Today is Monday, October 5th, 2026
This week’s weather should make up for last week’s rain: Today’s forecast calls for a sunny, breezy day with a high of 68, and the rest of the week calls for more of the same, with highs in the upper 60s to low 70s.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
Gothamist used the pending closure of Jake’s Dilemma, a popular neighborhood bar that recently lost its lease, as a peg for looking at other small businesses struggling to survive on the UWS — a neighborhood in which rents are rising and profits are not.
“Jake’s Dilemma is one of at least five longtime Upper West Side businesses to announce closure plans in recent months,” the publication pointed out. “The list includes long-serving Broadway grocery Barzini’s as well as Good Enough to Eat on Columbus Avenue, long known for wait lines that snaked outside the building.
“Businesses come and go all the time in the neighborhood, as they do elsewhere in the city, but the loss of so many venerable storefronts in a short span, the long duration of some vacancies, as well as the plethora of vacancies of all sorts have been jarring to some business and government leaders, who are weighing fixes.”
A bill currently under consideration pending before the City Council City would require landlords to provide official leases to all tenants of at least one year; Councilmember Gale Brewer, who co-sponsored the bill, said she’s encountered many businesses that are using spaces for which they have no formal lease, only what Gothamist described as “a handshake deal.” “When the rent goes up 500%, they have nothing to fight with,” Brewer told the publication.
“ It’s very, very difficult running a small business,” Brewer added. But “they are the DNA of our neighborhood.”
Read the full story — HERE.
The cherry blossoms in Riverside Park. The Hudson River. The George Washington Bridge as seen from Pier i. Those are just some of the iconic UWS views that have inspired UWS artist Tatjana Garibaldi, whose first solo exhibition opens today at the Salmagundi Club in Greenwich Village.
Titled “Air, Light, Distance,” the exhibition is a milestone for the former human resources director, who until a few years ago didn’t think she had artistic talent. “I have a younger brother who was born with a skill in drawing,” Garibaldi said. “He didn’t have to study it – he just knew how to draw. I always thought you had to be born with it, and in my family, the artist was my brother.”
Instead, she focused on her career, working for 10 years for a large financial services company, and later becoming a certified health and wellness coach. But when her father died in 2018, Garibaldi said, she was suddenly hit with a desire to explore her creative side. “The urgency I felt was a real full-body sense … if I was going to do it, I needed to do it now.”
So the following fall, she enrolled in a watercolor workshop at the Art Students League on West 57th Street. It was taught by Rick Brosen, an internationally recognized watercolorist (as well as an UWS resident). “Having a great teacher makes a huge difference, because he helped me succeed with that first painting,” which was of some old stone ruins in her hometown of Nitra, Slovakia, as well as some subsequent ones, she said. “I was struggling but I wasn’t frustrated to the point where I wasn’t succeeding.”
When the pandemic shut down in-person classes six months later, she continued taking lessons from Brosen, first in Zoom classes, and later, privately. She painted every morning for several hours. And little by little, she began accumulating a body of work, which, to her surprise, began to earn recognition. Last year, three of her paintings of the George Washington Bridge, as viewed from Pier i, were selected by LinkNYC for display in its wireless kiosks. Another won a top award at the American Artists’ Professional League’s Grand National Exhibition. And the Salmagundi Club, a non-profit fine arts center whose members have included artists such as Edward Hopper, Normal Rockwell, and N.C. Wyeth, reviewed her portfolio and selected her for membership.
Although Garibaldi has shown in group shows at the club before, the current exhibition — which includes a number of pieces inspired by the UWS — is her first solo exhibition. It runs through October 20th, with a reception Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue (at 12th Street).
The New York Times recently ran an in-depth profile of Francis Lee Rogers, the homeless artist killed in Central Park last month. In interviews with people who had known her over the years, the publication painted a picture of a gifted, albeit quirky painter who was dedicated to the birds that were the focus of her art.
“For years, she was the only person maintaining those bird feeders in the Ramble,” wildlife photographer Lincoln Karim, who knew Ms. Rogers for about 25 years, told the Times. “She would spend hundreds of dollars on birdseed and suet.”
Joe Lopez, a caterer who told the Times he knew Ms. Rogers for 15 years, said he bought several of her paintings, including one of Pale Male, the famed red-tailed hawk that nested for more than 20 years on a Fifth Avenue luxury building.
“To me, I was buying something beautiful, but it was also money I knew she needed,” Lopez said. “She wasn’t a homeless person to me, she was a genuine special character. The birders really respected her.”
Read the full profile — HERE.
In Other UWS News
- Eight hundred pounds of prosciutto and cured beef headed for an Amsterdam Avenue kosher market apparently were intercepted en route — by rats, reported the New York Post. Read the full story (which mistakenly identifies the market as being located on the Upper East Side) — HERE.
- A five-bedroom condo on West 91st Street that sold for $11.995 million topped the list of luxury sales on the UWS in the final week of September, Patch reported. See the details, and other top sales — HERE.
ICYMI
Riverside Park’s Drainage Renovations Continue Behind Schedule on the Upper West Side
UWS Schools Return to Beloved After-School Provider Less Than a Month After Disputed Change
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It should not be this hard to operate a small business in NYC. The physical make up of the city- dense buildings + small retail footprints + discerning residents make it ideal for small businesses to thrive. And they used to. And they do in other cities.
Sadly things have deteriorated faster than we expected under Mamdani. Prices have gone up everywhere, and there isn’t a republican within a thousand miles to blame it on. Feel the warmth of collectivism yet?
I guess you’re not including tarrifs and wars.
Jake’s Dilemma and Barzinis seem like poor examples to support Brewer’s legislation, which also mandates that store owners get an automatic one year extension if they can’t come to an agreement on a lease. This is basically a tiptoe into commercial rent control and is wrong on many levels.
Jake’s owners sold the building without negotiating a lease. They surely knew that they were paying below market and the owners were likely fairly compensated for selling then building.
Barzini’s had massive issues that we all know about, nothing to do with a lease (though candidly if I were their landlord I would have terminated the lease for unsanitary conditions long ago).
Jakes is part of a larger restaurant group (with Gin Mill) along with Good Enough to Eat. Not exactly small businesses.
Barzinis didn’t even lose a lease. They had stopped paying rent,. The marshalls closed them down.
West Side Kids was a huge loss.
Rent is definitely a huge issue.
But it should be noted that the City has benefited restaurants with street dining.
But the City has not helped retail shops or small businesses
Agreed and it is a vicious cycle. West Side Kids closed because a lot of parents buy toys online. I buy all my skincare online because everything is locked up at Diane Reade
I never met Frances Lee Rogers, but it is clear that many people appreciated her, and she contributed to the park’s humans and animals. I still don’t understand why she was able to sleep in the Gazebo or nearby during the night. I thought Central Park closes at 1:00 AM. Police have yelled at me when I have been crossing the park close to that time of night.
Prosciutto is, by definition, dry-cured ham, which would never be sold at a kosher market, no matter how high-end. Gourmet dry-cured meat OK, but not prosciutto per se. Maybe NYPost readers wouldn’t notice that error, but your readers will. Dear Editors: Details matter.
What kind of business invests money in renovating and starting up in a space with only a “handshake deal”. (besides Spirit Halloween). That’s a business that I don’t feel particularly sorry for.
I’ve been wondering about the extent of that issue since it was first mentioned. How often does it really happen? It’s very hard to imagine a landlord in NYC allowing a business to set up shop without a signed agreement.
Issues for small businesses in NYC are bigger than just what any one of us can help solve. However, there ARE things we can help with – such as, by USING these small businesses more often, for more things, especially now that there businesses are often suffering the realities of online shopping/orders. If more of us use these small businesses more often, more of them will survive. I know there are times I’ve chosen to shop online for the convenience (and sometimes the cheaper product), but I’m trying to be conscious of the fact that every purchase I take away from small businesses in the neighborhood, is one less transaction for them, and that without our collective business, they’ll have no business to run.
As usual, Brewer is promoting a solution to a problem that will only make the underlying problem worse.
Instituting commercial rent control (and that’s exactly what Brewer is suggesting) is not going to save weak businesses. Creating bureaucracies to make sure landlords provide some kind of regulated rent is no panacea.
There are already plenty of healthy businesses of all kinds that are thriving and are paying an agreed upon rent to their landlord. Providing rent regulation to weak businesses are not going to help the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, with big box stores and online competition many small businesses are simply obsolete.
If Brewer really wanted to help small businesses she can do something about the homeless who camp all over the UWS. This will increase foot traffic and help businesses. She can also fight to end NYC’s commercial rent tax which is an absurd tax on rent expense (also the only tax I can think of on expenses rather than income).
Keep in mind that the increase to the minimum wage is also impacting small businesses that were barely staying alive before this increase.
Small businesses can also do a lot to help themselves. There are so many grimy and decrepit awnings on the UWS. This makes the business uninviting.
There’s a resource for small businesses in NYC that too many people don’t know about, despite it being around since 1892: the Hebrew Free Loan Society (www.HFLS.org).
HFLS provides 0% interest, no-fee loans (yes – really, truly interest-free) to small business owners who are working hard to bring the city the diverse array of products and services that make it awesome.
Sipsteria, Izzy’s BBQ, Harlem Cycle, Kora, Bellissimo Hats, L’Apartement F, Beyond the Beard, The Frock, Harlem Seafood Soul, Marathon Coffee, The Twisted Spine, Ursula – HFLS is proud to have supported them all and many, many more of NYC’s favorite businesses.
Check out HFLS.org/small-business for more info and to apply online, or email Biz@HFLS.org with questions.
Kim Kaplan, Deputy Director
Hebrew Free Loan Society