published on July 14, 2024 in Celeb Gist

On the Avenue, Columbus Avenue

The avenue is a circus on weekends. Lines of people queue up outside restaurants. Tiny shops sell all manner of cookies and ice cream to an endless flow of young women in tight leather pants and men in khaki slacks and topsiders. In summer, cafe tables protrude onto the sidewalk, giving diners a view of street musicians and skaters on nylon rollers; in winter, those tables move behind glass, letting the customers continue to see and be seen.

You might think this is Greenwich Village or the First Avenue singles strip. But no; this is Columbus Avenue, on the once staid and somewhat worn West Side.

A dozen years ago Columbus Avenue was quiet and residential, the shops mostly service-oriented, geared to support the community. While those happiest with the current incarnation conjur up old images of junkies loitering in hallways and daily murders, in truth there were few such horrors then, especially in the blocks between Lincoln Center at 65th Street and the Museum of Natural History at 79th, site of the present boom. It was simply another West Side neighborhood, primarily working class, boring and somewhat shabby, but livable.

Then around 1974 the West Side got discovered. Of course, that was always the plan, from before work began on the Lincoln Center complex, the first part of which opened in 1962.

By 1976 the local Chinese and Japanese restaurants and hamburger emporiums were joined by bistros featuring quiche and pasta primavera. Some had gardens in back; others, glass-enclosed terraces in front. Then came the boutiques, selling clothes for adults and clothes for children, boots, shoes, hats. Sprinkled in between were narrow closets selling chocolate-chip cookies, greeting cards, ice cream with foreign names. By 1976 the "rebirth" had spread east and west along 72nd Street, and was being felt on Broadway.

Today the fever of prosperity runs rampant, with street fairs and block parties, new shops opening nearly every week, and even a slick neighborhood magazine. The Upper West Side has become a destination for Saturday night or Sunday brunch, a locale where it is important to be "the new in place."

Latest pretender to that crown--according to Mary Shaughnessy, publisher of the 2-year-old Columbus Avenue Magazine--is Cafe Central, recently moved from nearby Amsterdam Avenue and recast in red brick walls, Italian marble and beveled mirrors. One Friday evening, while it was just 6:30 and the three dining rooms were quiet, the centrally positioned bar was jammed with young preppies who looked as if they had just left a fashion shoot.

Normally, tables are not available just for drinking, but it was early, and a couple promising to order an appetizer managed a spot in the rear room. The table covering was paper, and a glass of crayons invited drawing. They ordered drinks and a shrimp cocktail (four shrimp for $6.95). But their attention was fully on the cluster at the bar.

"Who are all those people and where did they come from?" she asked the waiter, a budding actor from Cleveland. "They're here for the celebrities," he said. "People magazine said we're 'the place' to watch celebrities. Paul Simon was here opening night." And, checking the still sparsely occupied room: "This must be early for Paul."

Cafe Central may find its reign shaky; the competition is high. One challenger is Ernie's on Broadway, two blocks west. Formerly the Wrangler store where Robert Redford abducted Faye Dunaway in "Three Days of the Condor," it has been turned into a barn of a trattoria whose huge squared bar is mobbed most nights.

The most visible success on Columbus Avenue is Ru'elles, with its burgundy decor highlighted by white Corinthian columns, twin brass-banistered stairways leading around its octagonal bar to the balcony. The menu is ambitious if brief, but the interest here is in drinking and flirting; lines of people waiting to get inside extend far and late into the night.

A different county is represented at the Tap-A-Keg across the street. For 27 years the neighborhood has been drinking beer there, shooting pool, playing pinball and dancing to the loud jukebox. The pool table is gone and video games have left only one pinball machine, but the music is still loud and they still dance till 4 a.m.

But the main attraction of Columbus Avenue is neither bars nor restaurants, It is life, a gyrating, pulsating electricity that is not so different from what on summer weekends in the late 1960s drew people from all over the city, Connecticut and New Jersey to Greenwich Village.

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There is a lot to see and do. You can come to Lincoln Center for the ballet, opera, theater or symphony, to the Silk Roads-China Ships show at the Museum of Natural History (through May 12), the Cosmic Mysteries show at the adjacent Hayden Planetarium, to the exhibits at the New York Historical Society just across the street, then stroll down the avenue.

Or you can make the avenue the reason for your visit. Many do.

Most of the stores are open until at least 7 during the winter, 8 and 9 in summer; the food shops even later. And the range is staggering. The few general antique stores are outnumbered by those with a special focus: One Woman sells antique clothing; Jerry Jares sells antiques lamps; As Times Go By concentrates on Art Deco, Fiestaware and Depression glass.

There are stores where the stock can only be described as eclectic. Mythology sells spark-shooting ray guns, $4.50 to $8.50, mechanical hopping chickens at $6.50, plastic flies for 20 cents and exquisitely engineered mosquito pins with flashing jeweled eyes for $325. The Last Wound Up has new and antique wind-up toys, and Under Attack sells T-shirts and buttons defending pot and condemning the draft, and greeting cards either suggestive or offensive to nearly everybody.

Scattered along the avenue from 65th to 83rd Street--which is about as far as the renaissance has progressed--are more than 30 boutiques, and nearly as many specialty food shops, selling not only cookies and ice cream but coffee beans, cheese, spices, fruit salad at $8 a pound and apple pie at $2.25 a slice. Some, like David's Cookies and Frusen Gladje, are relatively new. Others, like Grossinger's and Miss Grimble Bakeries, are old-timers.

But old and new, all seem busy, especially on weekends, holidays and during the summer. On a warm evening you can hardly make your way along the avenue for the crowds, the street peddlers, the tables blocking the sidewalk. If revitalization of the neighborhood was one of the goals when Lincoln Center was being planned, it has happened. But not without expense.

The success of Columbus Avenue has driven rents so high that many who once considered it an alternative to more costly areas of the city can no longer afford it. For a one-bedroom apartment, the rent can easily be $1,500 a month. The picture is more serious for businesses whose leases run out; there is no limit on increases.

Residents began seeing the signs about 1978, as familiar little stores like LaRochelle Pharmacy at 76th Street closed. A year later Parkwest Stationers, just next door, went out of business. One was replaced by an art gallery, the other by a boutique. A block south the family-run King Cole Supermarket was replaced by an ice-cream shop, a pasta-and-bread store and a seller of running shoes.

For every new store that opens with fanfare, an old store has closed. The laundromat near Tap-A-Keg has been replaced by a fashion shoe store and a cosmetic store; the establishments that replaced LaRochelle Pharmacy and Parkwest Stations are both gone.

One that is about to close is Portobello Road, an antique store at 78th Street. The owner is Dorothy Friedman, who left her interior-design business to open her shop in 1977. "I knew the rent was going up," she said, "but I had no idea it would be so much. I was paying $1,200 a month; he wants $6,500." She shrugged as if it were a million. "I'll be closing this summer."

Just two blocks south is Eclectriques, where Lilit Goodman has been selling antiques since 1973. Her rent would go from $750 to $5,000 a month, but she is closing the end of this month. And there are others, more and more dark windows, or those displaying the sign "Final Sale--Closing." Few remain vacant long.

And the odds are, whatever is coming in will be trendy and expensive. That is the direction. Ice cream cones at $1.10 are plentiful on Columbus Avenue, but getting a key made or shoes fixed is a problem. Between 65th and 82nd Streets there are two cobblers, one drug store, two laundromats and two small supermarkets.

That seems to be the price of prosperity. Nobody fights to be "the in cobbler." When the neighborhood was more run-down and less chic, fewer people wanted to live there or open a business. Now, most can't afford more than an evening's visit.

But that sure can be one entertaining visit. As a long-time resident, I suggest dinner at Los Panchos on 71 Street, a cone of Cookies and Cream from Haagen Dazs and a game of pinball at Tap-A-Keg. Then just walk down the avenue and look.

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