As If We Needed Another Reason Why Gray's Papaya is Awesome

"Fools Rush In" may have captured it best - Matthew Perry, sitting on the side of a desert canyon, eating Gray's Papaya hot dogs air mailed to him by his mother and exclaiming "These are the best hot dogs in the world" or something to that effect. That's how I feel about Gray's Papaya; I get genuinely excited to introduce visitors to what is, without peer, the best and cheapest hot dogs in the whole world. I have been obsessed since high school, and make a point of going to the 72nd Street Papaya whenever I can. I really actually didn't need another reason to love them. But they gave it to me anyway.

The Only Vibrant Coffee Shop on the Upper West Side

Georgia's, the last coffee shop within thirty blocks of my apartment, happens to be on the next corner up from my very own door. I love it there. It started out as a small bakery with no chairs and very little elbow room, squished between the displaced barber shop and a t-mobile (another one). Slowly, through dedicated patronage from the remaining Upper West neighborhood set, it became incredibly successful, and when the symbol of the decline of my neighborhood closed, it valiantly and incredibly managed to take it over and become a real shop with a few small tables. Today, it sprawls over the whole corner of Broadway, and its quaint tables spill out onto the street. There a couple of truly wonderful things about Georgia's:

1) it is a coffee shop
2) it has decent coffee
3) the waiters will let you sit there for hours - it can be, at times, near impossible to actually get your check, which is an anomaly most definitely

Unfortunately, like all things good in my once deli-filled neighborhood, Georgia's too is slowly losing that which makes it truly unique: it is becoming a restaurant.

Yes, a restaurant - just like your average brunch place on Amsterdam Avenue, or the aptly retitled "Bloomingdale Road"(the once and well mourned Boulevard Restaurant of my youth, totally redone with a WASPy makeover - the mural of a diverse and slightly crude New York City subway platform long gone forever). This means that soon, it will lose all three of the above qualities which make it my monument to what the Upper West Side could be if it got rid of a few banks.

I realized I had never, as yet, really used Georgia's as a real coffee shop - I hadn't sat there reading or typing on my computer or sipping coffee leisurely by myself perusing the Times. I had certainly gone there for a cup of coffee and chatted for hours with friends, but never alone and never for writing. And ultimately, the reason I love coffee shops so much is that it is a chance to sit with my laptop and get some writing done without forgoing human interaction - I can be solitary but not alone. Coffee shops were my great savior on my loneliest days out west - I'd grab my computer or my book and head over to Philz or Revolution or anywhere, really, and suddenly I'd be surrounded by people who loved the ambiance as much as I did. And we were connected, through coffee and work and folk music over the speakers.

So, I decided that before Georgia's goes the way of my deli, I should at least try to sit there with my computer.

I was confident that I wouldn't look totally bizarre, since I'd seen people by themselves at Georgia's before - the small coffee tables are perfectly conducive to singledom, but are more frequently occupied by multiple people, increasingly with food. But I went early, when I was sure I wouldn't take a table from a lunch customer, and brought my laptop and got to it.

I felt pretty weird at first - I sat down at a table outside, and realized that sitting outside in the West Village or in the East Village or really anywhere else is not like sitting outside on Broadway, with all of the morning traffic and rush hour madness passing at top speed. It's a weird feeling - watching other people who are not prepared for you to be there looking askance and walking faster. Broadway, the street of theatrical energy, is not for idle coffee and computers.

On top of that, the early morning crowd was peopled with young mothers and their very young children, having a chocolate croissant and a chance to breath for a moment. I, a single 23 year old on my beat up laptop and sweatshirt about to head off to her low-paying theater job, don't exactly jive with the vibe.

But I got over it. It was lovely out. And my part of Broadway really is one of the most beautiful in the whole city, with pre-war buildings and wide sidewalks - it's a pity there aren't open air cafes everywhere because it is a singular experience, watching the cars go by and all that space to stroll up and down. And my coffee was warm and my quiche was damn good and I'm not married or pregnant and that feels pretty fucking good too. And I got some work done. And I used Georgia's the way, in a perfect world, I would use it all the time. I don't think I'll go back there with the same purpose - I've found an early morning place close to work that I can go to that is actually a coffee shop, and I'd rather not make passersby any more nervous than they already are. But it felt good, like I was taking back a little piece of my neighborhood.

No More Banks!

There are many things to be excited about when returning to the greatest city on earth. The suburbanization of the Upper West Side is not one of them.

When I was growing up, the neighborhood had a real character. Dangerous, yes, with drug dealers at every corner, and junkies stumbling back to the abandoned building on 88th and Amsterdam while my father and I waited for the morning carpool. But it, like so many other areas of the city, was defined by a long cultural history. Saying that you were from the Upper West Side meant something - it meant you were an intellectual, an artist (or at the very least, a person who deeply appreciated the arts). It meant you were not from the Upper East Side (a distinction which is becoming less and less defined). It meant you probably wore long skirts and schmatas and shopped at Liberty House. It meant you were part of a neighborhood, that you knew everyone on your hall, you chatted in elevators, you didn't go on Amsterdam Avenue at night, you went to Zabars before it was really cool to go to Zabars. It probably meant you were Jewish - my mother told me that she was talking to a Jewish friend of hers and without even thinking she said "Well, the Upper West Side Jews like us" which her friend found highly amusing (we are not, in fact, Jewish, and really no one but my mother actually feels like we are - but her point is that when you live on the UWS for 30 years as my family has, the culture is so powerful, and the association with the neighborhood so important, that in many ways you come to see yourself and the world from the standpoint of your friends and neighbors). It meant something.

I could tell you all about the evolution of my area. The Red Apple, a really kind of dirty super market, was replaced with Sloan's, another dirty supermarket, was replaced with Boston Market during Giuliani, was replaced with an awful toy store, was replaced with Duane Reed. Actually, Duane Reed replaced the toy store and the little bank on the corner, which became the huge bank on another corner, while the wonderful movie rental place with the great oldies section became a TMobile (there's another one three blocks away, and another one five blocks from that). The Gap and Banana Republic have been there for at least ten years, as has the Club Monaco, but the Deli on 86th turned into an Aldo in the last few years. The most upsetting was the really cool clothing store on my walk home which is now a Starbucks. Boulevard, the great restaurant/bar of my youth (best french fries, and crayons on the table) became a swanky place called Aix which is now empty. Murder Ink, the bookstore that my father loved, is closed. Now there is only Barnes and Noble.

But the main problem is the banks. The fucking banks. There is a Bank of America five blocks from... another Bank of America. There is an HSBC bank which takes up half the block. The size of these places is totally absurd. And it's not like they've added more ATMs, they're just taking up more space. It's disgusting, really, all the energy wasted in those places, the poor economization of space, the completely anonymous feeling of walking into these huge and empty areas. I walked in once, and there was air conditioning coming from a vent above me, and heat pumped in through a vent beneath my feet. Really. When we asked about it, they said they couldn't do anything about it because it was being regulated by some control center in some other part of the country. Ultimately, I just find it so disheartening and bizarre. I mean, you can get money out, but there's nothing to buy because there are no stores left. There's no small business.

And with the small business goes the neighborhood. The yuppies have moved in. The buildings (like mine) are going condo. The last place that sold flowing hippie skirts just closed. Hot and Crusty has gone from dark and shabby to sleek and shiny, and now the pizza sucks. A lot.

Worst of all, my deli is gone. My deli is gone. If all you want is milk and a chocolate bar, you have to go to Food Emporium. I stood on the corner and almost cried the day I saw that it was empty. It breaks my heart.

If it becomes a bank, don't be surprised if one night I happen to accidentally hurl a brick through its shiny neutral exterior.