the coats, there was still a lot of warmth. I saw it myself on 93rd and Amsterdam. A woman stepped off the bus in front of Kouzan and found herself trapped between the bus and a hip-high snowbank. Although by this point, it was less snow than glacier. This was no longer a sinking-in situation, more a free-solo climb, better not attempted in her unfortunate footwear.

The woman stood there for a moment, taking in Bus Stop Mountain. Perhaps she was deciding whether to attempt the climb or wait for the bus to pull away and walk with traffic to the next gap Upper West Siders had carved out. That’s when a man got off the bus behind her and, without much ceremony, picked her up and carried her over the ice. Just swept her off her feet.

I couldn’t tell if they exchanged a word before he lifted her, but I prefer to think they didn’t—that she simply let herself fly over the glacier. What matters is that she was grateful once she landed safely on the other side. If it hadn’t been fifteen degrees, and if my hand hadn’t been so stubborn about leaving my glove, we’d have a picture of it. But I’m a sissy in the cold, as it would soon become obvious.

That lift wasn’t heroism. Remarkably, the moment felt quite unremarkable. No one stopped, no one clapped, the bus moved on, and it was still cold. Only I got washed over with my burning love for this city and for us New Yorkers. We’re kind, but in an efficient way. We’ve got to keep moving, gotta go places, so if someone’s stuck deciding how to get over a glacier, you lift them up and carry on.

And of course, you complain … which we did. We’re Upper West Siders! The snow, the ice, the slush, the salt, the city not getting rid of the weather. And why are the kids not in school? We gripe, we denounce, we know better. In other words: we bond. Are you cold? I’m cold. We’re cold. But it gets cozily warm in that same boat we’re all sitting in together.

This week also showed how different we all are. I was walking up Amsterdam in five layers, freaking out that my hair felt frozen, when a cropped top walked past me. Granted, the midriff was paired with a thick puffer, but it was bare nonetheless, and it mocked my sissiness. The midriff belonged to a teenager, and as everyone knows, teenagers live under entirely different atmospheric conditions. But then I saw a woman in ballet flats with fearlessly naked ankles, and a guy jogging in shorts as if it were perfectly reasonable. Here we all were, wintering together, sharing the same hostile air and experiencing it in wildly different ways. None of us the standard, none of us doing it right or wrong, all of us bundled up together on the same frosty streets, right where we belong.

And just when the week seemed done proving its point, it sent in a dog, launching itself into a hole in the snow in Central Park and disappearing completely. For what felt much longer than the three seconds it probably was, everyone around went quiet. Even the other dogs stopped and tilted their heads. Together, we watched. Then the dog came flying out of the snow, triumphant and ecstatic, absolutely beside itself with joy. The rest of us caught the spark, laughing, smiling, and warming each other without even trying.

It’s not over. There’s more freeze and probably more snow to come. Some of us will hunch and push on. Others will run through it in shorts. For a few, it will be pure magic — like that dog, mind you, with its belly exposed and no shoes at all. Hopefully, it’ll all feel just as warm.

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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