Today is Monday, May 4th, 2026
The forecast calls for mostly sunny skies with a high of 71. If you’re planning an outdoor activity, today and tomorrow (when the high is expected to hit 80) will be your best bets: Showers are in the forecast for Wednesday and Thursday. While the sun should return Friday, it will be cooler, with the afternoon high barely breaking 60.
On this day in 1626, Dutch merchant and explorer Peter Minuit arrived on the shores of the island he called New Netherland and we now call Manhattan. Shortly thereafter, he famously arranged to purchase it from the Lenape tribe for a price believed to be 60 guilders — the equivalent of $24 at the time, or $1,500 to $2,000 in today’s dollars. However, historians point out that the Lenape were not familiar with the concept of “ownership” as Europeans viewed it, and did not believe air and land could be traded. So the two sides likely left the negotiations with completely different ideas of what had been agreed upon.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Community Board 7 has postponed a vote on the proposed (and controversial) redesign of the 72nd Street corridor. The vote, originally planned for tomorrow’s meeting, has been pushed back until June 2, to give the city’s Department of Transportation time to get more feedback from residents. You’ll find the revised agenda for tomorrow’s meeting, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the American Museum of Natural History and also on Zoom — HERE. Give feedback on the 72nd Street redesign — HERE.
Eli Northrup and Stephanie Ruskay, vying to represent voters in the 69th Assembly District, will face off at a candidates’ forum tomorrow from 6 to 8 p.m. at Goddard Riverside Community Center, 593 Columbus Avenue. Jeff Coltin of City & State New York, will moderate. Details — HERE.
In the category of “all good things must come to an end”: The Rag is sad to announce that our UWS Dish columnist, Abigael Sidi, will be stepping down at the end of May after a year and a half of writing reviews of restaurant dishes that are as entertaining as they are informative. (We wish her the best as she prepares to head to college in the fall.) But the beloved weekly column will, of course, continue, and we’re launching a search for her successor. If you live in Rag territory and are interested, drop us a line at info@westsiderag.com, telling us about yourself and why you think you’re the right person for the job.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
In December, The Milling Room — named one of the best restaurants on the UWS by Vogue magazine as recently as last year — abruptly closed after 12 years on Columbus Avenue.
Now the New York Post is explaining what happened — and the explanation is a doozy, involving an alleged $1.2 million in back rent and an owner who more or less disappeared after being badly burned in a sweat-lodge ceremony in Mexico.
“When reached in Mexico, owner Luis Gonzalez declined to comment on how much he owed,” wrote Jennifer Gould, who covers the restaurant industry in the Post’s Side Dish column. She said Gonzalez told her “he was forced to close following a mishap during an ancient temazcal ceremony, where participants enter a womb-like dark space with a fire and hot volcanic rocks, herbs and steam.”
“‘It’s an ancient practice, and I’ve been practicing these ceremonies my entire adult life,'” she quoted Gonzalez as saying. “‘But this one was not well managed. It was too hot and crowded, and I fell onto the red rocks. Luckily, someone pulled me out.'”
Gonzalez told Gould he was burned over 30% of his body, and has had 14 surgeries to date, but “I’m here to tell the story.”
His publicist, meanwhile, gave Gould a different explanation for the restaurant’s closure. “He’s in the wind,” said Ken Frydman, who was hired by Gonzalez to publicize Ashi, a new restaurant that Gonzalez initially planned to open in The Milling Room space. “Not only did he leave unpaid rent but he didn’t pay his PR guy. The last time I saw him was a couple of months ago.
“We sat on a bench on Columbus Avenue, and he said was going to buy a million-dollar apartment in Montreal the next day, and that’s the last I heard.”
Read the full story — HERE.
An UWS mom struck a chord when she posted a TikTok video documenting what she has to go through to get her daughter’s stroller up the stairs at the 72nd Street subway station.
The MTA is replacing both uptown and downtown elevators in the station, and after a number of delays, shut them down in December. The work should be complete by July, the agency says — but that’s small consolation to Katie Knuhtsen, who told CBS News that until then, she must haul her toddler plus stroller up and down the station steps every day to get her to school.
In a video that has received more than 2.6 million likes, she pleads with Mayor Zohran Mamdani to get the elevator fixed. “I am sick of having to turn into the Hulk just to get my daughter to school,” she said.
While MTA repairs fall outside the purview of the Mayor’s Office, Knuhtsen told CBS she remains optimistic. “It’s definitely gotten attention,” she said of her video, “so I really hope that it speeds up the process, at least.”
The MTA has said the new elevators will have “better reliability,” “modernized equipment,” a “smoother ride,” and “upgraded security systems,” and recommends going to either the West 96th Street or West 66th Street stations for elevator access until the work is completed.
Read/watch the story — HERE and see Knuhtsen’s TikTok video — HERE.
The New York Lawn Bowling Club is celebrating a milestone: It’s 100 years old this year, and to mark the occasion, Eyewitness News recently paid members a visit at their Central Park clubhouse.
There, members set the record straight on a couple of things:
For one thing, lawn bowling is not bocce, though it has things in common with its better-known cousin. The goal of lawn bowling is to roll a ball (which in lawn bowling is called a bowl, not a ball — more on this in a minute) down a grassy court and get it as close as possible to a smaller target called a jack.
Unlike bocce’s perfectly round balls, however, the bowls used for lawn bowling have a slightly irregular shape, for which the lawn bowler must compensate when rolling it toward the jack.
The roughly 100 members of the Central Park club, who have won multiple championships, meet at the Central Park Lawn Sports Center north of the Sheep Meadow (enter at West 69th Street) most days during the season, which runs from May till October. It’s not just the sport that draws them, though — it’s the camaraderie, and the atmosphere.
“Central Park is already an oasis. The lawn bowl green is an oasis within that oasis,” club member John Ross told Eyewitness News.
Read/watch the full story — HERE. New members are welcome; information about the club is — HERE.
Not many of us have the chance to go back and relive a scene from our youth — but UWSer Elizabeth Katz did.
The senior model, 79, was among those featured in the TikTok nostalgia series “Like Old Times,” by creators Johnny Gaffney and Vin Nucatola. In the series, the two 38-year-olds ask seniors, “What’s something you used to love doing that you haven’t done in years?” and then set about recreating the experience for them.
In Katz’s case, that meant disco dancing at the sort of nightclub where she’d spent so many happy evenings in the 1970s, wrote the New York Post, which included her in a recent story about the TikTok series.
Katz’s adventure began when Gaffney, clad in “Saturday Night Fever” style white bell bottoms and a black leather jacket, pulled up in a Checker cab to pick her up. Then they headed downtown to Disco Sally’s, a ’70s-style club in Times Square, where Katz hit the dance floor in a white top and black trousers, both glittering with sequins.
Afterward, she posted the video on her Instagram page. “Getting older doesn’t mean letting go of the magic,” she wrote. “Sometimes it means reliving it—with even more confidence, more gratitude, and more freedom than ever before.”
- The New York Times recently took an in-depth look at the city Department of Education’s plan — now on hold — to close and relocate a number of UWS schools, putting the proposal into the context of local and national trends. Read it — HERE.
- Tech billionaire Chris Larsen, who lives in California, plans to spend $3.5 million to help Democratic Alex Bores — the state assemblymember who wrote the AI legislation adopted in New York — in his race for the congressional seat being vacated by Jerrold Nadler. Read the New York Times coverage — HERE.
- Elle Decor recently featured an UWS brownstone that took three years to renovate because it was — as architect Michael K. Chen described it — “a complete mess.” Read about what it took to remodel it and see the results — HERE.
- The blog Ephemeral New York recently included a story on the history of the first row houses to be built on Riverside Drive, two of which survive today. Read about them — HERE.
- The NYPD officer who, on horseback, apprehended a purse snatcher two weeks ago was promoted to detective specialist, Eyewitness News reports. Read/watch the story — HERE.
- Democratic party strategist Julia Roginsky and high-profile attorney Gerald Krovatin have purchased two condo units on West 70th Street for $4.5 million. Read the full story — 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.)
Summer on the Hudson and SummerStage Line Ups Announced: What to Know for UWSers
Jack Schlossberg Shares His Thoughts on the UWS and His Congressional Campaign
Back in the day I took my daughter out of the stroller, held her in one arm, folded the umbrella stroller with the other hand, walked down the stairs and got on the train with the stroller folded. I did not put my daughter back in the stroller until I was out of the subway. When my daughter was too big for that she was told no more stroller.