Uptown To Do List - Week of Nov. 4, 2024

An ever changing list of things to do above the park

Hello and happy Monday! Welcome to the first ever edition of the Uptown To Do List. It is designed to be a weekly list of things to do above the park. Not all of the things, but a set of things we thought looked interesting. We hope this list will help our readers find new hot spots…above the park! Because uptown is vibes—just not the kind of vibes that got us a type-A nicely organized to do list before.

EATS AND DRINKS

ROKC (3452 Broadway between West 140th and 141st Streets): your go-to ramen spot. The cocktails are great. The ramen is exceptional, even (especially?) the vegetarian ramen, which is often neglected by other ramen spots. There is an oyster happy hour from 5-7 M, W-F, when oysters are $1.75 each. Oyster happy hour lasts all night on Tuesdays! (That’s tomorrow, so there is yet time to plan!) ROKC even makes its own hot sauce, which they don’t sell—but should—and, if you are there long enough, someone will inevitably try to slip a jar into their bag with wildly mixed results. Pro tip: No reservations and the dining room is small, so be sure to get there early.

Musette (420 Malcolm X at West 131st): the newest, cutest wine bar uptown. Happy hour is 5-7, when select wines are $10. There is no written list of these wines, only a verbal one, so bring your active listening skills if you want to get the most of happy hour. On the day we visited, the select wines included a white, red, orange and bubbles. If you don’t get there early, be sure to make a reservation, because the dining room can fill up quickly during peak hours. Bonus: take your receipt to Pompette Wine Shop next door on West 131st and get 10% off some bottles to take home.

Clay (553 Manhattan at West 123rd Street): Harlem’s best all-around restaurant. You won’t have a bad dinner here though the pastas (made in-house) are the star. On any day other than Mondays, when they’re closed, cozy up to the oversized bar if you’re looking for something more casual than dinner and try one of the well-curated house-designed cocktails. Consider pairing that cocktail with a small bite like the chicken liver mousse or even a housemade veggie burger, which is one of the unsung heroes of Clay. If you’re lucky, you’ll find yourself there on a menu takeover day where some delicious artisanal liquor is being paired with a special entree (like Agua Magica Mezcal meets mushroom mole tamales). Happy hour is Sunday-Thursday 5-6:30 and Fridays and Saturdays from 5-6, with discount small plates, happy hour cocktails, and $6 select beer and cider.

HAPPENINGS

National Jazz Museum (58 West 129th between Malcolm X and 5th Ave): Get your yoga on with a live band at the National Jazz Museum on Saturday morning, November 9th. You heard right. Start your Saturday morning off right with a 60-minute vinyasa flow yoga set to live jazz. Sounds way funner than your regular yoga studio (point a) and point b, while the suggested donation is $20, it is technically pay what you wish. (I’m sure the Jazz Museum won’t mind when you round up to $25.) You must RSVP in order to attend regardless of what you plan to pay.

Harlem Arts Stroll beginning at Calabar Gallery at the Refettorio Harlem at Emanuel AME Church (37 West 119th Street between Malcolm X and 5th Avenue) on Saturday, November 9th: go on a self-guided arts stroll with Harlem Arts Stroll, which has 15 participating businesses and takes place every second Saturday from 1pm to 6pm. It’s basically a free scavenger hunt with bonus awesome art to help you up your culture game. Register for the next one here (free) and then swing by Refettorio Harlem to pick up your map and start exploring! (Calabar Gallery has a bunch of exhibits at different outposts, so be sure to hit up the Refettorio Harlem to start your stroll. I’m sure the exhibits in the LES, Columbus Circle, TriBeCa and Governor’s Island are cool but you’ll probably get a nosebleed that far south and I’m not so sure that they have the map you’ll be looking for.)

Shrine (2271 Adam Clayton Powell at West 134th Street): this is the live music venue to visit if you want to impress your downtown friends with your neighborhood know-how. Shrine is a small venue that has shows by independent artists for an alarmingly wide variety of music listeners: jazz, funk, rock, indie, punk, jazz, afro-fusion, pop. (I’m sure I have forgotten something but the point is they have all of the types—all of them. Who else can say that in NYC???) They even have a comedy show on Sundays. (We haven’t been, so we don’t know if it’s funny, but probably it is.) If the calendar seems overwhelming, consider dipping your toes in the water on November 8 from 8-10pm with Bill Warfield and The Hell’s Kitchen Funk Orchestra. Pro tip: show up a little early for the show to take advantage of happy hour pricing on beer and wine ($5) and house liquor ($6).

Hamilton Grange (414 West 141st Street, north end of St. Nicholas Park at Hamilton Terrace): go visit the only house Alexander Hamilton ever owned: the Hamilton Grange. It is completely free and open to the public (W-Su, 10am-5pm). The park rangers there are the best and the tour guides are patient, funny and well-informed. (Ask them how they feel about Hamilton on Broadway.) There are tours throughout the day. Each one lasts about a half hour. There is even a mini-scavenger hunt for kids that will net them a Junior Ranger badge (and an oath ceremony) upon completion. For us, the highlight was a short film shown downstairs that chronicled how the Hamilton Grange had been moved to different locations around Harlem, including the one time it was literally rolled down the street and over a church. You don’t need reservations to visit.

Harlem Spoken Word Invitational at The Forum at Columbia University (601 West 125th Street at Broadway): Experience a free evening of poetry at the Forum on Sunday, November 10th from 5-10pm. The event is hosted by New Heritage Theatre Group in partnership with Hottest Poets and Harlem Bomb Shelter, so it seems like it will be an exciting night.

For the kiddos (grades 2 thru 6): On November 9th at 11:30, the Harry Belafonte 115th Street Library (203 West 115th Street between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass) in partnership with Teatro SEA will present a bilingual play on the life of Frida Kahlo called “The Colors of Frida.” This show is part of the library’s Culture Pass programming but the Harry Belafonte branch often has something interesting happening early on Saturday afternoons, so it’s worth checking their calendar regularly. (Or reading this to do list and trusting we’ll be checking it for you….)

DID YOU KNOW?

Legendary fashion icon Dapper Dan—he put the DAP in the DAP x GAP clothing line uptown—has a New York Times Best Selling Memoir “Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem.” The NYPL has hard copies and audiobook versions available.