Submitted by cal snyder, Sep 30, 2007 14:38

Julia Vitullo-Martin's piece on changing perceptions of the Upper West Side was nicely balanced and gently provoking. It reminded me of much that has transpired in the neighborhood for good and bad since I moved to it in 1980.

But I'm doubtful about the historical perspective condo salespeople who, looking back, see the opening of the Columbia apartment house as the symbol of when 'things really began to change.' This seems a little like looking back at the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886 and concluding it was the prompt for the great waves of immigration that soon followed.

I remember that entrepreneurial courage by small businesses played a bigger role in changing the livability index of places of the neighborhood. The problem with the West Side back then wasn't the length of the blocks on 86th Street. It was around the cornber on Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, where in 1980 life wasn't so much dangerous as ridiculous: it was easier to buy a ticket at a numbers parlor than to find a quart of milk or a plant to stick in the window.

I remember a much less-heralded event: the arrival of Sarah Beth- not in the fancy digs she occupied later, but in a tiny space along Amsterdam. Across the street from her cubby-hole was a large abandoned building where an arson had just occurred, and two-thirds of the storefronts on the avenue were empty. Although her brand later became an icon of up-scale pleasures, that risk she took with her small capital, like that of many others who have followed, was far more critical to the rebirth of the community than the latest profitability index of condo prices. Jane meet Sarah, and hold the Zeckendorf.

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