A man, who lives alone in his apartment, finds his ideal woman while going to the symphony. He dates her and brings her to his pad, only to find out she came to the symphony on a ticket she got from a co-worker.

In the slums of the upper West Side of Manhattan, New York, a gang of Polish-American teenagers called the Jets compete with a rival gang of recently immigrated Puerto Ricans, the Sharks, to "own" the neighborhood streets. Tensions are high between the gangs but two romantics, one from each gang, fall in love leading to tragedy.