Today is Monday, July 6th, 2026
We’ll finally have some relief from the heat today, with temperatures expected to reach only 73 degrees; thunderstorms possible. Tomorrow will be roughly the same: cloudy, chance of rain, and a high of 75. Temperatures start to increase again on Wednesday, but thankfully aren’t expected to climb out of the 80s this week.
In the category of “if you thought last week was hot”: On this date in 1949, a freak meteorological phenomenon known as a “heat burst” reportedly sent temperatures in central Portugal soaring from 38 to 70 degrees Celsius (100.4 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit) within a two-minute period. (We say “reportedly” because the scientific instruments available in that era did not allow for authentication by today’s standards.) Though the temperatures began dropping again moments later, one newspaper reported that the blast of hot air killed thousands of chickens; shriveled orchards, vineyards and fields; and “made people feel they were being licked by tongues of fire.” According to the National Weather Service, heat bursts are “interesting, relatively rare, atmospheric nighttime events characterized by gusty winds, a rapid increase in surface temperature, and a decrease in surface dewpoint associated with a dissipating thunderstorm.” The mechanism by which they occur is too complicated to explain in this blurb, but the meteorologically curious will find more details — HERE.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
The city’s Commission on Government Efficiency will host a public input session on proposed changes to the city charter on Wednesday from 5 to 8 p.m. at Riverside Church, and also on Zoom. Members of the public who wish to present ideas for making city government work better are asked to register — HERE. Zoom link available — HERE. Testimony is limited to three minutes, and also can be submitted in writing — HERE. The commission, announced by the mayor this spring, is tasked with modernizing government, identifying waste, and reducing expenditures. Any proposals that require changes to the city charter will be presented to the public as ballot items during the November general election.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
The city will once again begin sticking it to drivers who fail to move their cars for alternate side parking — or, more accurately, sticking it to their cars, in the form of adhesive-backed, neon-yellow violation notices, which will be accompanied by the usual $65 fine.
The so-called “shame stickers” were used for years by the Department of Sanitation, but were banned in 2012 after drivers complained that they left gummy residue that was difficult to remove. However, adhesives have improved since then, while parking scofflaws have not. According to the Department of Sanitation, more than a half-million vehicles every week violate alternate-side rules, making it impossible for sweepers to fully clean the streets.
“Warning stickers were one of the City’s most effective tools for improving compliance before they were banned,” said Councilmember Gale Brewer, who sponsored the bill to bring back the stickers, which was passed last week by the City Council. Brewer told Patch that passage of the bill is “a practical, common-sense step that will help keep our streets cleaner for everyone.”
Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson also applauded the move. “Selfish car owners who prioritize their convenience over clean neighborhoods will soon be peeling stickers off their cars, while also paying for a summons,” he said in a statement. “Our goal is neither writing summonses nor using stickers. We want people to simply comply with the law, so we can clean streets across New York City.”
Read the full story — HERE.
Old John’s Luncheonette on West 67th Street is celebrating its 75th year on the Upper West Side — a milestone that only a few years ago, it looked as if it would not reach — and to mark the occasion, amNY sent a reporter for a behind-the-scenes look.
The piece describes how the restaurant shuttered during the pandemic, apparently permanently, but then was resuscitated when restaurateur Louis Skibar bought it. “For Skibar, keeping the community of Old John’s alive was not just a business decision — it was personal,” recounts reporter , explaining that when Skibar arrived in the city in the 1980s, his first job was at Old John’s, which was then located at Broadway and West 66th Street, and had no tables or booths — just a curved bar with 17 seats. (The restaurant moved to its current location on West 67th between Broadway and Amsterdam, when the area was redeveloped in the 1990s.)
Since reopening in 2021, Skibar has revamped the menu a bit, continuing to serve classic diner comfort food while elevating the ingredients. “You could compare it to a high-end restaurant because the ingredients are the same,” Skibar told amNY. And the restaurant has kept some of its old recipes — “the tuna melt has remained largely unchanged since the restaurant’s opening in 1951,” notes the piece.
But it’s the vibe that makes the restaurant truly special, said waitress Kathy Dellinger, who has worked at Old John’s since 1998. “It’s amazing how strangers just start talking to each other here over the years, and some of them have even become friends,” she said. “It has become the ‘Cheers’ of the Upper West Side. It’s a place where everyone knows your name.”
Read the story — HERE.
When the late painter and illustrator LeRoy Neiman moved to New York City in the 1960s, he bought a pair of apartments in the famed Hotel des Artistes, located at 1 West 67th Street, for a reported $100,000. Now both, along with two other properties Neiman and his wife owned in the buildingare for sale for $6.125 million.
According to Curbed, the painter — best known for his colorful expressionist paintings of sporting events, as well as his illustrations for Playboy — used a two-bedroom duplex as his studio, which still has splotches of paint on the floor. It shares a terrace with a three-bedroom duplex with a Juliet balcony that he and his wife Janet used as their primary residence.
The four apartments – which can be purchased individually or as a group — are the last of many once owned by the couple in the building. “As LeRoy’s fame grew … more people began buying and collecting his paintings, and in turn he started buying and collecting apartments at the Hotel des Artistes,” according to Curbed. “At one point, the couple owned at least nine apartments across the building, including a duplex on the 15th and 16th floors, and was apparently cut off by the co-op from buying more.”
Following Neiman’s death in 2012, his wife sold off some of the couple’s apartments, but she continued to occupy their duplex, and the Leroy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation, which supports advancement of the arts, continued to use another of the apartments as office space.
However, Janet Neiman died last year, and the foundation is relocating, so all four remaining apartments are up for sale. Cheryl Daly and Amjad Pervez at Compass hold the listing.
Read the full story and see photos — HERE.
Dr. Jennifer L. Mnookin, Columbia University’s fifth president in four years, took office July 1, and in a profile, she told the The New York Times that one of her priorities will be “to bring people together to think about a path forward” to reopening campus gates to the public.
The gates have been closed to what the university calls “non-affiliates” since May 2024, in the wake of student protests over the attacks in Gaza. Their closure has been widely criticized.
Mnookin arrives at Columbia from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she had served as chancellor since 2022. Prior to that, she also served as dean of the UCLA School of Law, and as a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. She holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard, a law degree from Yale, and a doctorate in history and the social study of science and technology from MIT.
Reopening the campus to the public is, obviously, not her only priority. She told the Times that three of her most important areas of focus will be the impact of artificial intelligence; teaching students how to better handle political differences; and improving the university’s undergraduate school. “But those could change,” she added.
“I am a principled pragmatist,” Mnookin told the Times, “and I care about both parts of that sentence.”
Read the full story — HERE.
In Other UWS News
- The two men arrested earlier this month in connection with the stabbing of a Good Samaritan on the M104 bus have been released without bail the New York Post reported. Read the full story — HERE.
- A five-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom townhouse at 53 West 71st Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, was the UWS’s top seller the week of June 22, the latest week for which figures were available, Patch reported. The townhouse closed at $9.6 million. Read about it — HERE.
- Author and radio personality (and UWSer) Garrison Keillor recently wrote a column about trying to rehab from a shoulder replacement, in which he also threw in a few zingers about politics in the neighborhood. 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.)
Sinkhole Continues to Expand Near Upper West Side Dog Park: ‘Soon It Will Consume the Dog Run’
UWS Bakery’s Dessert Named Best in the United States by The Food Network
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great photo, Vera!
Bringing back the stickers is fine, but ultimately the $65 parking ticket hasn’t been increased for many years and is just too low. People just treat it as a cost of owning a car since its cheaper than a parking garage, it should be tripled at least so that its strictly more expensive vs using a garage.
Current rates are limited by state law and the legislature has to authorize higher fines.
Ours has been stuck at $65 for 35 years and it’s too low.
And I’d like to see a system where the initial fine is around $85 with subsequent tickets in a calendar month increases by about $25 each, making the monthly cost of ignoring the law more expensive than a garage.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that, but one wonders why no one has been able to get an increase passed in 35 years. I actually have a car in the city and even I would be in favor of the fine being significantly increased.
Spelling correction: It’s Garrison K-e-i-l-l-o-r.
Thanks, fixed.
I’m fine sitting for alternate side, but why can’t we leave AFTER they clean the street?
I assume that it’s simply because the garbage guys aren’t the ones handing out tickets and the only means that the actual ticketing agents have of determining whether a car has been left is whether someone is in the car when they go by. So you need to stick around waiting for them at a minimum. Now if we really wanted to enter the 20th century, the garbage truck would be able to snap a photo of an offending car’s license plate.
ALSO THIS.
This needs to be in conjunction with resident parking permits. I’m happy to move my car, but there is no where to move it to. With a job and kids, sitting for 90 min just isn’t always feasible, and a garage is not affordable.
For those who then say “don’t own a car”, I’d love to not, but with two kids needing strollers and car seats, the subway, bus, and Ubers just are not always options.
The reality is that owning a car is unaffordable if you live in certain neighborhoods. It’s YOU that needs to adjust, not the neighborhood. Parking on the street is a luxury that needs to go away. If you must have a car (an no, you do not) move to somewhere with a off-the-street parking facility that you CAN afford.
Really? I did it for both our kids. And I didn’t’ take our large strollers on busses or subways – instead we used the inexpensive “umbrella” strollers with shoulder bags for commuting around the city. We took cabs when we needed to. A car is a luxury in a city with public transport and cabs just a hail away.
Except with approximately 1.65 million people living in Manhattan and about 230,000 on the Upper West Side it simply isn’t possible to accommodate on street parking of cars for everyone who might want (or insist they “need”) one.
Please move your car for alternate side parking so our streets can be cleaned.
I have a car and park at the curb. But I also have strong feelings about this, including the effect of actions like yours on general antipathy towards car ownership.
If you don’t have the time to take care of the car consistent with your civic responsibilities then garage it.
There are plenty of lower cost options along the transit lines you take going to and from your job and you can use one of those.
I write this while sitting in my car on an alternate side day. I have that luxury now because I’m no longer tied to an office. When I was I garaged it about five stops from my apartment for under half the price of a local garage.
Do. The. Right. Thing.
To be clear, I also spent my AM sitting in my car. I’m just saying that emergencies come up and sometimes you can’t make it.
I’m glad someone spoke up about this. I’m in the same boat and I’ve resigned to sitting in my car near our building so I can tap into my home Wifi to work…at least it’s a bit peaceful most of the time.
Just outrageous that the two thugs who bullied a pregnant woman and stabbed a Good Samaritan were released with no bail. That judge made a huge error. These two kids stab a guy in the shoulder, and the lesson is they don’t need to be incarcerated. I blame the judge as much as the criminals.
“Despite the Manhattan District Attorney’s office requesting $150,000 cash bail or a $300,000 bond, Judge Jeffrey Gershuny granted both men supervised release. Because it was their very first arrest, their criminal history or flight risk may have fallen below the threshold that would allow a judge to hold them in jail under New York’s bail framework, meaning the judge was legally bound to use the least restrictive measures available.”
I.e., He didn’t really have much choice; and supervised release will still ensure that they appear for their hearing and setencing.
Just to appropriately place blame: the one at fault here are the bail laws. I am not president of Bragg’s fan club and often complain that he is too lenient but it sounds like his people tried to have a meaningful bail set but their hands were tied.
So what do we need to do to change this? One would think that the nature of the crime should factor into this? Or did that occur? First offense for stealing a pack of gum vs. stabbing someone should have different thresholds.
Good reasons for the law to change. Lower the age of responsibility so we do not have homicidal teenagers running around without bail or incarceration. It’s all a disgrace no matter what causes the problem. I cannot imagine having to recover, if possible, from a stab wound like that. The victim is scarred for life and not just in the shoulder.
Notice to New Old Johns
Bring back the buffalo wings
Ironic that Garrison Keillor calls the president a pervert when you find out the reason that Keillor was fired from NPR ….. projection much?
I would doubt the facts about how many cars the DSNY claims don’t move. There are about 2.1 million cars in New York City in totality (Including all boroughs) it’s impossible and unlikely that ¼ of them don’t move their car each week. These “facts “ are just wrong.
In New York City, approximately 1.39 million tickets were issued for alternate side parking (ASP) violations in the 2025 fiscal year (ending June 30, 2025) that is for the entire year. That does not equate to 500000 per week as the DSNY claims.
I have lived on the same block for over 60 years. And I can say with some surety that 1/4 is begin generous. There are times when NO ONE moves their car, and the street sweeper simply comes down the block in the middle of the road from one end to the other.
I would say that 1/4 is an AVERAGE, and that it is sometimes (maybe even most often) more than that.
On my block ( and every one I have seen on the UWS) every car gets a ticket if they do not move. Those traffic cops are relentless at issuing tickets. Many cars get the “boot” too. So, I’m not sure what you are seeing, but these are the facts on the ground.
Also, the ticket prices have increased in the last two years. Where do people get the idea that it has been the same for 30 years? — this is not the case.
You can have your opinion about cars in the city, but not your own “facts”.
All of this is in public records, just look it up.
Where do you live? Do you look out on your street during alternate side parking hours? Do you not see how many cars don’t move and how difficult it is for the street sweeper to even get down the block? Not all of those cars that are in the way get tickets. In fact, most don’t. (I just love when laypeople “know” more than the professionals who gather the statistics!)
Please give out tickets! Ticketing people need to be around when the sweeper comes. Or give street sweepers cameras and mail tickets. I pay taxes for street cleaning and instead I watch neighbors refuse to move their cars, sweepers sit helpless in their truck, and the ticket giver is around the corner feeling empathetic with the drivers who don’t want to move.
I lived on the UWS for decades but never went to John’s. Three years ago I made it a point to go for a diner breakfast. Sadly, it was not a good experience. The pancakes crumbled at the touch of the fork. I ended up with a plate of crumbs. A spoon would have helped. The butter was frozen and the bacon was precooked hours before. I’ve never gone back.
Similarly, I took an out-of-town guest there for a ‘real NYC diner experience’ soon after the renovation. Her turkey sandwich was made with what seemed like processed pressed (as opposed to freshly carved) turkey slapped on two slices of commercial rye bread. My Western omelet was enormous but so tough that two bites was enough. The waiter was too busy chatting with his colleagues to see that we needed flatware and condiments. I don’t know why the place gets so many raves — maybe only regular customers get good food and service.
Don’t need the personage or the opinion of a sexual harasser like Keillor in my neighborhood or my phone. Get that awful man out of here.
Re: street cleaning and vehicles not moving.
There seem to be quite a few food trucks that park 24/7 – basically permanently, never moving.
Vans come by and deliver supplies to them.
Not sure why the City allows this?
Just as annoying is people who double park on the other side of the street so that the sweeper can clean – but the driver then leaves their car and rarely leaves their phone number in the window so that if they are blocking someone, that person can get out. That sort of selfishness deserves a ticket, too, even though this type of temporary double-parking is “permitted” by the NYPD (they basically turn a blind eye).
Do you have a photo of the first Old John’s on 66th Street?
It is wrong for cars to not move for street cleaning.
And wrong for NYC to allow restaurant street dining structures which also block street cleaning.
Absolutely love the world “scofflaw.” Made my morning
16 out of 19 cards parken on my block are out of state. Ergo, our taxes pay for their free parking. It’s New York taxpayers’ normal: paying for anyone who decides to squat in our city. And it will not get better.
Betcha that a goodly percentage of the “squatters” are your neighbors who register their vehicles at Grandma’s house in New Jersey or their weekend address in Vermont.
Yes, otherwise known as insurance fraud.
Or Grandma’s weekend house in Vermont?
Just kidding – totally agree. This is another huge benefit of parking permits – it would require all of these cars to register here.
In our building, several of the maintenance staff live in NJ and drive in. There is no reliable public transit for them
.
Out of state plates may also be car rentals.
BTW although unlikely that they are parking, worth noting that a significant amount of ecommerce delivery is done by gig workers using personal cars. Some are coming from NJ and Pennsylvania to do this work.
“Pervert president?”
Garrison Keillor was fired from Minnesota Public Radio in November 2017 after an internal and external investigation concluded he had engaged in DOZENS of sexually inappropriate incidents over years, including unwanted sexual touching.
Who does his editing? Someone probably should have mentioned to him that he should have left that part out of his rant.
I really do hope that the new Columbia president will open the gates; if not that the Morningside Heights community organization (sorry, I’ve forgotten the exact name) will win its lawsuit against Columbia since they are breaking the law.
Genuinely curious, as I’ve only been to Columbia once for a graduation. Why does the campus need to be open to the public?
caly,
Pedestrians going to/from Broadway and Amsterdam need the access – otherwise pedestrians need to walk blocks around.
Especially for the hospital which is at Amsterdam and 114th.
Subway is at 116th and Broadway.
And really a problem due to weekend open streets when there is no M11 bus on Amsterdam 106-120
Thanks so much for the info, I wasn’t aware of that! 😊
Glad you are raising the issue of car owners who won’t move their cars – the entitlement is strong – they sit in their cars running their engines — don’t care if they are creating an unsanitary mess on our streets! I don’t remember this kind of behavior in the past – sorry but no sympathy for car owners and those who moan “I need my car – kids etc. etc.” Just now I look out the window at about six stationary vehicles — I say stickers, boots on wheels – those plastic shields placed on windows – hit em hard!
Restaurant street seating prevents street sweeping – incredible the City has allowed that.