Watch-Blog
Royale’s Son Honored Father with 1,000 Black and White Cookies
By Claudie Benjamin Marc Wigder is an attorney and City Councilman in Boca Raton, Florida. His parents owned the Royale Bakery at 237 West 72nd Street for more than 40 years. On the ten-year anniversary of the day that Ben Wigder passed away at the age of 94 in 2014,...
LW! and Landslide 2024!
By LANDMARK WEST! The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based education and advocacy non-project, released their annual Landslide report and this year they are focusing on sites of demonstration in U.S. history. Landslide 2024: Demonstration Grounds,...
Going Your Way
By LANDMARK WEST! John Tauranac has lived on the Upper West Side for most of his life, and in the same apartment building at 900 West End Avenue for over fifty years. Suffice it to say that when he leaves home and heads for the IRT at 103rd Street, he has a pretty...
Craving A Cup
By Claudie Benjamin Golden Arches identify the McDonalds at the 2049 Broadway location and at McDonalds throughout the country and the world. They might be seen as symbolic of US (omni)presence. But, that's only part of the picture. The history of coffee and coffee...
2024 Year End Appeal
Dear Friend and Neighbor, Quality of life. Sustainability. Community. Preservation. Who will fight for New York’s neighborhoods? We will. When I first returned to NY in 1999 for college, an early mentor further stoked in me a fire of New York curiosity that was...
Part of a Global Community
By Claudie Benjamin Abundance is unmistakable at the Morton Williams at 2015 Broadway as it is at all 17 Morton Williams supermarkets in the New York metropolitan area. The array of fresh fruit, vegetables, canned, frozen, and boxed foods, along with condiments and...
Chance Finds
By Claudie Benjamin Some older New Yorkers may remember the first modest beginnings of Pottery Barn in 1949. Early on, the threadbare store was on Tenth Avenue and 19th Street. Pottery was then sold in crates. There were no shelves. Somewhat younger people who are...
The Air We Breathe
By Claudie Benjamin Breathe in…ahhh…that fresh air! But, is it clean? Likely not. Daily air quality indexes on the Upper West Side, for example, can range in the “poor” toxic levels. More specifically, for example, on October 19 the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) on...
Risk and Movie-Watching
By Claudie Benjamin The policy of the AMC 13 Lincoln Square movie theater at 1998 Broadway is clear and familiar to theatergoers: “Smoking is prohibited within the theatre, including auditoriums and common areas. This includes vapors, e-cigarettes, and any other...
Water: Potable, Portable & Free
By Claudie Benjamin Recently, in Paris, a customer left Shakespeare and Company, the iconic bookstore, and right out front filled her water tumbler straight from one of the multitude of elaborately ornamented 19th-century “Wallace” water fountains on the streets of...
