The eclipse was a big hit in Central Park. Photo by Denton Taylor.
Shake the sand out of that towel: the summer’s over and the work-school year is resuming its normal grind! Sigh.
If you were totally tuned out, or need a refresher, here’s what happened in the neighborhood this summer.
Rats Took Over: Rats proliferated in playgrounds, turning entire sections into no-go-zones for the kiddos. What will save us? Special garbage cans? Dry ice? Hawks?
Tallest Building Stalled: A building on 69th Street and Amsterdam expected to be 668 feet tall has been stalled after a challenge by neighborhood activists. Will the developers have to set their sights smaller, or will they be able to move ahead after filing some rudimentary paperwork? Only time and the Buildings Department will tell.
Underground Fire: A fire burned underground at 71st and Broadway on July 13 and knocked out powers to hundreds.
A Political Brouhaha: Five candidates are running for the City Council seat occupied by Helen Rosenthal (Rosenthal is one of the candidates). The primary is just a week away, and there’s one more debate beforehand (it’s on Wednesday, see our calendar). We wrote about the last candidate forum here.
Sad Closings, Exciting Openings: Caesar’s Pizza closed after 36 years, and The Upper Breast Side is on its way out. West Side Market is now threatened with possible closure. But we got a new dim sum restaurant and the long-vacant home of PD O’Hurley’s on 72nd is getting a steakhouse.
Machete Mayhem: Two men battled on 95th Street in the predawn hours of July 19. One had a machete, the other a garbage can. It was all caught on video. If anyone could be said to “win” this fight, it wasn’t the guy with the machete.
New school: The Upper West Side got its first new school in 45 years.
We worked with some terrific student journalists this summer — including Hannah Reale, Gus Saltonstall, Matthew Friedman and Michael Wakin — and they broke just about every major story on the Upper West Side. Sadly, they’re back at school now and we’re looking for more new writers (no journalism experience necessary). If you’d like to write for the Rag, please email us at info at westsiderag.com.
Fantastic coverage on the summer’s stories, West Side Rag. I liked the review of the Central Park camp out, and personally fed up with the chance we lose another valued neighborhood business and residential amenity like Westside Market. Many thanks for covering these and other important stories.
Not much happened here on the UWS.
Maybe they’ll be more news in the Fall.