“For a long time, the Upper West Side was my friends’ neighborhood, but not mine. Though I found myself visiting a great deal back in the day––having sesame noodles at Chinese restaurants, going to Gray’s Papaya, the late Endicott Booksellers, and my internist’s office for my annual checkup, I’d never made this side of the park my home. In the decades since I graduated from college and moved to New York, I’d had apartments in the West Village, Murray Hill, SoHo, and on the Upper East Side, but not here. I wasn’t avoiding the area, but the right time to live here didn’t take place until several years ago. With our kids grown and moved out, we decided to move to the west 90s. I immediately enjoyed walking the dog in Riverside Park, attending events at Symphony Space (and sometimes performing there too); taking my laptop to various diners during the day; and sitting with a book in the tranquil Lotus Garden––a community garden with a koi pond and beautiful greenery, located (in ingenious New York style) above a parking garage.

“At some point this summer, months into the pandemic, I put a window seat into my office in the apartment and have spent time during the day sitting there just watching the street scene, which can look an awful lot like something in a stage play about the Upper West Side. There, framed in my window, are the New Yorkers with their dogs, their shopping carts, their kids, their backpacks. (And yes, their masks.) And there, too, after a big snowfall recently, were the groups of teenagers pulling their sleds toward the park. West End Avenue may be a dramatic wind tunnel at certain moments, but it is uncommonly beautiful in the snow.

“I was also happy to watch the street scene on the day that the election was called. I immediately raised the window and cheered, and a woman outside with a clanging school bell looked up and cheered back. That entire day felt to me not only like a stirring American moment, but also like a stirring neighborhood one. It reminded me that I am very glad to live here. I look forward to neighborhood moments of all kinds in the years to come.”

©2021 Meg Wolitzer, American novelist, New York Times-bestselling author and west 90s resident

The Zoom session kept glitching. I’d freeze. They’d freeze. By now, the routine was familiar. “Am I back?” “What about now?” “What’s the last thing you heard me say?” “Am I frozen again?” “Unmute.”

Sometime in this past year full of dialogue that Beckett might have discarded, I had to abandon my office between back-to-back Zoom meetings and move my laptop closer to the router. The spot I chose was the dining room table, but then I faced a choice: What should be visible over my shoulders—the living room or the windows?

The living room looked unpromising. A pile of quarantining mail on the nearby sideboard, bags of Fresh Direct groceries, also under quarantine, in the distant foyer. So the window it was.

The meeting began. The moderator introduced the participants to our guest—a prospective hire at one of the colleges where I teach. Clockwise around the Zoom cubicles the moderator went, keeping the introductions simple: first our names, then what we teach, and then where we live. When my turn came, she said my name, then what I teach, and then—she changed her routine. “And as you can see for yourself, Richard lives in Manhattan.”

I could have turned around and seen for myself, but I looked out that window all the time. So instead, I bent to my screen, trying to see what they were seeing. And there it was, unmistakably: West End Avenue. Its cozy, un-avenue-ish width. Its trees. The century-old building across the street. The superfluous but welcome ornamental flourishes of its facade. Its canopy and the doorman standing under it, hailing a yellow taxi. A dogwalker.

It was a New Yorker cover come to life, whether from 1939 or 1959 or 2019. I leaned back from the screen and started to say something—maybe “That’s amusing” or “That’s nice.” But then the moderator brought me back to 2021: “You’re muted, Richard.”

©2021 Richard Panek, popular science writer, journalist, Guggenheim Fellow and west 90s resident

Thunder, lightning, wind and rain.
Over the Hudson to rattle my brain.
To Riverside! To Riverside! O’ the walk from West End.
Hats fly, hair blows, I’ll get there!
I can see home through the wind.

©2021 Edward Soloway, west 90s resident
*top line credit: Jessie Stone “Don’t Let Go”