{"id":61644,"date":"2025-07-13T07:17:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T07:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/61644\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T07:17:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T07:17:18","slug":"how-we-keep-the-upper-west-side-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/61644\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Keep the Upper West Side Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Photographs by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n

B<\/strong>y Yvonne V<\/strong>\u00e1vra<\/strong><\/p>\n

Playtime is over at the corner of 84th and Amsterdam. The West Side Kids are not all right. After 44 years in business, the neighborhood toy store is closing for good<\/a>. According to the owner, the killjoys came in a pair: online competition and a new player, tariffs.<\/p>\n

Another local shop is shutting down, another burst of color turning into \u201cSpace Available.\u201d Oof. Some of us have memories stored in there, now at risk of fading. And even if we never set foot inside West Side Kids, chances are we still liked walking past it, thinking: how lovely to live in a place where the streets feel alive, with people to watch, windows to peek into, and surprises to stumble on.<\/p>\n

Now there\u2019s grief, the ache of losing yet another ingredient that makes our Upper West Side stew so delicious. There\u2019s anxiety, too, because our surroundings seem to change in step with the way we move through the world. Guilt follows. If the culprit is online shopping, then the culprit is us. It feels like we and the neighborhood are a team \u2014 evolving, winning and losing together. But do we even know how to play? The first rule is showing up.<\/p>\n

\"\"West Side Kids opened in 1981. It was the year Ronald Reagan became president, Jerry Seinfeld made his first appearance on The Tonight Show, and \u2014 with a final \u201cAnd that\u2019s the way it is\u201d \u2014 Walter Cronkite signed off for good from the CBS Evening News. \u201cThe Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel\u201d dominated the summer, Upper West Sider Billie Jean King came out of the closet, Simon & Garfunkel reunited on Central Park\u2019s Great Lawn, and the subway fare rose from 60 to 75 cents.<\/p>\n

Yes! That\u2019s how long West Side Kids has been a fixture on the Upper West Side. Whole lifetimes have been lived since then. Cultural revolutions have swept through. So many cents have been added to the subway fare. And through it all, the toy store kept the door open to magic, mischief, and the adventure of becoming, one toy at a time.<\/p>\n

The store also held something you can\u2019t get online: a person who knew just how to match us with what we needed. Algorithms are great at predicting what we want, but they can\u2019t compare to a human who steps out from behind the shelf with the one thing that hits the spot. That person might not offer endless options, but they read the moment, responding with instinct. It\u2019s the difference between being calculated and being seen.<\/p>\n

\"\"It\u2019s a full-body thing. Pencils, for example. I have a thing for them. I like seeing them, holding them, and writing in the air with them. I also enjoy watching others pick them up. No fetish, I swear. (I think.) It\u2019s just that I need the full ritual \u2014 the weight test, the balance test, the negotiation between fingers and pencil \u2014 before I know which one should be mine.<\/p>\n

Online, I\u2019d be hopeless. How would I even know I wanted a pencil if I couldn\u2019t look it in the graphite eye and believe its promise to change my life? If I couldn\u2019t see someone next to me trying out a blue one and thinking\u2026 maybe I want blue, too? An algorithm has never made me feel pencil envy, ever.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid I can\u2019t quite explain why I need other people around when buying a pencil. I guess you\u2019ll have to go see for yourself. Head to Stationery & Toy on 72nd, West Side Stationers on Broadway at 99th, or anywhere in between and beyond. And if you dare \u2014 because, wow, pencils galore! Pencils for advanced penciling! \u2014 check out the rather new-to-the-neighborhood Goods for the Study on Broadway at 73rd.<\/p>\n

\"\"In a world that\u2019s getting more and more disembodied, we\u2019re craving presence in our bodies, our senses, and our feelings. Science says so, and I don\u2019t see why common sense would disagree. What are we gonna do with all these senses we\u2019ve got?<\/p>\n

I want to overhear someone\u2019s attempt at flirting, I want to see cheeses living and breathing side by side in the display fridge, I want to touch sweaters, and I definitely want to find out what the idea of a forest smells like when I buy soap.<\/p>\n

Luckily, we still have many physical places on the Upper West Side where we can not just shop but wander, not just scroll but sense, not just browse but belong. But let\u2019s not kid ourselves: this version of the neighborhood won\u2019t survive on good vibes alone. Someone\u2019s gotta pay for the amusement.<\/p>\n

Yes, this is New York, where nothing ever stays the same. And yes, not everyone can afford to shop small. There\u2019s no easy fix. But maybe, for now, the point isn\u2019t to know exactly what to do but to notice what we have, and choose it when and how we can. When change and loss are New York facts, so are hope and the belief in new beginnings. And if all else fails, we get to bask in nostalgia, which, as studies show, makes us feel better about ourselves, connects us to each other, and eases existential threat.<\/p>\n

Is that too heavy an ending? I knew it, should\u2019ve bought the other pencil. The one that promised better ideas.<\/p>\n

\"\"Yvonne V\u00e1vra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gr\u00fcnde 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\u2019s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photographs by Yvonne V\u00e1vra. By Yvonne V\u00e1vra Playtime is over at the corner of 84th and Amsterdam. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":61645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5717],"class_list":{"0":"post-61644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa","21":"tag-yvonne-vavra"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114844706114622485","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}