By Caitlin Hawke

There's still time to make plans to join us for Tuesday's history talk via Zoom (July 14 at 7 p.m.)! I'll be presenting at the annual meeting of the Block Association. To tune in, send an email to AMZoom@w102-103blockassn.org. You will receive the log or dial in information for Zoom.

If you haven't heard the talk, it revives a 125 year-old piece of our neighborhood's history. Once known as the St. Andoche, 855 West End Avenue (at center above) was constructed by beloved Civil War-era actor Maggie Mitchell, whose fame was second only to Edwin Booth’s, brother of John Wilkes Booth. Her story is largely forgotten, but the eight-story colonial revival St. Andoche still stands proud on the southwest corner of West 102nd Street where Maggie retired and lived for the last two decades of her life. The talk is equal parts early U.S. theater history, Bloomingdale history, and neighborhood architectural history.

Hope you can make it but make sure to register at the email above. Please share this with your Block Association neighbors.

By Caitlin Hawke

Neighbors, I have two pieces of news for you. If you did not receive an email in June from the Block Association about the publication of the Summer 2020 edition of the quarterly newsletter, it means you are not on the Block Association's email list. To join the list, make sure to visit this page so you don't miss future news (https://www.w102-103blockassn.org/join-us.html).  Fill out "Step 1" and you will be all set. If you wish to support your BA, continue to "Step 2."

I will send you the newsletter once we receive your sign up.

The second piece of news is that on Tuesday, July 14, at 7 p.m., at the annual meeting I'll be repeating the talk I gave for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group in January: "From Ford's Theatre to 855 West End Avenue: Maggie Mitchell and the Story of the St. Andoche."

In a past blog post, I've written about Maggie Mitchell, the famous Civil War actor who built 855 West End Avenue. I'll be telling the story of her acting career and the beautiful building she mysteriously named the St. Andoche, located on the Southwest corner of W. 102nd Street and West End Avenue.

Known throughout the country for her stage presence and for her literally enchanting performances, Mitchell's success was huge -- she was out-earned only by Edwin Booth, America's leading man and brother of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth, both of whose paths Maggie crossed repeatedly. A child of New York, Maggie grew up on the stage, traveled the country and retired to Bloomingdale, settling at 855 West End Avenue, where she died in 1918.

All are welcome to Zoom into this talk on Tuesday, July 14 at 7 p.m. Please register by RSVPing to AMZoom@w102-103blockassn.org to receive the Zoom details to log in.

Hope you will join us to learn about this little nugget of neighborhood history!

See you on Tuesday.

By Caitlin Hawke

Apart. Like we have all been for months. A Part. Like we are coming to be, of a movement.

It's now rattled our windows and shaken our walls. I don't think I will ever forget the despair-to-hope ride of the past seven days for the rest of my life. They say you forget pandemics. The worry subsides and the world returns to normal. I'm always taken aback when someone doesn't recall the AIDS crisis, especially in New York City. I fully expect for Covid-19 to recede quickly into the recesses of our minds, once it packs its bags and moves on. 

But the power harnessed by the people in our streets protesting peacefully is stunning. The tipping point is in our rear view mirror, but we don't fully trust it yet. And there's so much still to fight for.

The curfews this week have been yet another chapter in "2020: How Surreal Can It Get." Tonight, itching to flout, but mostly hoping to soak in my strange neighborhood, I took a bike ride through the Upper West Side. Below are some images from that ride. As much as I want my city back and for the virus to remain under control, I also want the roots of what is happening to go down deep and buckle the macadam, rendering the old byways unpassable and forcing us to lay down new ones. 

It's almost as if the fact that we were apart enabled so many to become a part of this. Certainly the fact of our limbo helped hasten the outrage about the senseless murder of George Floyd, galvanized by the inequities of Covid's toll. 

I'm still thinking about Ex Uno Plures and E Pluribus Unum. Written only two months ago. I find myself believing that it's coming to fruition before our eyes. But "2020: How Surreal Can It Get" has many a chapter to go.

UWS Curfew Gallery: Part 1 - Hell You Talmbout
​​The first images I noted were these solemn panels -- memorials to victims of police brutality. If you haven't heard Janelle Monáe's song, it is what was going through my head when I saw these blades.

​(Keep scrolling down for more images; to view the gallery properly, click on the blog title to view it online).

If you received this in an email subscription, to listen to Janelle Monáe's "Hell You Talmbout" please click on the blog title to view the post online.

UWS Curfew Gallery: Part 2 - Lincoln's Center Under Cover

UWS Curfew Gallery: Part 3 - On Broadway Where Wood Meets Glass Under Bright Neon Lights

UWS Curfew Gallery: Part 4 - Check Point Nine Six
After 8 p.m., no through traffic is permitted south of 96th Street these days. I rode freely up the middle of the avenue toward home past a deserted 87th Street.

Below, a police officer checks in with a driver and let's him pass.

​In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

​-- Bob Dylan, "Every Grain of Sand"

By Caitlin Hawke

West End Avenue is deafeningly silent early this morning as the curfew has curtailed most car traffic south of 96th Street. It's a street I recognize less and less yet one that I've come to know deeply. I find myself studying it. Each bird chirping. Each passerby. Each delivery truck. Each siren. Each neighbor at his or her window in my sightlines. All targets of my gaze in a way I have never gazed before.

Looking out my window in sleepy Bloomingdale all day today I perceived a strange vibrato. Tension thick in the air. Anticipation. Trepidation. And the gaze from apartment to street of all these neighbors still cooped up is one of watchful, worried eyes. The First Wave scarcely receded, the Second Wave is roiling and swiftly rolling in.

But I am not talking about the virus. Like a Rube Goldbergian contraption, infection has become the vector of infection. Instead of picking up with some semblance of normalcy coming off the first wave of coronavirus, we are now again waist deep in. Begat by the first wave but not precisely in its own image, the Second Wave of which I speak looks and feels very much like a growing revolution, where people the city over -- the country and the world over -- have been swept up as it crests. 

Chalked on sidewalks, hung from windows, held up in protest posters each day at 1pm in Straus Park, called out by peaceful congregants making their noontime way down Broadway, the revolution beckons: manifest in support of justice for all, manifest in opposition to police brutality, manifest in acknowledgment of the grotesque and disproportionate toll Covid-19 has had on people of color.

The solidarity of the Second Wave equals that of the first, but its fury surpasses it. Both share uncharted waters, unpredictable consequences, unimaginable cost, unfathomable pain.

Experts tell us that there will be another wave of viral infections. But they didn't tell us that our social isolation would finally make us immune to complacency and catapult us into the work we must now do. 

I'm still too jaded to believe that in corona there could be salvation. But at a minimum there is transformation. And we are most definitely not coming out of this the same.  Prepare ye.

Above photos courtesy of Sharon Waskow

Daily protest near Straus Park near W. 106th Street, where neighbors gather at 1 p.m.

By Caitlin Hawke

Reflecting nigh on 100 days of solitude, I should be writing a love letter to Bloomingdale Aging in Place, or "BAiP" as everyone calls it. A bit over ten years old, this network of neighbors has proven itself to be the insta-community just waiting for anyone who wanted to join and meet-up hyperlocally. Did you ever watch "Cheers"? It's like that bar. But without walls. And no taps. You walk in, and everyone knows your name. BAiP is a perfect third place.

Its network of neighbors has launched nearly 100 different social and activity groups in the last decade. Groups that meet monthly, weekly and in some cases daily. 

But when Covid-19 hit and flung all BAiPers into their respective corners, with a halt to in-person social activities, it was hard to predict what might happen.

Three months later, there are more than 100 people meeting up -- sometimes three times a week -- to join remote yoga classes and then stick around in a post-yogic haze for breakouts just to schmooze, share, check in, be.

Many of the activity groups have not missed a beat, moving swiftly online and picking up when Mother Nature thwarted them from meeting together in cinemas and museums, in parks and living rooms. Each group its own mini-community led by a neighbor, when beheld together these dozens of groups weave into a tight-knit fabric of connectivity for nearly 1500 people throughout Bloomingdale. The grassroots, neighbor-to-neighbor model not only has proven resilient and responsive, but it has also been a lifeboat ferrying from desert island to desert island keeping us castaways connected while we all endure the strange pause.

Knowing that with a click, three times a week, I can jump in for a yoga class, instantly connect, and lay eyes on all these neighbors makes me feel a solidarity like the one I feel at 7 p.m. sharing glimpses and furtive waves with neighbors across the street, ringing my bell as fast and hard as I can to keep up with the cheers.

And while these classes are great for body and spirit, BAiP's neighbor-led groups are the community-building engine at its core, and despite worst initial fears, many have found a way to persevere online.

One of BAiP's oldest living room groups, Photography, is led by Block Association cameraman and ubermensch Ozzie Alfonso. Just as Covid-19 struck, Ozzie sent out word to the neighbors in his group that the next theme to shoot would be "Life in the Time of Coronavirus." Slightly ahead of the wave, the crew got out there way back a lifetime ago when the crocuses were starting to come up.  Over the weeks, they began documenting our neighborhood, our stores and streets, our residences.

Below is the very special, personal gallery that these local photographers produced. To view more of this group's work, see the dozens of their beautiful galleries here.

For me, coronavirus is a clarion call, like the one intoned by Allen Ginsberg at the end of Scorsese's documentary on Bob Dylan's magical mythical tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. It's as if this virus is saying the same:

"Try to get yourself together, clean up your act, find your community. Pick up on some kind of redemption of your own consciousness, become more mindful of your own friends, your own work, your own proper meditation, your own proper art, your own beauty. Go out and make it for your own eternity."

Here's hoping that if we take one kernel of truth back out into the social world with us when we emerge it is one akin to BAiP's truth: build the community you aspire to and they will come.

This Block Association and its sister organization, BAiP, spawned here 11 years ago, deserve your TLC. ​We have work to do, people. And redemption of our consciousness may be the one true gift to arise from this ordeal.

Credit: Gallery "Life in the Time of Covid '19" courtesy of BAiP's Photography group led by Ozzie Alfonso. Note: if you received this post in an email via your subscription, click on the title of the blog post to view the gallery online.

And lastly, my lagniappe for you is the Ginsberg benediction of the Rolling Thunder Revue. Again, if you are reading this in an email via your subscription, click on the blog post title to view the video on the blog.

By Caitlin Hawke

I won't go much into my complicated relationship to my patriotism. Except to say, while I could have done without all the lapel pins that later ensued, when I saw the first flags appear in solidarity in the immediate wake of 9/11, it took a deep emotional toll. I don't think I'd ever before realized how powerful a symbol a cloth flag could be.

When I was in grade school, I remember learning "Lift Every Voice and Sing" and being awestruck by its beauty. It shook awake in me an explosively optimistic feeling, perhaps the birth of my complicated patriotism.

Today, cheering at my window, watching my partner cheer beside me, hearing his voice projecting over West End Avenue, listening to but not seeing my downstairs neighbor ringing her school bell, and seeing my counterparts across the avenue materialize from behind closed windows night in and night out: these are small moments of solidarity I never could have imagined would be mine. 

Like the flags after 9/11 and the voices lifted in song of my DC childhood, the evening cheers touch a deep nerve within. Collective and rallied around a single cause. A patriotism.

Here now come the airborne elite. In a military tribute to the legions who've kept our fates from a downward spiral -- the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy's Blue Angels will flyover our punch drunk city today at noon in a salute to the people whose debt we are in: our essential workers and the frontline Covid workers.

These glorious flocks of flying machines are guaranteed to take your breath away.

I can't imagine any aerobatics, but the metaphor of the jets passing in impossible proximity at impossible speed is akin to what our medical, city, and essential business workers have done these past two months. Lockstep. No margin of maneuver. In sync. All ramped up at full speed.

As I said at the top of this post, my patriotism has its complexities. But when it comes to the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds, when they fly over, all is forgiven and forgotten between me and Uncle Sam: I am American to my core. The sight and stunning sound of them, too, make a deep emotional mark -- like a roaring promise that anything is possible, anything achievable. If we come together.

Deep inside we know it's time to face the rising sun of our next new day. With the Blue Angels above, let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

By Caitlin Hawke


A big hat tip to neighbor Win Armstrong for sharing news of this episode of "George to the Rescue" wherein the Bloomingdale School of Music gets the full "surprise reno" treatment that the show is known for.

While we are socially isolating and dreaming of the days of yore when stepping out to a concert didn't require biosafety level 3 gear, here's a feel-good story about how the little tuneful powerhouse known as the Bloomingdale School of Music gots its groove back. You may have seen the prodigious schedule of BSM concerts featured in our newsletters and website calendar. And you may have passed by this modest landmark just west of Broadway at 323 W. 108th Street, but never thought about what goes on inside.

Founded in 1964, this school is all about making music education accessible. It's one of those neighborhood gems like the temple of Shinran Shonin known as the New York Buddhist Church, or the Nicholas Roerich Museum -- institutions that quietly populate our residential streets and are getting on in years. Pushing 60, BSM has been so focused on educating, that sprucing up its backyard or performance hall has had to wait.  Until the angel-makeover show "George to the Rescue" got wind of its aspirations. Now that time has come, and the full transformation is unveiled in the video below.

On pause like the rest of the city, BSM will come roaring back one day soon because one of the things that makes us human is our need to make and experience music in live performance. Maybe this lovely little tale of its recent sprucing will make us all jump at the chance to attend one of their student or teacher concerts. That is, once we are delivered from our surreal sequestration. But it's something to look forward to in our Bloomingdale backyard.

Click on the image below to view the video directly on youtube (you know you have time!), or click on the blog post title to view this on our website where the video is embedded.  While you are thinking about it, now is a great time to share this blog with your neighbors while we are all in hyperlocal lockdown. It's easy to subscribe via the links below and receive posts directly to your email in box. So tell a couple of friends or neighbor about this site.

​

By Caitlin Hawke

Neighbors, I feel more connected to you than ever. I can barely hear you. Can't see you, except at 7 p.m. when you fling open your sash.  But you are beautiful at the top of that hour. And your cri de coeur is mine, too.

I've been thinking about how we got here. 

Out of one, many. That's for the pangolin, or whichever creature this zoonotic nightmare leaped forth out of and upended the lives of billions.

Out of many, one. That's for us. U.S. This country, with all its fault lines and political red and blue blocks is, for better or for worse, now 'one' in a way it hasn't been since 9/11. The sooner we embrace that, the stronger we'll emerge from this catastrophe. Roughly a month in, it's not a moment too soon. But it's not just domestic. Our family of man is global. Have you ever felt the purely human connection across borders and societal divides more profoundly? And yet, here we all sit. Alone. Out of many, one.

When we come through to the other side, when we have metabolized how we have behaved, how we were led, for better for worse, who we have lost, and how we'll go on, we had better reckon with the Anthropocene. We're so busy saving ourselves, we've forgotten that the real work ahead is to save our planet.

And if we can do this, surely we can do that.

Reservoir
by Caitlin Hawke

By Caitlin Hawke

People of Bloomingdale, what a surreal ride we are on together. I don't pretend to speak for us all, but for me it's been a week of heartbreak, solitude, angst, and the good old telephone. Oh, and ice cream. But I noticed you are eating ice cream, too, since there's never any in the store. We apparently all like the same flavors, and desperation forces us to consider the unthinkable. Strawberry, I am looking at you.

I have zoomed a good deal, too, and while I am growing used to videoconferencing, nothing beats a good, long dystopic gab on the phone with a good or long lost friend. So, count that as a silver lining.

Heartbreak is rolling in past the bulkhead in waves. Reading back a couple of posts, I was feeling it three weeks ago (also known as another lifetime) and my imagination is not as stretched as it once was: I do still greatly fear for our Mom & Pops, both the flesh and bone kinds and the brick and mortar kind. The so-called impending lockdown makes it all the more concrete. But it's not just the little guy; when I called to cancel a hotel-room block today for an academic event that had to be postponed, the echo of not one, not two, but three sales staff members furloughed, really shook me. There are a host of poignant stories, and I expect we will all be deeply touched by many of these as the weeks wage on. And so much more.

Solitude and angst, thankfully, don't go together for me. I like my community, but I also like my space. The angst comes from being out on the sidewalks and having to pass anyone who believes 3 or 4 feet is 6 feet. I guess we all have our sense of what is socially acceptable social distance! But don't make me take my tape measure out, because first I'll have to sanitize my hands, then pull it out, tap you, ask you to edge further to the east, snap my tape measure back, wipe it down, put it in my "clean" pocket, and try to remember which is my clean hand for when I have to repeat this process. It's meshuganah-making.

But through it all, so far, I am observing little touches of commonality. The urge to hug someone shaken because her dog got into a skirmish was powerful; but the 6 feet remained between us. Still we had a connection. The tilted heads and gaped mouths and "can you believe" gestures from nearly every neighbor passed who has dared to take a walk reinforces our bonds.

Distractions abound. Like you, I am receiving rafts of amazing offers from the suffering but stiff-upperlipping culture emporia that make our city and world so rich. From the fabulous Laura Benanti's hashtag movement (scroll down for some) to get any kids whose spring musical was cancelled to share their performance with her so she could be their audience, to the scads of streaming performances like my mad crush Ivan Fischer's Quarantine Soirées by way of the Budapest Festival Orchestra members at 19:45 each day (heure de Budapest), to this very special clip embedded below from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra: the human power to create, entertain, empathize and innovate is as daunting as the probability that some poor poached plated pangolin would have us in the state we're in.

So. Don't eat pangolin. Wash your hands. Don't go out. But exercise every day. Maintain your distance. Destress. Sleep. Complete the census. Skip your tax deadline (til July). Vote. No, I mean really vote. Vote like suffrage had been taken away from you and you just got it back after a many-month house arrest. Vote like you are Kate Winslet as Dr. Erin Mears tracking down the index patient in Contagion. Vote like you've just come upon a shelf full of gallon squirt-bottle hand-sanitizers on a Duane Reade shelf. And most of all, appreciate the irrepressible, untouchable, fellow Homo sapiens sapiens all around you.

Until we touch again...be safe, stay well, and just one more thing: would you mind holding that door open for me so I don't have to touch it? I can't remember which hand is which.


H/T to my dear friend Hanako for Rotterdam and BFO tips. Enjoy.

Sunshine Songs below from high schoolers around the country, a trending hashtag for their performances that were canceled due to the pandemic with thanks to triple threat Laura Benanti.
Click the links to view the performances.

By Caitlin Hawke

Those are the words of the terrific UK internet information source on the current outbreak of novel coronavirus, John Campbell, PhD.  His youtube channel is here. Campbell posts short videos daily that I find strangely calming. Below I am embedding his tips on hand washing, but have found all of his videos filled with evidence-based information.

Below, there are links to documents put out last week by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which include a fact sheet, a guide for residential disinfection and a poster that you can download and print and share as needed with your neighbors or building managers.

If you are receiving this message in an email subscription, you'll have to click on the post's title to view the video directly on the blog. I heartily recommend it. You will also find it on his channel at the link above.

Lather up and stay vigilant, neighbors.

By Caitlin Hawke

Talking heads everywhere.

If you are like me, you are on circuit overload. Impeachment, primaries, debates, newsmageddon week after week. Everything has stopped making sense. And now, really? We've got once-in-a-lifetime virus for the world to contend with, like there wasn't enough on our plate?

Pass the Purell and, please, Calgon, take me away.

I've been thinking a bit about what life in NYC might look like weeks and months down the road. And I am finding the limits of my imagination. I don't want to trivialize the risk we may be up against nor overdramatize it, but it's very hard to imagine a life when the subway isn't an option or we cannot convene in large numbers or worse. 

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may recall that I've written quite a bit about the state of Mom & Pop stores in our area. And I must say that in those limits of my imagination, I do worry that something terrible like an outbreak in NYC could be the final breaking point for so many small businesses already surviving on the thinnest of margins.

So this is a shout out to those businesses. And a call to arms to readers that they will need us more than ever. And we may need them, more than ever before, too. We may also need each other and our Block Association. Community is a powerful force, and we're lucky to be in a neighborhood with strong connections.

In the naive melodic lyrics of songsmith David Byrne who is fresh off a Broadway run of his show "American Utopia", this must be the place. And home is where I want to be. But it sure is a wild, wild life these days.

Hang tough, Bloomingdale. And, Mom & Pop, I hope we'll have your backs, same as it ever was.

For subscribers, please note that the lagniappe videos below won't show up in the email subscription feed. Please click here to view it on the blog.

By Caitlin Hawke

Neighbors, just a reminder that this talk -- the story of the building once known as the St. Andoche on West End Avenue -- will be held on Tuesday, January 14, at 6:30 p.m. at Hostelling International, 891 Amsterdam Avenue at W. 103rd Street. Hope you can make it for this lost slice of Bloomingdale's history! It's a free presentation in the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group series. All are welcome!

By Caitlin Hawke

As a teaser for the talk I'll be giving on Tuesday, here's a little Throwback Thursday entry which I hope will entice you to come hear more!

For the past many years, I've been digging up tidbits about the apartment house that stands at the southwest corner of West End Avenue and W. 102nd Street. Built in 1895, it's a little building, filled with charm. Its solid construction is thanks to the fortune that bankrolled it -- one amassed by Miss Maggie Mitchell powerhouse of the American stage in the Civil War era.

For about 22 years, Miss Mitchell called this building her home. Sadly, she died there in the wee hours of March 22, 1918, but at the ripe age of 81. Hailed at her passing as "one of the most popular actresses of an earlier generation," and "one of the most famous of American actresses," Mitchell left the stage in 1892, and retired to Bloomingdale where her well-constructed, eight-story, colonial revival building still stands, but where her name has been all but forgotten.

I'm hoping to rectify that on Tuesday, January 14, at 6:30 p.m. To hear how George Sand, John Wilkes Booth, Laura Keene, Abraham Lincoln, and a shadow-dancing waif with enchanting powers all cross paths with Maggie, come over to Hostelling International for this free presentation in the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group's wonderful lecture series. More details in the poster below.

​

By Caitlin Hawke

Bob Dylan has been in a long-term relationship with Greenwich Village, but he's been spotted in the throes of a torrid affair with the Upper West Side.

Even non-fans know the story of how he hunted down Woody Guthrie and then settled into the basket-house scene of Greenwich Village in early 1961. From his first apartment at 161 West 4th Street to his Stanford White townhouse uptown near City College on “Striver’s Row” Dylan is, at heart, a New Yorker.

I, like 20,000 others, will never forget the November 19, 2001, concert at Madison Square Garden when he played “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” to a packed house of aching souls, still in shock after 9/11. As he got to the last couplet — “I’m going back to New York City/I do believe I’ve had enough” — the hometown crowd erupted in a cry of solidarity and civic pride. I recall that he spoke between songs that evening — a rare occurrence in the second half of his career. He didn’t say much, but in acknowledgement of the tragedy he said simply that no one had to tell him how he felt about New York. Again a cheer brought down the house.

I could go on about all the Dylan landmarks and connections of this town — how he picked up violinist Scarlet Rivera on an East Village corner and convinced her to record with him on the seminal album “Desire.” Or that half-mile taxi ride with Lenny Bruce. How the fabulous folkloric “Rolling Thunder Revue” tour of 1975-76 was cooked up at a back table at the Other End with Bobby Neuwirth. As landmarks go, the one with the tightest connection to my heart is the legendary Supper Club, where on November 16, 1993, Dylan played an acoustic show that fans have traded bootlegs of with abandon for the last quarter century.

​But thanks to his two-week stay at the Beacon Theatre from November 23 to December 6, Bob Dylan was shaking the sugar down in our very own Sugar Town for ten sweetest of shows on positively 74th Street.

Read on here at the West Side Rag where I wrote an appreciation and here for a review of the first concert of the run. 

It's all over now, baby blue, but buck up, because in 50 short weeks, he'll be back.

Til then, I am pressing on.

By Caitlin Hawke

On Wednesday, come out for this resource fair for older adults in our neighborhood.  

Don't need these resources now?  Well, you or someone you know will soon enough!  By the middle of this century, the age pyramid of the U.S. is going to start looking rather top heavy with those over 65 making up about a quarter of the population. This is unprecedented and thanks to the Baby Boomer generation and strides in public health.

The Upper West Side, we know, is a great neighborhood for folks of all ages.  But for people nearing retirement or who have retired, it's a launch pad to all NYC has to offer: access to transportation and healthcare, free courses at Columbia, local shopping (or what is left of it), cultural institutions, volunteering gigs, it's all right here.

I didn't even mention Bloomingdale Aging in Place -- BAiP -- which, as the spiritual child of our Block Association and the one just to the north, has thrived over the last 10 years. BAiP have a spot at the fair, so drop by and ask about how to join, what groups are open and how to get involved. It's also a chance to meet our electeds who will be there in force. No matter you age, come let them know what you need to bloom in place.

It all happens on Wednesday, December 11, from 1:30-3:30 p.m. at Children's Aid (885 Columbus Avenue and W. 104th Street).

By Caitlin Hawke

You know it. You live it. We navigate the tumbleweeds of Broadway storefrontage every day.  And it is far from just our neck of the woods.

I've written about the blight many times in a blog series called Empty Storefronts and the Changing Streetscape:

Part 1: We Got the Supply. Where's the Demand?
Part 2: In Joon, Our Fall
Part 3: Lincoln Plaza Cinemas: Fare Thee Well My Honey
Part 4: Three Restaurants Go Down in One Month
Part 5: A Glorious UWS 800-Person Wave Turns Back the Tide
Part 6, which I hope to post soon, will feature Jen Rubin's story of her family's store Radio Clinic or RCI.

So who is going to Save Our Stores?  Literally, SOS! I mean: who among us is going to the first town hall meeting planned by the new group UWS Save Our Stores?  

Their event "Vacant Storefronts and Visions for Neighborhood Revitalization," will be held Thursday, December 5, 6:30-8:30pm, at the NY Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street. The event is free to the public. Doors open at 6pm, and the meeting will begin promptly at 6:30 p.m.  Venue is wheelchair accessible.

We keep experiencing it. Many keep talking about it. Others keep writing about it. But what are we DOING about it?  Surely no one agrees that vast swaths of our avenues should remain void of storefront life?  What's the next big idea? Where will it all go from here? What are the forces at play? 

There are so many questions....  Perhaps we need to craft the answers all as one.

SOS and See You There!  RSVP at UWSSOS.org.

​By Caitlin Hawke

The rest of the year is going to pass by like a flash now that Thanksgiving is behind us. I hope you had a good one and are resting comfortably amidst meals of leftover carb-on-carbs.  And yes, the cranberry relish counts as a veggie.

In preparation for December's competing demands for our attention, there are several dates to pencil in on your December calendar.

• The first is coming this Wednesday, December 4, from our friends over at the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group about how NYC's waterways contributed to the city's development. I hope there will be something juicy about the arrival of the obelisk of Thutmose III that stands outside the Met Museum which came via the shore. Look for my next Throwback Thursday post on this. The flyer for this talk is below.

• On Thursday, December 5, save your evening for a town hall on our vacant store fronts to be held at the Ethical Culture Society.  More to come on that tomorrow but also see this link to the WSR piece..

• On Wednesday, December 11, at 1:30pm, Community Board 7 will be offering up "The Senior Experience" a resource fair for older adults (flyer with location and more information to post shortly)

• And, of course, December 21 for the Block Association Solstice Caroling! The song sheet and meet up details are available on our home page.

More information to come on the above. See below for the BNHG talk on December 4.

See you in the neighborhood! 

By Caitlin Hawke

I can't think of fall without thinking of the beautiful love song "Autumn Leaves," of Jacques Prévert, and those who followed -- Yves Montand, Barbara, et oui, Serge Gainsbourg. Known in French as "Les Feuilles Mortes," it's an oft-covered song. I'm thinking of Sinatra, Streisand, Piaf, Clapton, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, and Robert Zimmerman. I told you the list of those who've fallen under its spell is long.

Lagniappes at the end of the post. But before we get there, I have two beauties -- photos shot by neighbors of not-quite-feuilles-mortes, still clinging to trees in their technicolor finale.

The first one is by Dee Eolin taken in Central Park's northern ravine area. The bottom photo is by the triple-threat William C. Altham a little closer to home.

Breathe it in, soak it up, feast your eyes. Enjoy Nature is all her glory. Right now. In our tree-filled neighborhood. Autumn leaves? We got 'em.

By Caitlin Hawke

My favorite part of this event isn't the kids hopped up on sugar. Bat that's pretty good. It's not that gamut of guises the munchkins choose for costumes, witch is a close second. It's how INTO it the grown-ups are.  Holy Moly, did you get a look at Wavy Gravy??

Simple proof that the little kid in all of us yearns tomb break into play.

So come for the wee'uns, but stay for the adults who somehow phantom in their busy schedules to pull a costume together.

It's our community, and it is turning out all along the block between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue on W. 102nd Street for the traditional treat-filled party. If you get there at 6 p.m. you can specterate (or join) the parade that sets off from 865 West End Avenue at 102nd Street. The candy-crazed group marches north to W. 103rd, heads west, then turns south along Riverside Drive to pour into the block-long, traffic-free corridor of decorated brownstones, whose stoops will be filled with dudded-up neighbors, storyreaders, and volunteers. The treats table will be staffed by the Block Association's team with help of friends from St. Luke's. There will be cake and candy; if you have broom, wash it down with delicious apple spider.

So grab your kit and ca-boo-dle, your next of pumpkin, and get ye to this hallowed affair.  Soul help me, it's a bury good time.

Photo gallery to come -- send me all your shots: blog@w102-103blockassn.org.

By Caitlin Hawke

Saturday is Autumn Festival Day at the New York Buddhist Church on Riverside Drive between W. 105th and 106th Street. 
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Neighbor Cathy Wald shared the flyer below. The New York Buddhist Church sits among the Beaux Arts buildings of Riverside Drive that Dan Wakin featured in his recent book, also known as the Seven Beauties (see prior blog post here). An eighth stood where the Buddhist temple is now.

The church has a lovely line-up with Japanese and Hawaiian food, dance, drum and martial arts demonstrations, a silent auction and more.

Check it out!  It's all part of the fabric of Bloomingdale.

By Caitlin Hawke

At some point, I am going to write long about BAiP. There are a lot of angles about this organization that would make good blog fodder. One of the most compelling is how deep its grassroots have dug in as if it's always been here. Another is how its existence was catalyzed by two block associations pooling resources to make the initiative known ten years ago as it started up. Originally a community tucked inside the community of the Block Association, BAiP has grown to cover well over a half mile squared.

I know college-age students who are envious of the depth and breadth of connections fostered by BAiP's members. That reaction is always sobering to me because no matter how "connected" we all are with technology, nothing replaces the person-to-person experience of sharing meals, books, walks and many other pursuits together right in the neighborhood. It is not an age-group specific yearning. We all need it and we all stand to benefit from knowing our neighbors better for lots of reasons.

I've written about David Reich here before, and it's hard to speak of BAiP's 10th anniversary without acknowledging the incredible work that David did, first from his perch as head of this Block Association, and then heading the steering committee that would eventually become the non-profit known as Bloomingdale Aging in Place. As a founder, among many other efforts, he laid down the communications systems that have proven to be BAiP's enduring but virtual infrastructure. Of course David was far from alone in building the initiative, but he was the undeniable organizational engine.

To recognize the decade gone by and recommit to BAiP's mission of creating connections, throughout the fall, its members are finding dozens of ways to mark the birthday as well as to look forward to what is to come.  One of those "BAiP@10" activities happens this week: "How a Community Blooms: An Oral History of BAiP." 

This event is a debut of sorts. You see, a few years ago, one of BAiP's activities groups took up a training in the art of oral history, in a workshop led by neighbor Pat Laurence. Once trained, the group members turned to exploring progressive movements on the Upper West Side and set its sights on compiling an oral history project on BAiP's founders, how and why this organization materialized, and then how the founders oversaw its organization and sought to carry out its mission. There were many people who poured love and sweat into laying down just the right tracks, several of whom have long history with this Block Association. Some of these neighbors were interviewed in two lengthy oral histories over the past two years, with interviewers trying to understand the "special sauce" -- the secret to BAiP's success.

This project is now nearing completion, having documented some of these early voices and perspectives in an archive consisting of audio recordings and transcripts, photographs, a timeline, press clippings, and much more. The collection is open to researchers and producers for future study and/or documentation of progressive, grassroots movements on the UWS that have taken hold. The collection illustrates how community members have come together and assisted one another as older adults. In sum, BAiP represents an early, ahead-of-its-time community response to issues around aging that are now part of the state and national dialogue.
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This BAiP Founders Oral History project comes alive on Wednesday, October 16, 6:30 p.m. at Hostelling International New York, 891 Amsterdam Avenue at W. 103rd Street, in a program presented by the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group and conceived by BAiPers Pat Laurence and Nancy Macagno (who also wears the hat of a BNHG Planning Committee member).

It is free and open to the community.  Come check it out!

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By Caitlin Hawke

With two days of humid high eighties weather, little did we know that we were but one cold front away from a definitive blast of fall. Thursday proved that.  But it got you in the mood and that's all that counts because the Block Association's Fall Tree Clean Up and Bulb Planting Event has impeccable timing!

Fall out on Saturday morning for a cool two-hour stint of hands-in-soil.  You know the drill: Mark Schneiderman and his crew will meet you at 878 West End Avenue with all the fixins'.

Bring the kids and remind them that our Halloween Party and Parade can't be far behind.

Your Block Association has it in spades.

By Caitlin Hawke

Our friends over at the West 104th Street Block Association are on a roll. You've seen them raising funds with the split-pot raffle and readying themselves for the extravaganza this Saturday, September 21. Here's a call to neighbors for donations to their "What A Bargain" table, run by Joyce Mann. Those things that seem to precious to throw away but you are tired of looking at? Those things (I am looking at me, now) clogging up your closet for another time, another home, another go round?  You know you're never gonna use 'em!  Donate them to West 104th Street Block Association to help the organization carry out its community building efforts throughout the year.

And don't forget to stop by and enjoy the yard sale all day Saturday (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) along West 104th Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue.

To help the "What-A-Bargain" table, here's all you need to know:

​Donate to What-A-Bargain, a hot spot at the West 104th Street Yard Sale where shoppers find great deals and make purchases that support our Block Association. 

Dig into your cabinets and pull out: 

•    Jewelry
•    Handbags or wallets
•    Toys
•    Charming bric-a-brac
•    Unopened personal care products
•    Ceramics/pottery
•    Musical instruments
•    Bicycles
•    Complete games and puzzles  

(Please do not contribute the following: clothing of any kind, heavily used pots, pans, and glassware; outdated electronics; items missing pieces; or things like used coffee mugs because in the past Joyce says these haven't sold and will end up in the landfill.)

To donate, please contact Joyce directly to let her know what you have and to arrange a drop off time before September 19. She'll give you all the information you need: 
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Email: joycemann2@gmail.com
Phone: 212-721-6341
​Cell: 516-238-4609

Don't have anything to donate?  Come check out the yard sale and find a bargain just for yourself -- another way to help our neighboring Block Association. And there are rumors that their bake sale table will be an abbondanza of scrumptiousness.

By Caitlin Hawke

On November 7, at 7 p.m., TriBloomingdale's "It's Easy Being Green" group presents the president and CEO of the Riverside Park Conservancy, Dan Garodnick.  Dan will speak about the importance of parks in the bigger outlook on climate. But the parks, like our beloved Riverside Park, are also vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and Dan will dive into that as well. You will find details below. Space will be limited, so RSVP quickly to ItsEasyBeingGreen.UWS@gmail.com.

TriBloomingdale's "It's Easy Being Green" group began a few months ago as the brainchild of neighbors Christine Campbell and Sharon Waskow to bring neighbors together each month to take action on climate change. It is one of several opportunities to engage with neighbors in the TriBloomingdale initiative which was begun in 2014 as a simple concept: take one great neighborhood -- Bloomingdale -- with lots of community-minded neighbors. Add three anchor community organizations -- BAiP, West 104th Street Block Assocation and West 102nd & 103rd Streets Block Association. And you get TriBloomingdale. The idea behind the three organizations joining forces from time to time was to bring a broader group of neighbors together to pursue common interests. We've always collaborated loosely on neighborhood events like the Halloween parade or the two annual yard sales.  And BAiP owes its creation to leaders from both block associations and their members back around 2008.  So it is natural to pool efforts so that members can find ways of getting to know each other.

In addition to this climate group, TriBloomingdale offers the following:

• TriBloomingdale Sunday morning brisk walking group where members walk at a very brisk pace.  

• TriBloomingdale SciFi reading group on third Thursdays where members enjoy favorite classics by writers like Robert A. Heinlein, Terry Pratchett and John Scalzi.

• TriBloomingdale Networking in the Neighborhood on first Friday mornings for Bloomingdale's sole proprietors who work from home and want to enlarge their nearby resources and build their businesses.

If you wish to lead an activity within this tri-organizational initiative or would like to receive more information about any of these activities, please email Caitlin Hawke: chawke@bloominplace.org.  

Come out and try TriBloomingdale!

By Caitlin Hawke

It's nearly time for the 30th Annual West 104th Street Yard Sale put on by our neighbors at the West 104th Street Block Association. On September 21 on West 104th Street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, you can enjoy the energy of a bustling street market in an exotic land. Shop in more than 60 stalls bursting with second-hand treasures. Bid on gift certificates, antiques, vintage collectibles, posters, photographs, paintings, theater tickets, household items in their original boxes, and services at the Silent Auction. Browse a large selection of novels, plays, poetry, history, biography, children’s books, cookbooks, atlases, dictionaries, and CDs at the Book Sale. Select your family dessert at the Bake Sale. Hunt down a two-dollar labor saver or conversation piece at ‘What-A-Bargain.’ Take a chance in a raffle. (Last year’s winner took home $2,025.50.) Tap your foot to live music performed by seasoned New York musicians. Free admission. 10 AM to 5:00 PM. For more information, visit www.bloomingdale.org.