Upper West Side Story

In NYC, Boutiques, Bars and the World's Largest Cathedral

In downtown Manhattan, honking taxis slalom through traffic and swells of people plunge into the streets when the coast is clear. But on the Upper West Side, it's the baby strollers you have to watch out for.

They're all over, like shopping carts in a supermarket -- pushed by nannies in the daytime and parents in the evening, going north and south on Columbus, Amsterdam and Broadway and passing in between. Clearly, this is a family-friendly neighborhood, but what's extraordinary is that in the fastest city in the world there's a place where people -- whole families, even -- actually stroll.

The Upper West Side is densely populated, yet it seems quieter here. Brownstones face tree-lined streets, and even Broadway's surge is softened by a leafy median. Civic-minded residents have prevented their streets from becoming a blitzkrieg of blinking, flashing, mammoth advertisements for such cultural phenomenons as Christina Aguilera and french fries. Instead, eyes feast on soaring architecture like the fortress walls of the Dakota apartments at 72nd Street and Central Park West, where John Lennon was murdered, and the Gothic grandeur of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

While Central Park West is a star-packed Zip code -- Madonna, Michael J. Fox and Faye Dunaway have all hung hats here -- the Upper West Side is not the place to just see or be seen. It's a refuge in the city from the city. The area generally is defined as extending from Columbus Circle (59th Street) to 110th Street and beyond.

Visitors rarely come to Manhattan for the Upper West Side, but it would be wrong to leave without having visited this neighborhood of artists, intellectuals, up-and-comers and Seinfeld wannabes. And contrary to what the guidebooks tell you, there's more to discover than the fossil halls of the American Museum of Natural History and the medieval tapestries at the Cloisters.

The plight of Meg Ryan's character is one familiar to the Upper West Side. The bohemian neighborhood was once peppered with quirky mom-and-pop shops. Now, only a comparative few remain struggling to maintain the neighborhood's offbeat flavor against the incoming tide of name-brand commercialism. Westsider Rare & Used Books is one, standing right across the street from Barnes and Noble on Broadway. It is perhaps one-sixteenth the size of its stalking giant, and though Westsider has been a bookstore for two decades, it looks as if it's been here for two centuries. A faux black raven guards the floor-to-ceiling shelves in this narrow, dusty bilevel shop, where you can find a copy of "Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre" near an original copy of the "Star Wars" soundtrack on vinyl record, still wrapped in plastic with the bonus picture book.

About 10 blocks north is Murder Ink, which claims to be the first bookstore in the world devoted to crime fiction. This savvy shop has had to modify its focus to survive against Amazon.com. "We used to sell a ton of mysteries in our catalogue, but now we specialize in signed first editions and out-of print paperbacks," says manager and buyer Tom Cushman, a nervous and witty man, who is constantly interrupted by customers and phone calls.

As co-owner of the adjoining Ivy's Books and Curiosities with Murder Ink's owner Jay Pearsall, Cushman prefers to go by the title of "the lesser fool." He has watched his neighbors close their shops as rent on Broadway skyrocketed. "The Upper West Side used to be chockablock with independent bookshops," Cushman says from atop the ladder he is using to shelve books. "They're all gone."

A daunting sign of the times has risen at Columbus Circle, the southern gateway to the Upper West Side: the newly constructed Time Warner Center, a glass-sheathed monument to 21st-century one-stop shopping, appropriately staked across from Merchant's Gate at the southwest corner of Central Park. Within 80 stories and two towers are more than 40 renowned retail shops; several expensive destination restaurants; the lavish Mandarin Oriental hotel and spa; CNN studios; performance halls for Jazz at Lincoln Center; luxurious condominiums; and a subterranean Whole Foods Market.

It's not a mall, insists Kenneth A. Himmel, president and chief executive of Related Urban Development, one of the center's investors and a leading figure in mixed-use construction. "The word 'mall' takes on the feeling of a very large, very antiseptic, almost tomblike experience," he says. "It is the most anti-urban experience. . . . I've never done a mall."

Some residents and visitors beg to differ, though. "Manhattan has become one big mall," sighs David Lenin, a SoHo resident on his first visit to the center. His wife, Jana, surveys the marble floors in the first-floor galleria and the second-largest Williams-Sonoma in the country and adds, "This feels very touristy to me." In fact few people have come to the center to actually shop on this particular day. Many have come just to check it out, or to take in the sweeping views of Central Park's treetop hills and the carriage ponies queuing along the 59th Street corridor stretching all the way to the East River, which can be seen through the building's glass facade from second-floor lounge chairs.

But Allan Pollack sees something positive through his purple-tinted sunglasses. A shock of teased blond hair, he stands in the doorway of his flamboyant retro fashion shop, Allan & Suzi, on Amsterdam Avenue, and says, "The Upper West Side is becoming the new downtown. The mall is bringing people here. My business has been great -- more than ever."