Meet 80th Street
Despite the fact that 80th does not have the same number of businesses as other streets that I have walked, the ones that do exist are bastions of the community, demonstrating to me at every turn that Manhattan cannot survive without its institutions, shops, and restaurants hiding on the side streets.
After a quiet residential walk from the East River to Second Avenue, I discovered Prestige Home Interiors, a design company that makes custom curtains, bedspreads, rugs, and more right on their premises. A short distance away is the First Hungarian Baptist Church, a remnant of the strong Hungarian community that used to exist on the border of Yorktown and the rest of the Upper East Side.
I received a full tour of the Unitarian Church from Mary-Ella, an impressive historian who has been a member of the congregation for over fifty years. In addition to speaking fluently about the building itself, Mary-Ella also gave us a lesson on influential New Yorkers connected to the church over the last two centuries. A few doors down, I discovered the New York Junior League, a women’s organization that has been volunteering in the community for over 100 years.
Before strolling through Central Park, I admired the East 80th Street Houses, a group of four attached houses located between Park and Lexington Avenues. They were built in the 1920s to function as residences for wealthy New Yorkers and are recognizable by their brick facades with stone trims.
On the West Side, I spent time in two Israeli restaurants. The first, on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue, is TLV (Lost Gem). Noam Langleib, the owner, treated the Manhattan Sideways team to a veritable feast, consisting of cuisine ranging from Israeli street food to fine dining. Farther west, I visited Grill 212 (Lost Gem) where Riki Damti and her husband, together with her brother, serve up home cooked glatt kosher dishes from their minute space located a few steps down off the street.
A delightful way to end my visits to the side street businesses was meeting Gene Nifenecker, the self-declared “Balloon King.” He and his team at Balloon Kings provide customers with one balloon or a thousand in every color of the rainbow with a smile and a heaping of witty banter.
The rest of my walk was lined with architecturally diverse residences and ended at the landmarked, historic section of Riverside Drive where, once again, I could gaze out at the Hudson River for a few moments.
