Upper West Side has always leaned left due to Columbia and Barnard (where my girlfriend taught).
Many of the cafes along Broadway and Amsterdam had seen their day in the 60s with radicals and Beats droning on and on with bullshite but by the 80s they were fairly dormant...Shakespeare Books was always a hang out for lefties (any bookstore is like that today) and the two Teacher's cafes were known for radicals to be seen sipping coffee and chattering but in my day more Upper West Siders were busy birthing today's leftist youth and were less involved politically and more so with work.
Anyone curious should see that video of the pro McCain folks walking down Columbus....last September.....unbelievable how bad it is now.
New York seems nothing like I remember...
Dinner for two with drinks (Oban on the rocks for me and some rum concoction for her) and we left with $150.00 out of pocket. The place was full as was every other restaurant along Columbus and down to Lincoln Center. If there's a recession in NYC you sure couldn't tell. The waitress said that it wasn't V-Day, every weekend is the same.
As for the people, yeah, I wanted to slap the snot out of most of them. I could write volumes about the changes since I lived there (back when it was called the Wild West).
There was a line of at least twenty couples on CPS waiting their turn to hire a carriage.
You were there the same time ‘Bama and Bill Ayers were. Anyways....for you and you wife Valentines
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqViJyweNV0