WEST SIDE STORY, THE JETS & THE SHARKS IN THE UPPER

Today, The Grandma has visited the Upper West Side.

Meanwhile, The Newtons have continued preparing their Cambridge Exam. They have studied The Passive.

More information: The Passive

The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighbourhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.

It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper West Side is adjacent to the neighbourhoods of Hell's Kitchen to the south, Columbus Circle to the southeast, and Morningside Heights to the north.

Like the Upper East Side opposite Central Park, the Upper West Side is an affluent, primarily residential area with many of its residents working in commercial areas of Midtown and Lower Manhattan. Similarly to the Museum Mile district on the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side is considered one of Manhattan's cultural and intellectual hubs, with Columbia University and Barnard College located just to the north of the neighbourhood, the American Museum of Natural History located near its center, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School located at the south end.

The Upper West Side is bounded on the south by 59th Street, Central Park to the east, the Hudson River to the west, and 110th Street to the north. The area north of West 96th Street and east of Broadway is also identified as Manhattan Valley. The overlapping area west of Amsterdam Avenue to Riverside Park was once known as the Bloomingdale District.

From west to east, the avenues of the Upper West Side are Riverside Drive, West End Avenue (11th Avenue), Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue (10th Avenue), Columbus Avenue (9th Avenue), and Central Park West (8th Avenue). The 66-block stretch of Broadway forms the spine of the neighborhood and runs diagonally north–south across the other avenues at the south end of the neighborhood; above 78th Street Broadway runs north parallel to the other avenues.

Broadway enters the neighbourhood at its juncture with Central Park West at Columbus Circle (59th Street), crosses Columbus Avenue at Lincoln Square (65th Street), Amsterdam Avenue at Verdi Square (71st Street), and then merges with West End Avenue at Straus Park (aka Bloomingdale Square, at 107th Street).

Traditionally the neighbourhood ranged from the former village of Harsenville, centered on the old Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) and 65th Street, west to the railroad yards along the Hudson, then north to 110th Street, where the ground rises to Morningside Heights. With the construction of Lincoln Center, its name, though perhaps not the reality, was stretched south to 58th Street.

More information: Trevor

With the arrival of the corporate headquarters and expensive condos of the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, and the Riverside South apartment complex built by Donald Trump, the area from 58th Street to 65th Street is increasingly referred to as Lincoln Square by realtors who acknowledge a different tone and ambiance than that typically associated with the Upper West Side. This is a reversion to the neighbourhood's historical name.

The long high bluff above useful sandy coves along the North River was little used or traversed by the Lenape people. A combination of the stream valleys, such as that in which 96th Street runs, and wetlands to the northeast and east, may have protected a portion of the Upper West Side from the Lenape's controlled burns; lack of periodic ground fires results in a denser understory and more fire-intolerant trees, such as American Beech.

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Upper West Side-to-be contained some of colonial New York's most ambitious houses, spaced along Bloomingdale Road. It became increasingly infilled with smaller, more suburban villas in the first half of the nineteenth century, and in the middle of the century, parts had become decidedly lower class.

In the 1900s, the area south of 67th Street was heavily populated by African-Americans and supposedly gained its nickname of San Juan Hill in commemoration of African-American soldiers who were a major part of Theodore Roosevelt's assault on Cuba's San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. 

By 1960, it was a rough neighbourhood of tenement housing, the demolition of which was delayed to allow for exterior shots in the film musical West Side Story. Thereafter, urban renewal brought the construction of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Lincoln Towers apartments during 1962–1968.

The Upper West Side is a significant Jewish neighbourhood, populated with both German Jews who moved in at the turn of last century, and Jewish refugees escaping Hitler's Europe in the 1930s. Today the area between 85th Street and 100th Street is home to the largest community of young Modern Orthodox singles outside of Israel. However, the Upper West Side also features a substantial number of non-Orthodox Jews. A number of major synagogues are located in the neighbourhood, including the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, Shearith Israel; New York's second-oldest and the third-oldest Ashkenazi synagogue, B'nai Jeshurun; Rodeph Sholom; the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue; and numerous others.

More information: Untapped Cities

West Side Story is a 1961 American musical romantic drama film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. 

With a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, the film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same title, which in turn was inspired by Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, and George Chakiris, and was photographed by Daniel L. Fapp in Super Panavision 70. The music was composed by Leonard Bernstein, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Released on October 18, 1961, through United Artists, the film received high praise from critics and viewers, and became the highest-grossing film of 1961. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 10, including Best Picture (in addition to a special award for Robbins), becoming the record holder for the most wins for a musical.  

West Side Story is regarded as one of the greatest musical films of all time.

The film has been deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1997.

A second film adaptation of the same name by Steven Spielberg was released on December 10, 2021; it was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and six other Oscar nominations, winning one Oscar for DeBose's performance.

It stars Ansel Elgort as Tony, Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ariana DeBose as Anita; Moreno returns as a new character, Valentina, who is Doc's widow.

More information: Rogert Ebert

I was miserable in West Side Story.
They really miscast me.
I came from the Midwest;
what they really needed was
a guy that was street smart.
The first time I saw the movie,
I had to walk out.
I looked like the biggest fruit
that ever walked on to film.
My character was so weak.

Richard Beymer