The Upper West Side runs from 59th Street to 110th Street, between Central Park on the east and the Hudson River (via Riverside Park) on the west. It is, by almost any measure, one of the most pleasant places to live in New York City — the kind of neighborhood that produces people who have lived there for 30 years and have no intention of leaving. That kind of neighborhood stability is worth paying attention to.

Lincoln Center and the Cultural District

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts at 65th Street and Columbus Avenue is one of the great performing arts complexes in the world. The New York Philharmonic (David Geffen Hall), the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center all call it home. The plaza between the buildings is a gathering place year-round, with outdoor performances in summer and the particular energy of pre-performance crowds in fall and winter.

Rush tickets to the Metropolitan Opera — available online and at the box office the day of performance — start around $25 and represent one of the best entertainment values in New York City. The Met Opera is world-class by any standard; hearing it from an upper tier seat is a genuinely moving experience.

Central Park: The Upper West Side Entrance

Central Park’s western edge belongs to the Upper West Side from 59th to 110th Streets. The park is large enough that the specific entry point shapes your experience — entering at 72nd Street gives you the Strawberry Fields memorial and the Bethesda Terrace. Entering at 81st Street puts you near the Great Lawn and the back entrance to the Metropolitan Museum. The Reservoir at 90th Street is the park’s primary running loop. The northern end of the park, above 100th Street, is consistently less crowded than the southern sections and has some of the most interesting topography.

Broadway: The Commercial Spine

Broadway on the Upper West Side (the street, not the theater district) is a genuinely good commercial corridor — not the luxury shopping of SoHo or the tourist concentration of Midtown, but a working neighborhood main street with excellent grocery stores, food shops, independent businesses, and restaurants that serve the people who live there.

Zabar’s at 80th Street is the essential Upper West Side institution — a gourmet food shop that has been operating since 1934 and has an extraordinary smoked fish counter, cheese selection, and appetizing department. It’s a genuine local institution and worth visiting even if you’re not buying anything.

H&H Bagels was the neighborhood’s most famous bagel institution for decades; the original location has closed but the brand continues. For current bagel supremacy, Absolute Bagels on Broadway at 108th Street makes what many serious bagel people consider the best bagel in Manhattan.

Jazz and Nightlife

The Upper West Side has a jazz history that predates Lincoln Center — many of the bebop-era musicians who defined 20th-century jazz lived in the neighborhood. The Jazz at Lincoln Center complex at Columbus Circle presents world-class programming in the Frederick P. Rose Hall and the smaller Dizzy’s Club, where you can hear excellent jazz and watch the sunset over Central Park through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

For neighborhood bars: Amsterdam Ale House and Dublin House on West 79th Street represent the unpretentious end of the neighborhood’s bar scene — good beer selection, reasonable prices, the kind of places where people actually talk to each other.

Riverside Park and the Hudson

Riverside Park on the neighborhood’s western edge offers 330 acres of Hudson River waterfront, the 79th Street Boat Basin (where people live on boats year-round), running and cycling paths, and consistent views of the New Jersey Palisades. It’s quieter than Central Park at almost any hour and one of the best places in Manhattan to watch the sun set over the water.

Will

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