A juvenile red-tailed hawk suns itself on the jungle gym at the Wild West Playground in this photo, which was taken by 8-year-old Vera Atkins. Photo by Vera Atkins.
Today is Monday, July 6th, 2026
We’ll finally have some relief from the heat today, with temperatures expected to reach only 73 degrees; thunderstorms possible. Tomorrow will be roughly the same: cloudy, chance of rain, and a high of 75. Temperatures start to increase again on Wednesday, but thankfully aren’t expected to climb out of the 80s this week.
In the category of “if you thought last week was hot”: On this date in 1949, a freak meteorological phenomenon known as a “heat burst” reportedly sent temperatures in central Portugal soaring from 38 to 70 degrees Celsius (100.4 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit) within a two-minute period. (We say “reportedly” because the scientific instruments available in that era did not allow for authentication by today’s standards.) Though the temperatures began dropping again moments later, one newspaper reported that the blast of hot air killed thousands of chickens; shriveled orchards, vineyards and fields; and “made people feel they were being licked by tongues of fire.” According to the National Weather Service, heat bursts are “interesting, relatively rare, atmospheric nighttime events characterized by gusty winds, a rapid increase in surface temperature, and a decrease in surface dewpoint associated with a dissipating thunderstorm.” The mechanism by which they occur is too complicated to explain in this blurb, but the meteorologically curious will find more details — HERE.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
The city’s Commission on Government Efficiency will host a public input session on proposed changes to the city charter on Wednesday from 5 to 8 p.m. at Riverside Church, and also on Zoom. Members of the public who wish to present ideas for making city government work better are asked to register — HERE. Zoom link available — HERE. Testimony is limited to three minutes, and also can be submitted in writing — HERE. The commission, announced by the mayor this spring, is tasked with modernizing government, identifying waste, and reducing expenditures. Any proposals that require changes to the city charter will be presented to the public as ballot items during the November general election.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
Photo courtesy Department of Sanitation.
The city will once again begin sticking it to drivers who fail to move their cars for alternate side parking — or, more accurately, sticking it to their cars, in the form of adhesive-backed, neon-yellow violation notices, which will be accompanied by the usual $65 fine.
The so-called “shame stickers” were used for years by the Department of Sanitation, but were banned in 2012 after drivers complained that they left gummy residue that was difficult to remove. However, adhesives have improved since then, while parking scofflaws have not. According to the Department of Sanitation, more than a half-million vehicles every week violate alternate-side rules, making it impossible for sweepers to fully clean the streets.
“Warning stickers were one of the City’s most effective tools for improving compliance before they were banned,” said Councilmember Gale Brewer, who sponsored the bill to bring back the stickers, which was passed last week by the City Council. Brewer told Patch that passage of the bill is “a practical, common-sense step that will help keep our streets cleaner for everyone.”
Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson also applauded the move. “Selfish car owners who prioritize their convenience over clean neighborhoods will soon be peeling stickers off their cars, while also paying for a summons,” he said in a statement. “Our goal is neither writing summonses nor using stickers. We want people to simply comply with the law, so we can clean streets across New York City.”
Read the full story — HERE.
Old John’s Luncheonette. Photograph by Scott Etkin.
Old John’s Luncheonette on West 67th Street is celebrating its 75th year on the Upper West Side — a milestone that only a few years ago, it looked as if it would not reach — and to mark the occasion, amNY sent a reporter for a behind-the-scenes look.
The piece describes how the restaurant shuttered during the pandemic, apparently permanently, but then was resuscitated when restaurateur Louis Skibar bought it. “For Skibar, keeping the community of Old John’s alive was not just a business decision — it was personal,” recounts reporter Jack Bulik, explaining that when Skibar arrived in the city in the 1980s, his first job was at Old John’s, which was then located at Broadway and West 66th Street, and had no tables or booths — just a curved bar with 17 seats. (The restaurant moved to its current location on West 67th between Broadway and Amsterdam, when the area was redeveloped in the 1990s.)
Since reopening in 2021, Skibar has revamped the menu a bit, continuing to serve classic diner comfort food while elevating the ingredients. “You could compare it to a high-end restaurant because the ingredients are the same,” Skibar told amNY. And the restaurant has kept some of its old recipes — “the tuna melt has remained largely unchanged since the restaurant’s opening in 1951,” notes the piece.
But it’s the vibe that makes the restaurant truly special, said waitress Kathy Dellinger, who has worked at Old John’s since 1998. “It’s amazing how strangers just start talking to each other here over the years, and some of them have even become friends,” she said. “It has become the ‘Cheers’ of the Upper West Side. It’s a place where everyone knows your name.”
Read the story — HERE.
Photo credit: Jim.Henderson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
When the late painter and illustrator LeRoy Neiman moved to New York City in the 1960s, he bought a pair of apartments in the famed Hotel des Artistes, located at 1 West 67th Street, for a reported $100,000. Now both, along with two other properties Neiman and his wife owned in the buildingare for sale for $6.125 million.
According to Curbed, the painter — best known for his colorful expressionist paintings of sporting events, as well as his illustrations for Playboy — used a two-bedroom duplex as his studio, which still has splotches of paint on the floor. It shares a terrace with a three-bedroom duplex with a Juliet balcony that he and his wife Janet used as their primary residence.
The four apartments – which can be purchased individually or as a group — are the last of many once owned by the couple in the building. “As LeRoy’s fame grew … more people began buying and collecting his paintings, and in turn he started buying and collecting apartments at the Hotel des Artistes,” according to Curbed. “At one point, the couple owned at least nine apartments across the building, including a duplex on the 15th and 16th floors, and was apparently cut off by the co-op from buying more.”
Following Neiman’s death in 2012, his wife sold off some of the couple’s apartments, but she continued to occupy their duplex, and the Leroy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation, which supports advancement of the arts, continued to use another of the apartments as office space.
However, Janet Neiman died last year, and the foundation is relocating, so all four remaining apartments are up for sale. Cheryl Daly and Amjad Pervez at Compass hold the listing.
Read the full story and see photos — HERE.
Jennifer L. Mnookin. Photo by Bascombasement via Wikimedia Commons.
Dr. Jennifer L. Mnookin, Columbia University’s fifth president in four years, took office July 1, and in a profile, she told the The New York Times that one of her priorities will be “to bring people together to think about a path forward” to reopening campus gates to the public.
The gates have been closed to what the university calls “non-affiliates” since May 2024, in the wake of student protests over the attacks in Gaza. Their closure has been widely criticized.
Mnookin arrives at Columbia from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she had served as chancellor since 2022. Prior to that, she also served as dean of the UCLA School of Law, and as a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. She holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard, a law degree from Yale, and a doctorate in history and the social study of science and technology from MIT.
Reopening the campus to the public is, obviously, not her only priority. She told the Times that three of her most important areas of focus will be the impact of artificial intelligence; teaching students how to better handle political differences; and improving the university’s undergraduate school. “But those could change,” she added.
“I am a principled pragmatist,” Mnookin told the Times, “and I care about both parts of that sentence.”
Read the full story — HERE.
In Other UWS News
The two men arrested earlier this month in connection with the stabbing of a Good Samaritan on the M104 bus have been released without bail the New York Post reported. Read the full story — HERE.
A five-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom townhouse at 53 West 71st Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, was the UWS’s top seller the week of June 22, the latest week for which figures were available, Patch reported. The townhouse closed at $9.6 million. Read about it — HERE.
Author and radio personality (and UWSer) Garrison Keillor recently wrote a column about trying to rehab from a shoulder replacement, in which he also threw in a few zingers about politics in the neighborhood. 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.)
Sinkhole Continues to Expand Near Upper West Side Dog Park: ‘Soon It Will Consume the Dog Run’
The Upper West Side at the Speed of Wonder
UWS Bakery’s Dessert Named Best in the United States by The Food Network
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