Today is Monday, February 2nd, 2026
Today’s forecast calls for mostly sunny skies, with a high of 32. Even better, the highs are expected to hover in the low 30s all week, though there’s a possibility of snow of Friday. But hey — this winter, we’ll take what we can get!
Today is also Groundhog Day and by the time this has been published, Punxsutawney Phil (or Staten Island Chuck, if you prefer your groundhog forecast local) will have seen his shadow or not, and based on that, made his prediction as to whether we’re facing six more weeks of winter. But if he dives back into his burrow, signaling an extended winter, don’t worry: A few years back, The Washington Post did a data analysis of 30 years of Phil’s predictions, comparing them to the actual arrival of spring each year. The conclusion: It depends on where you live. “[W]hile Phil was technically right more times than not in some cities (it’s bound to happen in some areas because temperatures across the country do not rise and fall uniformly), the average temperatures between shadow and non-shadow years were slight at best,” reported the Post. “An outlier to this is Oklahoma City, Okla., which experienced shadow-seeing years that were 8.5 degrees cooler than non-shadow-seeing years. Conversely, Phil was exceptionally wrong with St. Petersburg, Fla., in which shadow years, on average, were 13.9 degrees warmer than non-shadow years.”
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Interested in serving on a community board? Applications for Manhattan community boards are open through 5 p.m. on February 27th. The City explains the process of applying, and what you need to know about serving– HERE. A link to the application is — HERE.
On Thursday at noon, author Leslie Day will hold an online discussion about River: A Hudson Memoir, about the 36 years she spent living on a houseboat in the 79th Street Boat Basin. See the Rag’s review of her memoir — HERE, and get a ticket to the online talk — HERE. (Tickets are free if you’re a member of Landmark West, and $6 if you’re not.)
The MTA has opened a Customer Service Center in the 59th Street-Columbus Circle subway station, near the entrance at West 58th Street and 8th Avenue. The booth will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with agents on hand to answer questions about the OMNY card and to help customers sign up for the reduced-fare program.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
An UWS personal trainer and a luxury senior-living facility are locked in a legal battle over a wealthy mutual client, with the trainer saying that the facility tried to kidnap the client, and the facility denying all allegations.
At the center of the story is Diana Multare, a 91-year-old woman “with a weakened heart and a memory so unreliable that she had forgotten she was a multimillionaire,” according to the New York Times, which wrote about the case last week. The other players are personal trainer Eric Houston, 69, and The Apsley, a luxury assisted living facility at Broadway and West 85th Street.
Houston began working with Multare five years ago, and the two had become friends. He was the one who suggested she move into the Apsley last spring, after she suffered a heart attack and he became concerned about her ability to care for herself, the Times said. The facility required a power of attorney for her to enter, and Houston agreed to serve in that role.
However, the day after she entered, Multare decided she’d rather be at home, and when she tried to leave, Apsley employees intervened. “A staff member called Mr. Houston and told him that Ms. Multare had dementia,” the Times said. “She could no longer make important decisions, said the employee, who asked about placing Ms. Multare in the facility’s dementia ward.”
Houston rushed to the facility to extricate Multare, but a “tense standoff” of several days followed, “with mistrust, arguments and insinuations of theft coming from both sides.”
The Times story outlines the ongoing, tangled saga, which now involves a lawsuit originally filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and later moved to the Southern District of New York. In the lawsuit, Houston accuses the Apsley and Sunrise Senior Living of wrongful restraint, fraud and defamation, while Sunrise Senior Living denies all allegations.
“We disagree with and will defend against the characterizations and allegations” made by Mr. Houston, Heather Hunter, a spokeswoman for Sunrise Senior Living, told the Times. “We take the privacy, safety and security of our residents very seriously and will not be commenting further.”
Read the full story — HERE.
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And if it gives you frigid temperatures and you live in NYC, make ice cream — on the fire escape.
That’s what UWSer Collette Komm did on Friday, and her Instagram about the experiment went viral, racking up 800,000 views by the next day.
“Gonna find out if it’s cold enough in NYC to churn ice cream on my fire escape,” she wrote in her post, which opened with a video of a red KitchenAid mixer stirring away on a fire escape, with a thermometer lying next to it. A closeup showed that the temperature on the fire escape — which is in a sheltered alleyway — was about 17 degrees.
Komm, a fashion designer, told the New York Post that she’s an experienced ice-cream maker; every summer, she makes 20 flavors at her parents’ house in Vancouver. But she doesn’t have room for an ice cream maker in her UWS apartment. “So when I saw that the temperature was going to be so low for such a long time, I got to thinking maybe I could just do this in my KitchenAid on the fire escape,” she told the Post.
Did it work?
Sort of, she said.
“After three hours, I had to go buy a bag of ice from my bodega and some extra coarse salt and wrap it around the bowl to get down to a cold enough temperature.” But she and a cousin were able to have some with homemade apple crisp for dinner and “it tasted great.”
Read the full story — HERE, and see the Instagram video — HERE.
An UWSer had her moment on the red carpet at the Grammys last night: Soprano Allison Charney told “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent Cassie DiLauria and television personality Taylor Hale that when she found out she’d been nominated for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, she was sitting at her dining room table with her husband.
“[He] was surreptitiously filming me even though I told him not to. So now I have proof of just how loudly I shrieked with joy!” said Charney, who has performed with opera companies across the country, including the New York City Opera.
Charney and her conductor, Benjamin Loeb, with whom she’s been making music for 37 years, were nominated for her album “Alike – My Mother’s Dream.” The album is a tribute to her mother’s belief that we need to focus on what makes human beings alike, as opposed to what separates us. It includes pieces composed by a Russian, a Ukrainian, an Iranian, an Israeli — “my point being that their music belongs perfectly right next to each other on my album, just as I believe these people belong next to each other on planet Earth, living together in peace,” Charney told NY1 in a pre-Grammy interview last week.
The nomination was the first for both her and Loeb, and though they didn’t win, the nomination itself held special significance: It was Charney’s comeback album after taking two decades off from touring to raise her sons, now 18 and 20. During that time, she hosted a series of pre-concert conversations with other classical musicians called “PREformances with Allison Charney.”
In her NY1 interview, she said that people often ask her if having children “stopped my career and stopped my singing — and instead I would say they’ve given me something to sing about.”
“I think this is an incredible testament to sticking with it and continuing to follow your dream,” she said in her red-carpet interview last night. “… I really do feel, for real, overwhelmed with gratitude.”
See her pre-Grammy interview with NY1 — HERE and watch her red-carpet interview — HERE.
After nearly 40 years of “visionary leadership” of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis is stepping down, the program’s board of directors announced in a press release last week. Marsalis will remain as artistic director through the end of the 2026-27 season, then continue in an advisory capacity through the end of his contract in June 2028.
A committee has been formed to collaborate with Marsalis “on identifying the next generation of JALC’s artistic leadership, including future Artistic Director candidates,” the press release said, with the goal of having someone in place by the fall. A second committee is working to identify a successor for executive director Greg Scholl, who earlier announced he was stepping down in June.
“This announcement marks the beginning of a transition process that will honor and preserve Mr. Marsalis’ legacy and ensure that JALC’s mission and identity continue to thrive,” the board said in a statement. “It also comes at a moment of exceptional strength for Jazz at Lincoln Center.”
Marsalis, who will remain on the center’s board in perpetuity, and will continue to play on occasion with the center’s orchestra, said he intends to provide “institutional memory and insight, but not oversight.”
Read the announcement — HERE.
In Other UWS News:
- The Super Bowl is this Sunday, and Patch put together a list of the 10 best places on the UWS to watch it. You’ll find the list — HERE.
- NBC took a light-hearted look at the mess left in Central Park after the snowstorm last Sunday — not the snow itself, but, rather, the accoutrements that people used for sledding on it. View it — HERE.
- Rolling Stone writer Chris Schembra describes the life lessons he learned when he began hosting meals for groups of strangers in his UWS apartment. Read it — 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.)
Man Sentenced For Morningside Heights Double Murder 30 Years Ago: Manhattan DA
UWS Had 2nd Most Home Sales of Any NYC Neighborhood in 2025: Study
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Here we are more than a week from the last snow day and a full third of the cars parked on my block still are covered in snow while trash bags continue to pile up on the sidewalk.
This is totally backwards, why have we allocated enormous amounts of public space to free storage for barely used cars when we could take a few spots for proper trash containerization and get trash bags off the street??
Why do you hate cars so much? Your tone and language is really nasty and uncalled for. I’m sorry you don’t have a car and/or people to see or visit outside of the range of subways. I’m not opposed to parking fees or something similar to better monetize the space. But this childish anti-car brigade is off the rails.
And did you ever think that some of these people would love to move their cars but are not able to because they are blocked in? Perhaps there are older residents who use their cars because public transit is difficult and go to visit doctors, family members and others with their cars and now are not able to because they are unable to dig out their cars. That must be incredibly stressful for them? But it is totally beyond you that some people truly do need their cars. You are actually the one being selfish.
How is it “nasty” or “uncalled for” to notice that the sidewalk is flooded with trash to make room for cars that haven’t been moved in over a week? It’s a simple observation of the allocation of street space.
It may be more convenient for some people to have a car and they are free to pay the going rate to park them in a garage. Obviously these people who haven’t moved their cars in a week don’t use them regularly and they’d be better off taking a cab.
As I wrote, perhaps they can’t move them? Ever think of that. I proposed a compromise – charging a nominal fee for street parking. You ignored it. Because your anti-car rage blinds you from a reasonable response. Go spend a week living in Peoria and see how the rest of the world lives.
I agree a parking fee would be a big improvement from the current state of things. You could easily do that & take spaces for trash bins to get trash off the sidewalk.
The ability to live without a car is a big reason NYC is special, why would we want to make NYC more like Peoria?
Because many of us love living in NYC but also have friends and family outside the city jobs outside the city, want to take advantage of the countless other things to do outside the city, etc. And many of the people who work here choose to live outside the city but need to commute in by car (because as much as WSR posters like to scream and yell about it, public transit isn’t available everywhere, especially at non-peak hours). And they need a place to park. And lots are super expensive.
So let’s just agree that a minimal fee for parking, with that fee made available to those who work in the area, is a great idea. And lots of street parking is a great idea. And figuring out something to do with trash is a great idea. And cars are not horrible. And America is a great place because some of us can choose to live in NYC and others can choose to live in Peoria and they each have pros and cons.
Peace.
I do all of those things but don’t have a car. For most people in Manhattan, a car is a luxury rather than a necessity, and as it’s a luxury, they should be willing to pay for a garage.
Do you think that all car owners are rich? They’re expensive enough to own and maintain without paying the exorbitant garage rents.
Actually, yes, I do think most of the people who own cars in Manhattan are likely reasonably well off. For most of us living in Manhattan, a car is a luxury and not a necessity. Yes, you might like to have it. That doesn’t mean you need it. And if it’s luxury you should be willing to pay for it or reconsider your budget options.
They’ve studied this and the UWS is so crowded that entire blocks would have to be taken up by trash bins, so no, it’s not ‘a few spots,’ the look would be horrible (and they’d be just as snow covered as the cars are).
The true one off here is the deep freeze that followed the storm. Past snowfalls of 12″ or more have been far easier to deal with because of higher temperatures.
It would be a huge mistake to rewrite the rules because of this event.
Why aren’t entire Paris or Barcelona blocks taken by trash bins? Look is not the best, but it’s hardly horrible and is definitely much better than piles of bags thrown everywhere, with half their content spilling out.
I haven’t studied this, but when I hear that “they” did something, the first thing I want to know is who “they” are and how they get paid.
“They” is DSNY. A 2023 study.
Paris and Barcelona don’t have 700’ long blocks lined with 16 story residential buildings.
Bins are there 24/7. Bags are not.
Not true at all about containerization, and it’s coming. One of the pilot rollouts is happening up in the Columbia area, and it’s working well.
UWS Dad… Growing a little tired of the anti-car-owner bashing!.
Laura Muha photo of the church is quite beautiful, but I believe the green glow is from the lights on the front of the church which are not incandescent but most likely fluorescent or LED which are not balanced for daylight and register green when photographed. Greg Andracke 86th & Broadway (The Belnord)
I’m really sad about Wynton Marsalis stepping down. He’s wonderful.