The First Baptist Church in the City of New York, located at the corner of 79th and Broadway, glowed green in the evening light last week. The church was built between 1890 and 1893, and the tower on the right was deliberately designed to look unfinished, to symbolize the unfinished work of the church. Photo by Laura Muha
Today is Monday, February 2nd, 2026
Today’s forecast calls for mostly sunny skies, with a high of 32. Even better, the highs are expected to hover in the low 30s all week, though there’s a possibility of snow of Friday. But hey — this winter, we’ll take what we can get!
Today is also Groundhog Day and by the time this has been published, Punxsutawney Phil (or Staten Island Chuck, if you prefer your groundhog forecast local) will have seen his shadow or not, and based on that, made his prediction as to whether we’re facing six more weeks of winter. But if he dives back into his burrow, signaling an extended winter, don’t worry: A few years back, The Washington Post did a data analysis of 30 years of Phil’s predictions, comparing them to the actual arrival of spring each year. The conclusion: It depends on where you live. “[W]hile Phil was technically right more times than not in some cities (it’s bound to happen in some areas because temperatures across the country do not rise and fall uniformly), the average temperatures between shadow and non-shadow years were slight at best,” reported the Post. “An outlier to this is Oklahoma City, Okla., which experienced shadow-seeing years that were 8.5 degrees cooler than non-shadow-seeing years. Conversely, Phil was exceptionally wrong with St. Petersburg, Fla., in which shadow years, on average, were 13.9 degrees warmer than non-shadow years.”
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Interested in serving on a community board? Applications for Manhattan community boards are open through 5 p.m. on February 27th. The City explains the process of applying, and what you need to know about serving– HERE. A link to the application is — HERE.
On Thursday at noon, author Leslie Day will hold an online discussion about River: A Hudson Memoir, about the 36 years she spent living on a houseboat in the 79th Street Boat Basin. See the Rag’s review of her memoir — HERE, and get a ticket to the online talk — HERE. (Tickets are free if you’re a member of Landmark West, and $6 if you’re not.)
The MTA has opened a Customer Service Center in the 59th Street-Columbus Circle subway station, near the entrance at West 58th Street and 8th Avenue. The booth will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with agents on hand to answer questions about the OMNY card and to help customers sign up for the reduced-fare program.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
The Apsley. Photo via Google Maps.
An UWS personal trainer and a luxury senior-living facility are locked in a legal battle over a wealthy mutual client, with the trainer saying that the facility tried to kidnap the client, and the facility denying all allegations.
At the center of the story is Diana Multare, a 91-year-old woman “with a weakened heart and a memory so unreliable that she had forgotten she was a multimillionaire,” according to the New York Times, which wrote about the case last week. The other players are personal trainer Eric Houston, 69, and The Apsley, a luxury assisted living facility at Broadway and West 85th Street.
Houston began working with Multare five years ago, and the two had become friends. He was the one who suggested she move into the Apsley last spring, after she suffered a heart attack and he became concerned about her ability to care for herself, the Times said. The facility required a power of attorney for her to enter, and Houston agreed to serve in that role.
However, the day after she entered, Multare decided she’d rather be at home, and when she tried to leave, Apsley employees intervened. “A staff member called Mr. Houston and told him that Ms. Multare had dementia,” the Times said. “She could no longer make important decisions, said the employee, who asked about placing Ms. Multare in the facility’s dementia ward.”
Houston rushed to the facility to extricate Multare, but a “tense standoff” of several days followed, “with mistrust, arguments and insinuations of theft coming from both sides.”
The Times story outlines the ongoing, tangled saga, which now involves a lawsuit originally filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and later moved to the Southern District of New York. In the lawsuit, Houston accuses the Apsley and Sunrise Senior Living of wrongful restraint, fraud and defamation, while Sunrise Senior Living denies all allegations.
“We disagree with and will defend against the characterizations and allegations” made by Mr. Houston, Heather Hunter, a spokeswoman for Sunrise Senior Living, told the Times. “We take the privacy, safety and security of our residents very seriously and will not be commenting further.”
Read the full story — HERE.
Ice cream photo by Nicolas Ettlin, via Wikimedia.
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And if it gives you frigid temperatures and you live in NYC, make ice cream — on the fire escape.
That’s what UWSer Collette Komm did on Friday, and her Instagram about the experiment went viral, racking up 800,000 views by the next day.
“Gonna find out if it’s cold enough in NYC to churn ice cream on my fire escape,” she wrote in her post, which opened with a video of a red KitchenAid mixer stirring away on a fire escape, with a thermometer lying next to it. A closeup showed that the temperature on the fire escape — which is in a sheltered alleyway — was about 17 degrees.
Komm, a fashion designer, told the New York Post that she’s an experienced ice-cream maker; every summer, she makes 20 flavors at her parents’ house in Vancouver. But she doesn’t have room for an ice cream maker in her UWS apartment. “So when I saw that the temperature was going to be so low for such a long time, I got to thinking maybe I could just do this in my KitchenAid on the fire escape,” she told the Post.
Did it work?
Sort of, she said.
“After three hours, I had to go buy a bag of ice from my bodega and some extra coarse salt and wrap it around the bowl to get down to a cold enough temperature.” But she and a cousin were able to have some with homemade apple crisp for dinner and “it tasted great.”
Read the full story — HERE, and see the Instagram video — HERE.
Soprano Allison Charney, via Wikimedia.
An UWSer had her moment on the red carpet at the Grammys last night: Soprano Allison Charney told “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent Cassie DiLauria and television personality Taylor Hale that when she found out she’d been nominated for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, she was sitting at her dining room table with her husband.
“[He] was surreptitiously filming me even though I told him not to. So now I have proof of just how loudly I shrieked with joy!” said Charney, who has performed with opera companies across the country, including the New York City Opera.
Charney and her conductor, Benjamin Loeb, with whom she’s been making music for 37 years, were nominated for her album “Alike – My Mother’s Dream.” The album is a tribute to her mother’s belief that we need to focus on what makes human beings alike, as opposed to what separates us. It includes pieces composed by a Russian, a Ukrainian, an Iranian, an Israeli — “my point being that their music belongs perfectly right next to each other on my album, just as I believe these people belong next to each other on planet Earth, living together in peace,” Charney told NY1 in a pre-Grammy interview last week.
The nomination was the first for both her and Loeb, and though they didn’t win, the nomination itself held special significance: It was Charney’s comeback album after taking two decades off from touring to raise her sons, now 18 and 20. During that time, she hosted a series of pre-concert conversations with other classical musicians called “PREformances with Allison Charney.”
In her NY1 interview, she said that people often ask her if having children “stopped my career and stopped my singing — and instead I would say they’ve given me something to sing about.”
“I think this is an incredible testament to sticking with it and continuing to follow your dream,” she said in her red-carpet interview last night. “… I really do feel, for real, overwhelmed with gratitude.”
See her pre-Grammy interview with NY1 — HERE and watch her red-carpet interview — HERE.
Wynton Marsalis. Public domain photo by Eric Delmar, via Wikimedia Commons
After nearly 40 years of “visionary leadership” of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Wynton Marsalis is stepping down, the program’s board of directors announced in a press release last week. Marsalis will remain as artistic director through the end of the 2026-27 season, then continue in an advisory capacity through the end of his contract in June 2028.
A committee has been formed to collaborate with Marsalis “on identifying the next generation of JALC’s artistic leadership, including future Artistic Director candidates,” the press release said, with the goal of having someone in place by the fall. A second committee is working to identify a successor for executive director Greg Scholl, who earlier announced he was stepping down in June.
“This announcement marks the beginning of a transition process that will honor and preserve Mr. Marsalis’ legacy and ensure that JALC’s mission and identity continue to thrive,” the board said in a statement. “It also comes at a moment of exceptional strength for Jazz at Lincoln Center.”
Marsalis, who will remain on the center’s board in perpetuity, and will continue to play on occasion with the center’s orchestra, said he intends to provide “institutional memory and insight, but not oversight.”
Read the announcement — HERE.
In Other UWS News:
The Super Bowl is this Sunday, and Patch put together a list of the 10 best places on the UWS to watch it. You’ll find the list — HERE.
NBC took a light-hearted look at the mess left in Central Park after the snowstorm last Sunday — not the snow itself, but, rather, the accoutrements that people used for sledding on it. View it — HERE.
Rolling Stone writer Chris Schembra describes the life lessons he learned when he began hosting meals for groups of strangers in his UWS apartment. Read it — HERE.
ICYMI
Here are a few 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.)
Man Sentenced For Morningside Heights Double Murder 30 Years Ago: Manhattan DA
Happy Curmudgeons Day—or Curmudgeon’s, or Curmudgeons’?
UWS Had 2nd Most Home Sales of Any NYC Neighborhood in 2025: Study
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