Uptown To Do List - Week of Feb 18, 2025
An ever changing list of things to do above the park
Hello and Happy Tuesday! Hope you all had a good and restful President’s Day weekend. We are going to start a new key for events - if you see these emojis next to an event, that means:
👋 - We are going to this event, so come by and say hello!
🌟 - We wish we could go, but you should go and tell us how it is!
So, even though it’s super cold outside, try to go to some uptown events, meet your neighbors and make some new friends.
EATS AND DRINKS
Cake Man Raven (201 West 135th Street between Adam Clayton Powell and Fred Doug): there is almost too much to say about the Cake Man to fit into one blog, but here are the highlights—he got famous (or maybe really, really famous) baking cakes out of a store front at 708 Fulton Street until the landlord got greedy, which led to a series of things, including Cake Man’s relocation/return to HARLEM! Cake Man’s signature is red velvet cake, which is super widely acclaimed and does not need my further hype (but know you should get there if you haven’t yet). In addition to bangin’ flavors, the Cake Man has baked some very cool cakes, like an Adidas sneaker honoring Jam Master Jay, a twelve-foot-long Brooklyn Bridge, a 3.5 ton replica of Columbia’s Low Library, and the world’s tallest wedding cake, which weighed 5,000 pounds.
HAPPENINGS
The Morningside Heights Library (2900 Broadway at West 113th Street) will be screening If Beal Street Could Talk on Tuesday February 18 from 1-3pm as part of its Black History Month Programming. The film is adapted from James Baldwin’s 1974 novel of the same name. More info here.
If afternoon movies aren’t your thing, join NYC Parks at the Thomas Jefferson Recreation Center (2180 First Avenue at East 112th Street) from 5-7pm on Wednesday, February 19th for Painting for the Culture, which will be celebrating Black History Month. Participants will have an option to paint a famous Black artist or a famous Black inventor. Tracing paper and all of the art supplies will be provided. Register here.
If you are lamenting how you missed Zollar Systems last week at the National Jazz Museum, you’re in luck! (Same outcome if you went last week and have been jonesin’ for more.) There will be a second FREE concert on Wednesday, February 19th at Allianza Dominicana Cultural Center (530 West 166th Street in the triangle between St. Nick and Audubon) from 7-9pm. RSVP here!
🌟 If you haven’t been to the Schomberg Center this Black History Month, we have another opportunity for you. On Wednesday, February 19th at 6:30, the Schomberg Center (515 Malcolm X at West 135th Street) is hosting a very cool event called “A Revolutionary Friendship: Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama.” If you don’t know who Yuri Kochiyama is, you can read up on her here. The abridged version is she was born in San Pedro, California, interned in Arkansas during WWII and eventually moved to Harlem where she became active in the civil rights movement. (She has made some controversial/unfortunate statements but she has also been nominated for a Novel Peace Prize.) The event is FREE and you can register here.
The Dizzy Gillespie Jazz Academy will be at the Harlem School of the Arts (645 St. Nicholas Avenue, north of West 141st Street) on Thursday, February 20th from 6 to 8pm. It will be an evening full of music, dance and a fire side chat with West Philly artist King Saladeen, who is described in the promo materials as a jazz-influenced artist (I don’t think there will be actual fire though King Saladeen makes some art that is fire). You can RSVP here.
👋 The weekend we’ve been waiting for at United Palace (4140 Broadway between West 175th and 176th Streets) is finally almost here. On Saturday, February 22 starting at 1pm, United Palace will be celebrating its 95th birthday with a Star Wars TRIPLE FEATURE. (I’ve never used all caps, bold and italics before, so you know we’re serious….) Doors at noon. A New Hope starts at 1pm. There will be a one hour intermission from 3-4 and then The Empire Strikes Back will play at 4pm. You get one more one hour intermission from 6-7 and then Return of the Jedi will start at 7pm. United Palace bills itself as “the largest, grandest, most over-the-top cinema in New York City.” We agree. You don’t want to miss this. Adult tix are $30. Seniors, students and 12 and under are $20. Even if you go for only one of the movies, you’re helping to support some awesome programming (which is also why we think if you have 95 cold ones, it’s worth a splurge for the movie membership—good vibes and rockin’ benefits).
The Uptown Brunch Club—a group of NY’s best professionals, influencers, business owners and entrepreneurs—will be hosting their first ever monthly networking brunch at Chele’s (2280 Fred Doug at West 123rd Street) on Sunday, February 23 at 1pm. The event costs $60 and includes a starter, one entree from a prefix menu, one specialty cocktail and a gift bag. (If cocktails are not your thing, there is an alcohol free $50 ticket too.) Purchase tickets here.
DID YOU KNOW?
Bayard Rustin, one of the architects of the 1963 March on Washington, advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and subject of the eponymous Netflix film, moved to Harlem in 1937 and attended City College! In fact, the Harlem rowhouse at 170 West 130th Street (at the corner of Adam Clayton Powell) served as the national headquarters for the 1963 March on Washington. You can read more about Bayard Rustin here or in any one of the terrific sources cited in the King Institute piece.