By Tracy Zwick

Welcome to UWS Weekend! It’s a long weekend for many, with Independence Day kicking it off on Thursday. Here are some traditional offerings and things you might not have known about to do. Happy Fourth of July! 

July 4 – 7, 2024

Fireworks: Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks; public viewing along the West Side; Thursday at 9:25 p.m.; Free  

They’re back on the West Side! A New York City tradition since 1976, the Macy’s annual 4th of July fireworks celebration this Thursday night will be held on the Hudson River for the first time in a decade. Designated areas for public viewing are between West 14th and 34th Streets, but UWSers can try to catch the show from safe rooftops, terraces, and other unobstructed UWS venues. For those who can’t attend in person, NBC and Peacock will stream the celebrations starting at 8 p.m. Happy Independence Day! 

Podcast: The Open Ears Project 

Sure, the classic soundtrack for fireworks celebrations is Francis Scott Key’s “The Star Spangled Banner.” But why not listen to what a local theoretical cosmologist and professor of astronomy and physics suggests this weekend while you’re looking at the sky? The final episode of this season’s “The Open Ears Project” features Barnard College’s Janna Levin breaking down Mozart’s “Requiem” and the connection between music, math, and cosmology. As usual with this terrific pod, the first half is someone talking about the classical track that means the most to them, and the second half is a recording of the track in full. This episode has the UWS’s own New York Philharmonic playing the “Requiem”.  The whole episode is just over twenty minutes long, and since you’ve got a long weekend, take some extra time to dip into other episodes from “Open Ears.” I especially enjoyed Tom Hiddleston on Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel Im Spiegel.” 

Eat: Pie! 

What’s the Fourth of July without pie? Apple may be the traditional choice, but raspberry, cherry, strawberry, and blueberry, with their all-American colors, can’t miss. Silver Moon Bakery on 105th and Broadway has beautiful apple or mixed-berry tarts you can buy right out of the display case. For a slice of lattice-topped cherry pie, hit Good Enough to Eat on Columbus and West 85th Street. They also have apple, pecan and blueberry by the slice. If you’d prefer something more avant-garde, Milk Bar on Columbus and West 87th Street has its signature Milk Bar Pie with a sticky salty-sweet filling in an oat-cake crust for $7/slice or $53 for an entire pie. I like to make my own Strawberry Spoon Cake using Jerrelle Guy’s New York Times recipe. It’s easy, delicious and flexible enough to accommodate any juicy fruit if strawberry’s not your jam. Add your go-to UWS pie place in the comments! 

Art: “Growing Sideways: Performing Childhood” at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, Saturday-Sunday from 12-6; Free

This show at Columbia’s Lenfest Center for the Arts on 129th Street just west of Broadway includes work by world-class artists from Lorna Simpson to Gordon Parks to Joan Jonas, all of whom explore aspects of childhood in the pieces on display. It’s an accessible exhibition with a mischievous edge, including a painted crib, Fisher-Price playhouses, toy washing machines, and brightly colored kites along with works on paper, film, and more. The show is organized by Piper Marshall, a doctoral candidate at Columbia who also worked on the Joan Jonas retrospective at MoMA, which is closing this weekend. 

Read all past UWS Weekend columns here, and please send your ideas for future items to info@westsiderag.com

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