What UWS Litter Says About the Neighborhood; Congestion Pricing, One Year Later; A Coyote’s Icy Trek in Central Park; Extell Building’s First Resale
The full moon shares the sky with the El Dorado towers. Photo by Meghan Kelly
Today is Monday, January 5th, 2026
The forecast calls for mostly cloudy skies, high 32°F. The good news is that the rest of the week should be significantly warmer, with highs in the low- to mid-50s on Wednesday and Friday — but the bad news is that there’s a possibility of rain or drizzle every day except today.
On this date in 1896, the discovery of X-rays by German physics professor Wilhelm Roentgen was announced to the world by an Austrian newspaper, changing medicine forever. Five years later, in 1901, Roentgen would be awarded the first Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Here’s the UWS Dish is on hiatus until next week.
Earlier this fall, City Councilmember Gale Brewer collected ideas from UWS residents to present to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, with whom she met last weekend. If you’re curious as to what UWSers think Mamdani should tackle, check out her spreadsheet — HERE. (She notes that she “may or may not agree” with all of the ideas, “but I believe in civic engagement!”)
As 2025 drew to a close, so did MetroCards, which were discontinued as of December 31st. If yours still has a balance, you can transfer it to an OMNY card at the new Customer Service Center in the West 96th Street subway station on the 1-2-3 line.
Instead of putting your Christmas tree out on the curb for trash pickup, consider dropping it off at one of the three UWS locations listed below between now and next Sunday, January 11th, so the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation can turn it into mulch. (Please don’t wrap it in plastic.) Here are the collection sites on the UWS; the two marked “chipping site” will be giving out free bags of mulch next weekend.
- Central Park (drop-off only) West 67th Street and Central Park West (north side of Tavern on the Green entrance)
- Central Park (chipping site) West 81st Street and Central Park West, at the bridle path
- Riverside Park (chipping site) West 83rd Street and Riverside Drive
More information — HERE.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
Spied last week on the east side of Broadway, at West 80th Street. Photo by Laura Muha
Litter is a fact of life in cities such as ours, but what does it say about us and the way we live?
To find out, The New York Times recently sent writer John Leland and photographer to five Manhattan neighborhoods — including the UWS — to document in words and pictures the detritus of daily life.
“In each of the five neighborhoods we visited, litter often sat just feet from one of the 23,000 trash cans managed by the Sanitation Department,” wrote Leland. “Random clusters seemed like prompts for short stories.”
For instance, an abandoned soccer ball found near an UWS elementary school suggested a favored form of recreation in our neighborhood, while in Kips Bay, another ball found on the street — this one a tennis ball that had been cut open — told a different story: It was “surely from the base of an aluminum walker.”
Another takeaway: The Upper West Side may be a bit cleaner than some neighborhoods. “If you walk five blocks and spot only a flier for a handyman and a sticker for Andrew M. Cuomo’s unsuccessful mayoral campaign, chances are that you are on the Upper West Side,” Leland wrote. “If you find a plethora of discarded cannabis packaging … well, you could be anywhere.”
That’s not to say the UWS is litter free; during their walk through the neighborhood, Leland and Rolland did find plenty of litter, including a bent one-way New Jersey Transit ticket from Newark to Penn Station, a champagne cork, a baby’s shoe, a flattened paper coffee cup, and an empty drink pouch whose label indicated it had once contained an individual serving of organic strawberry-banana smoothie.
“Some patterns held from neighborhood to neighborhood,” Leland said. “Packaging from cannabis prerolls outnumbered that for vapes or edibles, and Corona bottle caps outnumbered all other brews. Outside the numerous Dunkin’ shops we passed, sidewalks were uniformly spotless; everywhere else, it seemed, Dunkin’ litter ruled.”
This despite the Department of Sanitation’s fleet of 450 street sweepers, which typically collect up to 3,000 pounds of debris apiece during an eight-hour shift. “It’s definitely a Sisyphean task,” Joshua Goodman, deputy commissioner of public affairs for the sanitation department, told the Times.
Read the full story, and see photos of what the Times found, litter-wise, in our neighborhood and others — HERE.
Traffic photo courtesy WSR archives.
A year ago today, New York became the first city in the country to introduce congestion pricing, levying hefty $9 tolls on passenger vehicles entering Manhattan at 60th Street or below during peak hours, and even higher tolls for commercial vehicles.
How’s it working? The business news magazine Fast Company recently took a comprehensive look at the data and concluded that “Manhattan looks markedly different.”
In 2025, about 23.7 million fewer vehicles entered the congestion pricing zone than passed through the same area in 2024.
As a result, traffic delays are down by 25 percent, with commuters saving up to 21 minutes on a one-way trip. Bus routes have gotten faster — some as much as 25 percent faster — and school buses are encountering fewer delays. “They’re on time 72 percent of the time, up from 58 percent” in 2024, Fast Company reported. In addition, traffic-related 311 complaints — such as those related to honking horns — are down 45 percent.
And a Cornell University study released last month found that air pollution in the congestion relief zone has dropped 22% — and it’s dropped in the outer boroughs as well.
“This tells us that congestion pricing didn’t simply relocate air pollution to the suburbs by rerouting traffic,” Timothy Fraser, one of the study’s authors, said in a statement. “Instead, folks are likely choosing cleaner transportation options altogether, like riding public transportation or scheduling deliveries at night.”
Congestion pricing still faces legal challenges and Trump administration threats to kill the program, but Kate Slevin, executive vice president of the Regional Planning Association, a nonprofit that advocated for congestion pricing, told Fast Company she remains optimistic that it’s here to stay.
“I think at this point it will be hard to remove it, because it is delivering benefits for people,” she said. “The money is going back into the public transit network. And our region absolutely needs the transit network to work for our economy to thrive,” Slevin says. “I don’t think eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars for public transit spending is going to be very popular.”
Read the full story — HERE.
A Central Park coyote. Photo by Brett Cohn
Coyote sightings in Central Park aren’t exactly news; as far back as 2011, we were reporting them in the Rag, and in the past year, a male and female have become such a familiar presence near the Delacorte Theater — home to Shakespeare in the Park — that they’ve affectionately been nicknamed “Romeo and Juliet.”
Yet somehow, spotting one still brings a thrill, as photographer Michael Silverstone can attest. He spotted one trotting across the ice at Turtle Pond on a morning shortly before Christmas and pulled out his camera. The resulting video went viral, not just here in the city, where it aired on ABC7 and Fox 5 New York, but also on news sites as far away as Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, and the UK.
“Relieved when I found out this was a wild coyote and not somebody’s actual pet on the loose,” Silverstone – who more typically photographs wedding proposals — wrote on Instagram when he posted the video. “The things you see in NYC!”
Check out the video — HERE.
The First Armory Buildings and 50 West 66th Street rising up behind it. WSR
If this picture looks familiar, it’s because we ran it last week, to accompany a story about 2025’s priciest condo sales. (At $46.7 million, the condo, in the Extell development at 50 West 66th Street, was No. 7 citywide.)
This week, the property is once again making real-estate news, because its first resale apartment — a five-bedroom on the top floor — just hit the market with an asking price of $22.5 million. (Monthly maintenance: $6,190.)
“This is a one-of-a-kind combination home that was masterfully redesigned by an incredible architect and designer, Clive Lonstein,” listing agent Leslie Singer of Brown Harris Stevens told BehindtheHedges.com, a site that covers luxury housing. “It was over a year in the making, almost two, in which every single inch was thought about. Doorways were moved and widened to capitalize on natural light, among many details.” The ceilings, she told the publication, are 12 feet high, and the kitchen seats 16.
The building also was mentioned — along with The Henry, another new building on the UWS — in an article about the amenities developers are including in high-end buildings in an attempt to lure buyers. (Both the aforementioned UWS buildings feature private bowling alleys.)
Read the full story on the apartment resale — HERE. And the piece about bowling alleys and other amenities in luxury buildings is — HERE.
ICYMI:
Okay, we doubt you missed the New Absolute Bagels story below, but if you read it on the day we posted it, you wouldn’t have had access to the bonus audio story, posted by author Claire Davenport the next day. It’s linked at the bottom of the story:
They are ‘Absolutely’ Back and Some Early Customers Say the Bagels Are Still ‘10 out of 10’
And here are a few more stories we think are worth a look if you missed them last week — or a second look if you saw them. (Note that our comments stay open for six days after publication, so you may not be able to comment on all of them.)
The 10 Most-Read West Side Rag Stories of 2025
Reading Makes Your Grammar Grow
Upper West Side Historical Photo Challenge No. 17
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