By Yvonne Vávra
This week, you’ve all been heroes. Because I made you heroes.
You might be thrilled to know that I’m always out here looking at you. I walk around getting excited about who I imagine you are. What are you up to? How are you making it through life? But inspired by City & State New York’s annual Unsung Heroes list, which celebrates the people behind the decision-makers, the ones getting things done just outside the spotlight, this week I started looking at you and wondering about all the ways you save the day, every day. I know you do. But where’s your spotlight?
And then it hit me. Or almost hit me, because I was saved. A couple came toward me with an SUV of an umbrella, one of those golf umbrellas that could keep a small wedding dry. Side rant: What’s up with that? Claiming an unthinkable amount of air rights for your tiny head?
Given that this was an Upper West Side–sized sidewalk, there was no getting around the thing, and I was about to be poked in the ear had the man not tilted it at the last minute. What a hero. It was enough civic decency to make up for the fact that he had been part of the decision—or, at the very least, hadn’t prevented his partner from bringing a beach umbrella onto the sidewalk.
It’s these tiny heroic contributions that last only seconds but save us from falling apart. It’s not easy being one of about 29,000 New Yorkers per square mile. It helps when someone tells you your backpack is open or puts a chair back where it belongs. It’s comforting to see, as I did a few weeks ago, a young man catch a plastic bag that was flying in the wind down 86th Street. For him and his friends, the joy and pride were all about jumping up and catching it, but he still threw it in the trash afterward. Street saved.
There’s another special category of heroes saving the day: those who do it by not making things worse. All you Upper West Siders who don’t honk when you don’t need to, don’t block the subway exit, don’t stretch your dog leash across the sidewalk, and don’t abandon your shopping cart in the exact spot where you stopped needing it: Thank you! I applaud the restraint. What a heroic way to be a New Yorker.
And another kind of hero deserves a song, uh, a whole concert. An epic opera, really. The champions who are saving us minutes. They hold the elevator door, already know our order at the bodega, warn us not to get into that one line at Fairway that’s not been moving, or save our place in line while we grab something we forgot.
Some people save us three minutes, others save half a century for us. Upper West Sider Taylor Hosking is keeping a nearly forgotten part of our neighborhood’s history alive, and soon we’ll get to see the results of her efforts. Hosking grew up at 93rd and Columbus, and every summer, she’d watch the Puerto Rican flag go up on a light pole from her childhood bedroom window. Flying the flag from that pole has been a longtime tradition, a way of saying, “We’re here, and we belong,” in a neighborhood that has changed drastically since the 1970s and ’80s. In the documentary West Side Familia, her feature-film debut, Hosking shines a light on the history of the Black and Puerto Rican community of the Upper West Side and the political and sometimes neighborly efforts to push it out. “Because a lot of people think the neighborhood’s always been this wealthy, liberal, predominately white neighborhood it’s known to be in popular culture. But that’s far from the truth,” Hosking says in the trailer.
When I walked by the pole this week, the wind had played a little too roughly with the flag, twisting it tightly around the pole and practically hiding it. But soon, the story behind it will be impossible to miss, and Hosking will get the spotlight she deserves when West Side Familia premieres at the New York Latino Film Festival on September 16.
I was saved one more time this week. On Tuesday, I was walking on 77th Street, by the museum, when a jogger flew past me, weaving around me like a skier through slalom poles, and I was the pole. I smelled what I did not want to smell, and my horrified mind insists I felt her sweat on my skin. I was gearing up to give her a piece of my mind when another woman nearby yelled at her. I don’t remember what she said, but there were curses. Beautiful, glorious curses.
I stood there, relieved, amazed, and grateful. Someone else was fighting my fight. She saw a problem, stepped in, and saved my day. Made my day. I’m still singing her praises.
Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.
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beautiful!
I love the UWS. I miss it everyday. Lived here for 7 years ((Oct 2014 – Oct 2021), sadly the rent increases, and a not so great landlord, drove us out. Best neighborhood I have ever lived in. 💜
I had a similar experience. For 15 years, I lived in a one-bedroom walk-up at 72nd and Broadway. After the building was sold and renovated, I returned as a prospective tenant and was surprised to find that the reconfigured rooms made the apartment feel claustrophobic—and the rent had tripled. Extremely disappointing, but I wouldn’t have paid to live there at any price. I now live on the Upper East Side…but sad to say, it has a very different vibe. 😞
Sorry to hear that, several of my friends have suffered the same fate. It’s terrible the UWS (and NYC generally) has gotten so unaffordable! Building more homes is the only solution.
What is this obsession with overbuilding? It is clear that Manhattan, the UWS, or any other desirable place in the world will never become affordable simply because of incessant building. You can’t accommodate the entire world in a couple of square miles.
UWS Dad,
My colleague lost his West Side apartment in a small pre-war building as the landlord wanted to sell the building. The building was torn down and currently a luxury high-rise is going up in its place.
So there are actually now “more” apartments at this site – and more unaffordable.
Building more homes isn’t “the only solution.” It matters what you build, where you build it, and who can actually afford it. More luxury apartments aren’t magically going to make the UWS affordable. But sure, let’s just keep building forever. Once Manhattan reaches the moon, maybe rents will finally come down. For the rich.
Those people who upgrade to the new apartments leave behind others that people can upgrade into and so it goes down the list. The reality is that building in Manhattan is extremely expensive so no one is going to build cheap apartments. But in building even expensive units, they are creating more housing all the way down the chain. So let’s not bash construction just because we can’t afford it. It’s helping!
It’s strange to assume that people moving into new luxury apartments are coming from cheaper apartments nearby. This is Manhattan – wealthy people move here from elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad.
The whole premise is flawed. Who says the people moving into these new apartments are “upgrading” from cheaper apartments nearby and freeing them up for someone else? Manhattan attracts buyers and renters from all over the country and the world. New luxury apartments bring more high-income households into the neighborhood. There is no magical chain of apartments becoming cheaper all the way down.
It’s true that some of the new demand is new buyers moving to manhattan for the first time. Now imagine those high income households are moving to the UWS for all of the same reasons that we love the neighborhood. If you don’t build housing for these households, they will outbid lower income households for the existing housing and the upward march of rents will keep pushing those households out of NYC. It’s happened to many of my friends who would have loved to stay on the UWS.
The UWS is not infinite. You can’t keep building forever, while wealthy people will continue to come. There will never be enough luxury housing to satisfy that demand. I feel for your friends, but this is reality, and it can happen to any of us.
The population growth rate for Manhattan is less than 2%. So while there are indeed people moving here from elsewhere the vast majority of apartment sales are to people moving within Manhattan. I can tell you’re very invested in your “luxury construction bad” argument but I won’t call it “flawed”. That would be rude.
Population growth doesn’t prove that the vast majority of buyers are moving within Manhattan. People leave as others arrive, and apartments are also bought as second homes or investments. If you have actual data showing that the vast majority of new luxury apartments are bought or rented by people moving from cheaper Manhattan apartments, by all means show it.
Here’s what the data says: 50% of new units being built are occupied by Domestic primary buyers that occupy the space. 15% are pied-a-terre’s. The rest are foreign, corporate or LLC buyers who do not intend to occupy and will either rent or keep vacant as an investment. Thats 35% of new housing that can’t help but contribute to the upwards trend of pricing (it’s an investment after all!) It also deprives the local economy of their capital as well as their taxes, etc Granted it’s a free market but we have commoditized housing, like healthcare, to the extent that people have lost sight of the inherent value of what it should actually provide vs how much money it can make.
Google tells us that Manhattan population is 72k people per square mile – not counting daily visitors and workers who roughly double the count, albeit probably more in other areas. BTW: runners, scooter persons and the like who don’t respect others should be fined!
There are so many times when UWS folks help each other. I’ve seen grocery bags fly apart and people run to help gather the items, hats and gloves get dropped and a neighbor literally runs after the person to give them back, people give the fruit/vegetable vendor a $10 when their bill is $8, people drop bills in the guitarist’s bucket outside of Fiorello’s. We are a helpful, generous people.
The contrast between your comment and Dino’s just after you is wild! He said:
“‘those who do it by not making things worse.’
You’re asking for too much. Remember, this is a neighborhood of entitlement where all codes of conduct are strictly self-serving. Take that obnoxious jogger for example. To her, you’re the insufferable nuisance who refuses to move out of her way.”
I’d say my experience is closer to yours, on the whole. Do you and Dino live in different neighborhoods, or just see them through different eyes?
“those who do it by not making things worse. ”
You’re asking for too much. Remember, this is a neighborhood of entitlement where all codes of conduct are strictly self-serving. Take that obnoxious jogger for example. To her, you’re the insufferable nuisance who refuses to move out of her way.
The contrast between your comment and Stacy’s just before you is so striking! Do you live in the same neighborhood?
Here’s what Stacy said:
“There are so many times when UWS folks help each other. I’ve seen grocery bags fly apart and people run to help gather the items, hats and gloves get dropped and a neighbor literally runs after the person to give them back, people give the fruit/vegetable vendor a $10 when their bill is $8, people drop bills in the guitarist’s bucket outside of Fiorello’s. We are a helpful, generous people.”
I think I’d mostly go with Stacy, not you.
So true. Some woman drove her stroller right at me clipped my ankle because I just couldn’t move fast enough. Not even a glance. It was like I was a cow or dog to her.
When did being a courteous, considerate and decent human being become a hero???? This type of behavior should be the norm and certainly shouldn’t be considered heroic.
So sad it has come to this.
People have become checked-out automatons. You’d think they’d not only smell it but wake up (as in wake up — be conscious! — and smell the coffee)!
Thank you Yvonne, for this beautiful perspective. I’ve lived and experienced my own versions of these unsung heroics on the UWS too. Brava!!
Love this article & documentary. When I grew up on the 50s-60s on W 93rd vs Bwy & WEA, with 11 girl friends aka ” The Girls of W 94rd-96th” the Hell Burners were our neighborhood ” gang.” Friendships that have lasted until today. The Young Lords influenced my life path as Puerto Rican community builder in Puerto Rican neighborhoods throughout the US. in PR, Hawaii and USVI. ” Aqui, alla.”
This ia my neighborhood. This makes me hopeful for humans in general, what a scintillating read. Thank you!
Several neighbors in my building have pitched in to purchase groceries for an elderly neighbor even though they don’t know him well. They did so upon hearing of his plight and that he had no reliable resources.
Neighborhood acquaintance provide candy to food delivery workers who come to the building when the weather is especially bad (BT W the couple themselves do not get food delivery)
A neighborhood acquaintance purchases supplies and picks up donations and drives to deliver them to a family homeless shelter in the Bronx several times a month.(yes she has a car which she parks on the street)
In my coop the staff are greedy and grab anything they can get their hands on — food included. They look at the building like it’s their personal cash register.
I’m surprised to hear that. The staff in my co-op are always very nice and courteous. People in our building often give away food when they’re going away or have extras, but even then, they usually offer it to other tenants. I’m very happy with our building team.
I lived on the Upper West Side for 40 years and thought NYC it was the greatest metropolitan city on earth.
Until I moved to Tokyo.
That’s just an unfair comparison.
How so? I lived in both too.
This article is a true credit to humanity. The world will be a better place when more articles like this get published. Thank you.
No. The world would be a better place if this was (like in the past) common behavior.