{"id":118494,"date":"2026-01-31T18:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T18:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/118494\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T18:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T18:02:10","slug":"youre-cold-im-cold-were-cold-but-the-uws-still-feels-warm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/118494\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019re Cold, I\u2019m Cold, We\u2019re Cold. But the UWS Still Feels Warm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Photographs by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n

\u00a0By Yvonne V\u00e1vra<\/p>\n

Everyone seemed to be bowing this week on the Upper West Side. Not to one another, and not out of politeness, but to the cold. Heads down, shoulders forward, arms pressed to our sides like penguins, we moved through the neighborhood in a kind of collective submission. Weather wins. We\u2019re cold.<\/p>\n

But beneath all the low hoods and the scarves and the coats, there was still a lot of warmth. I saw it myself on 93rd and Amsterdam. A woman stepped off the bus in front of Kouzan and found herself trapped between the bus and a hip-high snowbank<\/a>. Although by this point, it was less snow than glacier. This was no longer a sinking-in situation, more a free-solo climb, better not attempted in her unfortunate footwear.<\/p>\n

\"\"The woman stood there for a moment, taking in Bus Stop Mountain. Perhaps she was deciding whether to attempt the climb or wait for the bus to pull away and walk with traffic to the next gap Upper West Siders had carved out. That\u2019s when a man got off the bus behind her and, without much ceremony, picked her up and carried her over the ice. Just swept her off her feet.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t tell if they exchanged a word before he lifted her, but I prefer to think they didn\u2019t\u2014that she simply let herself fly over the glacier. What matters is that she was grateful once she landed safely on the other side. If it hadn\u2019t been fifteen degrees, and if my hand hadn\u2019t been so stubborn about leaving my glove, we\u2019d have a picture of it. But I\u2019m a sissy in the cold, as it would soon become obvious.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That lift wasn\u2019t heroism. Remarkably, the moment felt quite unremarkable. No one stopped, no one clapped, the bus moved on, and it was still cold. Only I got washed over with my burning love for this city and for us New Yorkers. We\u2019re kind, but in an efficient way. We\u2019ve got to keep moving, gotta go places, so if someone\u2019s stuck deciding how to get over a glacier, you lift them up and carry on.<\/p>\n

And of course, you complain \u2026 which we did. We\u2019re Upper West Siders! The snow, the ice, the slush, the salt, the city not getting rid of the weather. And why are the kids not in school? We gripe, we denounce, we know better. In other words: we bond. Are you cold? I\u2019m cold. We\u2019re cold. But it gets cozily warm in that same boat we\u2019re all sitting in together.<\/p>\n

\"\"This week also showed how different we all are. I was walking up Amsterdam in five layers, freaking out that my hair felt frozen, when a cropped top walked past me. Granted, the midriff was paired with a thick puffer, but it was bare nonetheless, and it mocked my sissiness. The midriff belonged to a teenager, and as everyone knows, teenagers live under entirely different atmospheric conditions. But then I saw a woman in ballet flats with fearlessly naked ankles, and a guy jogging in shorts as if it were perfectly reasonable. Here we all were, wintering together, sharing the same hostile air and experiencing it in wildly different ways. None of us the standard, none of us doing it right or wrong, all of us bundled up together on the same frosty streets, right where we belong.<\/p>\n

And just when the week seemed done proving its point, it sent in a dog, launching itself into a hole in the snow in Central Park and disappearing completely. For what felt much longer than the three seconds it probably was, everyone around went quiet. Even the other dogs stopped and tilted their heads. Together, we watched. Then the dog came flying out of the snow, triumphant and ecstatic, absolutely beside itself with joy. The rest of us caught the spark, laughing, smiling, and warming each other without even trying.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not over. There\u2019s more freeze and probably more snow to come. Some of us will hunch and push on. Others will run through it in shorts. For a few, it will be pure magic \u2014 like that dog, mind you, with its belly exposed and no shoes at all. Hopefully, it\u2019ll all feel just as warm.<\/p>\n

Yvonne V\u00e1vra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gr\u00fcnde New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She\u2019s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photographs by Yvonne V\u00e1vra. \u00a0By Yvonne V\u00e1vra Everyone seemed to be bowing this week on the Upper West…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130,20020],"class_list":["post-118494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-yvonne-vavra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}