There are stories from the months before I was born when I was still nestled inside my mother like a Yonah Schimmel knish to go the city was overtaken by a heat wave so mighty that it made being inside without A.C unbearable—you had to stay moving just to create a breeze My mom remembers thinking that New York hadn’t felt so unhinged since the Summer of Sam that the heat lent an edge of hysteria to everyday interactions she ran into an equally sweaty and disoriented friend on the corner of Broadway and Houston who told her that the sculptor Carl Andre had been accused of throwing his wife the seminal Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta when my parents went to see a movie at Lincoln Plaza and the smell of other people’s buttered popcorn made my mom so sick that she had to leave halfway through my father—who has often been accused of charging ahead with little concern for those travelling with him—made a mad dash out of the train car just before the doors closed “I looked around and everyone was laughing,” she recalls she placed her hand on the glass between her and my father and burst into tears They’re about the struggle of living in a city where compressed like office workers in a stalled elevator a beautiful blond boy a few blocks over who had set off for the school bus one morning and never returned the local preschool playgroup began using a new contraption for walking toddlers to the park—a rope with a mitten attached for each child New York: A Centenary IssueSubscribers get full access. Read the issue » Covers by Christoph NiemannIt didn’t take long for me to grow into possibly the least adaptable native the city had ever seen the city takes a certain amount of chutzpah—you have to be ready rush to nab the last subway seat or the only on-duty cab You have to be unsurprised by the consistent surprises that come with a new day in New Amsterdam My parents had both been raised far enough outside the city to have childhoods that could be called idyllic but close enough that Manhattan exerted a strong pull Getting to New York was their ultimate expression of self-determination the place where they would shed preconceptions about who they were meant to be and create a new life among artists and experimental thinkers planting their seeds in the fecund soil of the city If we are to continue with the plant metaphor I was more like an avocado pit mashed into a cup of dirt by an excited third grader who then forgot to water it my parents ought to have been ashamed of the creature they’d wrought inevitably be littered with fresh obstacles scrappy child whose natural independence I envied—was riding in a subway car when a bomb went off She described being rushed through the resulting mayhem by her grandmother a glamorous woman with a bonnet of gold hair whom she called Dammy Isabel was back on the 2/3 line within weeks whereas I still stood at the mouth of the subway station Navigating the city on foot was only marginally better I hated the smell of rotting fish on Canal Street where I’d bury my nose in my mother’s pants as we walked to Isabel’s house I also hated Central Park—though we rarely went—because sitting atop what looked to be a nest of its own intestines I’d promptly thrown up in the bushes near Strawberry Fields I liked the local park on Thompson and Spring until one day I entered a plastic tube on the jungle gym to find a bald-headed man on his belly because I had seen a handsome young guy asleep on a stoop with a needle in his neck and I hated Sixteenth and Third—inconveniently the block my school was on—because I had once passed a dapper elderly gentleman in a camel overcoat then begun to twitch and let loose a sudden stream of shocking expletives after which he smiled again and kept moving we had found someone lowering his pants to defecate Every place where I had seen something or someone that provoked unease was deemed permanently suspect if you couldn’t return to the scene of some randomized chaos in pre-Giuliani Manhattan New York seems to open a portal to the expansive lives they had always felt they should be living the city constricted until the only place I felt safe was in my loft bed at the back of our apartment the faint sounds of the streets below my window like a white-noise machine that occasionally yelled which opened directly into our living space only to find a disoriented person wearing a tutu and smeared red lipstick advancing into our home “I think you are in the wrong place,” my mom said calmly and the person eventually left without incident But for months afterward I froze whenever I heard the elevator straining to lift off: I was in the wrong place All this may seem to imply some deeper judgment about the city—that I think it’s wanton and unregulated But I will always defend New York from those sorts of charges—after all no one can talk shit about my mother but me It’s that the city’s messy scrum was a poor fit for a chronically ill child with obsessive-compulsive tendencies and a preternatural inability to look both ways when crossing the street It took me years to understand that most people accept New York’s mayhem as some kind of toll a small price to pay for the panoply of delights available to them at a moment’s notice—whoever said “Nothing good ever happens after midnight” has never lived in New York But anyone who has ever fallen in love with the city knows that they will accept myriad slights just to stay in that relationship—cramped apartments How many Hollywood movie plots hinge roughly on the idea that the hero will do anything who had chosen that plot; I was simply the culmination of it whose house in rural Connecticut I considered to be the apex of peace—would sometimes shake her head and tell my parents to get me out of the city “It’s no place for a child,” she would whisper to me when my parents left the room noting my “terrible nerves.” But my father had felt the same way about his home town of Old Lyme which was so insular that nearly every business in the nearby neighborhood of Hamburg was owned by a relative we went back there to visit my grandmother’s grave on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death Margaret—suggest a good Protestant stability “You can’t even imagine how small this place feels,” he told me “There’s nowhere I can look without being faced with a memory.” it hadn’t occurred to him that I might have similarly complicated feelings about New York I may not have come of age with a group of stiff Republican relatives whose offspring still own the local Subaru dealership but growing up is one of a handful of things that everyone has to do My father’s family was baffled that anyone would ever want to leave the bucolic world of Hamburg Mine seemed to wonder who could ever see New York as anything other than the center of the universe I loved spending time at my grandma’s house because of the slow pace of her days A trip to the grocery store to buy a half pound of London broil constituted a major outing took a break at five o’clock for peanuts and tonic water and I’d be safely tucked into bed by 8 P.M my mother could pack ten or eleven separate excursions into a single day—or spend hours wandering the floors of the discount department store Century 21 striking up endless conversations in the communal dressing room (another place I regarded poorly having seen one woman elbow another in the face over a cut-price Victoria’s Secret negligee) My mom and her sisters—Jewish girls at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Margarets I distinctly remember my mother repeating that “what I love about Manhattan is that if you really want to you can always get from one end to the other in twenty minutes.” (This is not and I blame the remark for my lifelong inability to properly judge commute times.) “Laurie is a ‘from’ girl—the lox is from one place the flowers from someplace else.” Knowing how to get the best out of the city—from discount Manolos to vintage buttons to a ten-dollar blow-dry—gives my mother the satisfaction of a chess grand master stumping her opponent with a series of unexpected moves But being a “from” girl is about more than the provenance of goods; it’s about living at such high speeds that your inner life can never quite catch up to you I couldn’t help but feel like a character in a children’s book where a sloth must attend school with human kids taking great pains to hide his true identity under glasses and a cardigan my celebrity look-alike—who lives essentially unsupervised in the Plaza “I am a city child / I live at The Plaza.” But this city child never seems to set foot outside: everything and everyone she needs exists within the walls of the hotel I persuaded my father to bring me to the Plaza to experience it firsthand as a stand-in for the slumber parties that other girls were having the two of us spent the night in a twin room on a low floor the hotel had passed through the hands of Ivana Trump and the space—drawn in the book with such vivid low-key glamour by Hilary Knight—was hard to recognize I asked for Eloise’s usual meal of beef medallions so we ate grilled cheese and watched “The Rainmaker” and I got a bloody nose my parents briefly considered moving us out of New York Like everyone during that endless “after,” they were stunned by the destruction and unsure of what could come next We piled into the car and drove up to look at a rental house on a rural stretch of road in northwest Connecticut My visit to Housatonic Valley Regional High School ended with a peek at the agricultural center where I dreamed of bottle-feeding baby goats and winning trophies in animal husbandry “I think we could have a wonderful life here,” I said again and again with the energy of Annette Bening’s character in “American Beauty” chanting “I will sell this house today!” But it was clear that though my mother might be worried for her family she could not be parted from her lover: New York This was the woman who had tried to pay extra to keep her 212 number when we moved to Brooklyn New York and I had a brief moment when it seemed like we might fall in love after all I was back from college (in the cornfields of Ohio which is a great place to send your kids if you want them to return with a fresh appreciation of what New York has to offer) and had only recently shed some of my fearfulness and begun dating in earnest I found myself waiting in a bar on Ludlow in knee-high boots and red lipstick excited to be crushingly disappointed; dancing to music by yet-to-be-cancelled men in basements in Chinatown; lying prone in a ransacked house share in Flatbush shivering with anticipation (or maybe just shivering) standing on the aboveground subway platform (much preferred to the other kind) in a dress that had seemed perfect the night before but in the glaring sun made its absurdity apparent and again on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and once more eating fried clams on City Island I choked back unrequited passion looking at an installation at P.S wondering whether every artist had felt this way and whether that was why artists made anything at all—to hold on to the feeling It was during this time that I was able to write my own story about the city in the form of a television show How could they have known that the safest I’d ever felt in New York was either hiding under the covers or pretending to be someone else under klieg lights thought that New York held the key to all her dreams—but (I had been told by countless cabdrivers—soothsayers all of them—that I seemed like I was from someplace else because no matter how far off course they drove me and unlike other native New Yorkers I had no preferred routes.) Hannah was an expression of homesickness for a place I’d never truly lived in and of my hope that I could meet New York again under an assumed identity she left New York and boldly set sail for a story line that signalled how much of a question mark the rest of the world still seemed to me and yet I had a New Yorker’s certainty that there really wasn’t anywhere else to go I was deep in the kind of heartbreak that I now know is on the required curriculum for that stage of adulthood but that seemed As if some higher power were sensing my need but only to the equally bedevilling city of Los Angeles It was a sojourn fit for one of the Brontë heroines I had always loved (or so I thought not realizing the difference between the moors of Yorkshire and the Celtic rain forests of Powys—a place that Charlotte this break would provide a chance for New York and me to hook up with other people and then realize we were meant to be together all along We all know how well that plan usually works out for couples Wales—with woods so uncannily green I could compare them only to the computer game Myst—led to London and London shocked me with its reassuring differences from New York which is large enough to contain all five New York boroughs twice streets so wide that the buildings seemed to be stepping aside for me to pass Three decades of urban sense memory cleared as if I had woken up to a system upgrade and damaged files had been erased in the process the fact that I’d yelped in pain on exactly zero London street corners like walking into a house I’d been to only in a dream London Lena,” a friend cooed when I agreed to go out for a third night in a row My reputation back home was as a work-obsessed hermit with an inappropriate fear of the “human statue” performers in Times Square whether walking on Hampstead Heath or sliding into a black cab In New York—the fastest city in the world—days had felt like years so much so that I call seltzer “sparkling water” and settle for bagels that taste like caulk Even when Londoners remind me of New Yorkers the city doesn’t jangle me the way New York does a drunk man unzipped his fly to pee on my stoop not noticing my presence behind some overgrown ivy On my first journey back to New York after the pandemic—which had kept me away for nearly two years—the experience of walking out of J.F.K and into the airport cab line was so powerful I nearly keeled over One day back in the city left me breathless and panicky When friends and I made plans to get together I’d suggest restaurants that had been shuttered for years No matter how often I’ve returned in the time since I’ve found myself standing anxiously at crosswalks as if trying to hop into a game of double Dutch But now the sense of dislocation is temporary The three-decade fight to mold myself to the city is over In Joan Didion’s essay “Goodbye to All That,” about her own decision to leave New York for her native California she writes that New York is best suited to the very young My grandmother said that it was no place for a child All I know for sure is that it was simply no place for me—at least you both try to show your best and truest selves but still the other party sees only your worst this was the most mature sort of breakup—the sort where we can still have coffee sometimes It turns out that I felt about New York City the same way so many New Yorkers feel about whatever place they started: it’s just where I was born A long-ago crime, suddenly remembered A limousine driver watches her passengers transform The day Muhammad Ali punched me What is it like to be keenly intelligent but deeply alienated from simple emotions? Temple Grandin knows The harsh realm of “gentle parenting.”  Retirement the Margaritaville way Fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Thank You for the Light.”  Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. Zoë Kravitz and Noah Centineo were photographed spending time together multiple times in recent months 2025 10:00 AM EDTSean "Diddy' Combs has received major news in his criminal case Jury selection has finally gotten underway According to National Public Radio Combs' trial is finally starting in New York City on May 5 The goal will be trying to find jurors who can be neutral in a case that has generated such massive news coverage and emotional reaction Opening statements in the trial are likely on May 12 which reported that jury selection is expected to last a week However, USA Today reported that it's possible jury selection could conclude in three days Judge Arun Subramania will question each of as many as 150 potential jurors According to CBS News the music mogul has been in custody since September when he was ordered held without bail on a slew of sex trafficking accusations He has pleaded not guilty and rejected a plea deal offer before the trial The indictment accuses Combs of having engaged in or attempted to engage in sex trafficking He is being tried in federal court in Manhattan and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled--creating a criminal enterprise," the indictment reads Combs' attorneys wanted the judge to delay the trial Combs has denied the accusations, which stem from his alleged treatment of women after rising to be one of the most powerful hip-hop entrepreneurs in the United States. According to The Associated Press the investigation first hit the news in earnest in 2024 when authorities searched Combs' properties in Miami Beach and Los Angeles You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed Since the Queens Assembly member launched his mayoral campaign in late October knocked on hundreds of doors across neighborhoods historically overlooked in citywide elections made countless fundraising calls while fasting for Ramadan (something he hopes never to do again) joined his fellow candidates onstage at over 30 forums and trooped back and forth between New York City and Albany via Amtrak at least 20 times missing only a day of the legislative session Mamdani’s message is consistent: The cost of living is crushing working-class New Yorkers and it’s the job of city leaders to fix it “We can’t just hope and pray that people come to us,” Mamdani told City & State as he leaned across a table at Qahwah House in the West Village peak spring – the sort of day where freshly fallen cherry blossoms speckle the sidewalks like confetti and everybody flocks outdoors to wherever New Yorkers are with the same message.” Mamdani’s goal to meet New Yorkers where they are has been central to his efforts to stitch together an unprecedented coalition of Democratic primary voters He’s betting that his unyielding focus on the cost of living and his targeted outreach to Muslim and South Asian voters will inspire people disillusioned by the political status quo and those long ignored by citywide candidates to flock to the polls the many different groups uniting behind him will have challenged the rules about which political coalitions wield power in the city Roughly two months out from the New York City Democratic primary Mamdani has already defied many people’s expectations about how far he could go in the mayoral race proud affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America lack of managerial experience and willingness to break from mainstream Democratic orthodoxy to criticize Israel and defend Palestinians – all factors naysayers initially said clouded his viability – didn’t stop his rise to second place in the polls His economic populist message coupled with his social media strategy his charisma and massive volunteer force have made him a serious mayoral challenger – one who hit the $8 million fundraising cap faster than any other candidate and who many observers are starting to see as front-runner Andrew Cuomo’s chief rival “He’s pretty concise and succinct around what he wants to do,” said Jasmine Gripper co-director of the left-leaning Working Families Party which really is the power of strong messaging around things that actually resonate.” New York City primaries have notoriously low turnout rarely exceeding a quarter of the city’s eligible electorate In a city with the second largest Jewish population in the world Mamdani would be the first mayor to take an openly critical stance on Israel since the country was established Cuomo has near universal name recognition and a commanding lead in every poll there is growing consensus that there could be a path for Mamdani One that will put his ability to build a truly broad multiracial cross-class coalition to the test Mamdani said he went into his campaign knowing the story he wanted to tell and the people he hoped to bring together He’d entered the already crowded field believing that while there is not an ideological majority in New York City most New Yorkers feel they’ve been left behind by the economic policies of this mayoral administration and politics today It’s a reality he said will allow him to build a broad constituency – one that extends across the five boroughs stretching “far beyond the caricatures of where these kinds of ideas can live and die.” Affordability has emerged as the central theme in the mayoral race, spurring the many Democrats running to replace New York City Mayor Eric Adams to shape their messages around growing concerns over the cost of living But while many of Mamdani’s fellow progressive candidates have embraced more moderate stances on issues like public safety and the size of the city’s police force the 33-year-old Assembly member has been unapologetic about his policies “He’s always been a very straightforward guy This business can have a lot of duplicitous people,” said state Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris whose district overlaps Mamdani’s and who worked with him on a free bus pilot Critics have derided many of Mamdani’s big, costly policy proposals as overly idealistic and a socialist pipe dream. When asked about Mamdani’s public safety plan, Adams mocked him as “Defund the police Mamdani.” The mayor also cast doubt on his proposals to expand the city’s social safety net “Where are you going to get the money from?” The city’s current fiscal situation doesn’t leave much room for new spending particularly with the threat of federal funding cuts Mamdani has pitched asking the Legislature to raise the city’s 7.25% corporate tax rate to 11.5% – on par with New Jersey – and to increase the income tax rate by 2% for millionaires He has estimated that together these would generate about $10 billion a year though legislative cooperation is no guarantee The idea would likely face stiff opposition from moderate elected officials and the city’s powerful business community Other policies like his free bus proposal would also require the support of state lawmakers It’s not just Mamdani’s platform – realistic or not – that’s won him such a devoted following though It’s how he’s approaching politics at a time when the Democratic Party is facing criticism for failing to meaningfully connect with voters and to effectively respond to President Donald Trump’s agenda A handful of people interviewed for this story described Mamdani’s solutions-oriented delivery his economics-first messaging and advocacy for progressive social issues as reminiscent of 2016 Bernie Sanders and 2008 Barack Obama attempting to push through a barricade of state police officers “Republicans are consistently bringing a gun to a knife fight and the Democrats are holding knives,” said Brooklyn City Council Member Chi Ossé the council’s first Gen Z member and TikTok star to see someone who is actually sticking their neck out speaking to the issues we actually want to hear and running a campaign that is truly grassroots.” Ask any of the Democrats running for mayor about which New Yorkers they are actively courting What is New York City after all if not a grand mosaic of every community The reality is that roughly 27% of the 3.8 million eligible New York City voters participated in the 2021 Democratic and Republican primaries victory is usually bestowed by the New Yorkers who most consistently show up: historically Democratic political consultant Amit Singh Bagga described the city’s matching funds program as the double-edged sword of low-turnout primaries New York City political campaigns tend to use their limited resources to hone in on “triple prime voters,” people who participated in the last three primaries but there’s a cap on how much the candidates can raise and spend – forcing all of them to go after the same groups of existing primary voters and both more English-speaking and home-owning than the broader electorate,” Bagga said Sanitation Department Commissioner Kathryn Garcia appealed to white New York Times-reading liberals across most of Manhattan and much of brownstone Brooklyn civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley mostly won younger voters in hip gentrified neighborhoods in Brooklyn and western Queens former presidential candidate Andrew Yang made inroads in northeast Queens and southern Brooklyn with a coalition of Asian and Orthodox Jewish voters Adams won with the working-class outer borough Black and Latino voters in Southeast Queens Mamdani is already extremely popular with the left and young voters – the Wiley contingent. Turnout has recently grown among young voters – 18% of 18-29 year olds and 22% of 30-39 year olds participated in the 2021 mayoral primary the city’s second most recent open primary those numbers respectively were 11% and 15% Mamdani reached the maximum public matching funds program fundraising cap with more small donations than any other mayoral candidate The average contribution amount has been $84 educators have been the most frequent followed closely by students And multiple political observers and community leaders said they expect an unprecedented number of South Asians and Arab New Yorkers to show up for Mamdani While over 350,000 of the city’s roughly 1 million Muslims are registered to vote only about 12% voted in the last mayoral election meaning there is a lot of potential for growth a practicing Muslim born in Uganda to parents from India has resonated with many New Yorkers who aren’t used to seeing themselves reflected in the halls of political power He would be both the first Muslim and first South Asian New York City mayor “The message that is out there in the South Asian community a South Asian and Muslim community organizer and activist They are being told to realize the power of voting But Mamdani will also need to make major inroads with the old-school outer borough coalition of Black and Latino voters who carried Adams to victory in 2021 “It’s going to be tough for him to reach these two groups because of this perception – whether it’s real or not – that DSA has been soft on crime and that their proposals have not led to any progress on the public safety front,” Democratic political consultant Eli Valentin “He needs to inspire confidence in this electorate Mamdani said he sees his path to victory as stitching together the constituencies Wiley and Adams assembled in the last mayoral primary while expanding the electorate to encompass Muslim South Asian and other ethnic communities who haven’t had much sway in prior elections He said he believes Adams won in 2021 in large part because of his message of empowering the working class – often with progressive language “As much as he characterized his message around public safety He spoke to New Yorkers that they need not choose between justice and safety,” Mamdani said “Now he has shown himself fundamentally uninterested in the former and unable to deliver the latter but it is important to remember that there is a path here between these constituencies that are often framed as oppositional.” Cultural fluency has been a priority in Mamdani’s strategy Campaign literature has so far been translated into Urdu Arabic and Bangla – the languages most commonly spoken by Muslims in the city in addition to English – and Spanish Mandarin and Haitian Creole are being created now Two full-time staffers are dedicated to engaging Muslim and South Asian New Yorkers The campaign is also currently in the process of hiring a Spanish-language press secretary who will be dedicated to reaching Spanish-speaking voters online and across traditional news media nearly 800 are registered Spanish speakers Mamdani said that effort alone is not enough; outreach to communities must be sophisticated and individualized thus feeding the cycle of city elections being decided by people already engaged in politics “What’s so frustrating sometimes when you speak to New Yorkers of color is that the investment that is given to a triple prime voter is often denied to a voter who would carry the same impact if they were given a reason,” Mamdani said “We need to treat voters the way that shows their worth.” That’s something that’s really been missing,” Mark-Viverito said Hoping to reach an even broader spectrum of New Yorkers staff are creating a multilingual video about Mamdani’s campaign in Uzbek The purpose is twofold: to stitch together into one video but also to disseminate them individually across WhatsApp and other platforms who has been floated as a possible Working Families Party candidate in the general election if he loses the Democratic primary “We can do all these things in tandem,” Mamdani said “We can tell people to register and join the party and we can also speak to those who’ve been in the party for decades while recognizing the ways in which this party has fallen short and try to live up to the ideals that excited so many years ago.” There are roughly seven weeks to go until the New York City Democratic mayoral primary Seven weeks for Mamdani to flood the airwaves with television advertisements introducing himself and his policies to a broader audience Seven weeks to weather attacks from a well-funded Cuomo machine – and to launch his own barbs in kind Seven weeks to be everywhere and do everything to secure further endorsements from influential electeds and unions Seven weeks to transport potential voters from a place of what is often passive interest to actual boots-on-the-ground supporters come Election Day his indisputable rise to second in the polls his ardent supporters – both online and in the streets – his egalitarian platform and the roughly $7.5 million he’s got in the bank are a powerful springboard entering this key final stretch Other big questions that could have a big impact on Mamdani’s campaign are still to be answered – like whether he will win Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s coveted endorsement grow his support with labor unions and whether the Working Families Party will decide to rank him first “At the very least he’s going to be in second place For a 33-year-old junior Assembly member to overperform as much as he has he has done more for his career than anyone else,” Democratic political strategist Trip Yang said “He could easily leverage himself for a congressional seat for a borough presidency – anything else probably he’s probably the front-runner in the next race he runs.” Mamdani says he’s not in the race to elevate his profile nor to set himself up for the next big thing He pointed out that while people have described his campaign as having a ceiling since day one he has already exceeded those initial expectations News & Politics Policy Personality Opinion NYN Media List Nominations First Read Magazine Resource Directory Events Jobs About Merchandise Awards, Plaques & Permissions Help us tailor content specifically for you: Thank you for subscribing! 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Never before, in modern times at least, has a New York City mayoral race known such a generation gap and a three-term governor with tangible accomplishments does Cuomo’s top rival, as of now, is a 33-year-old state assemblyman named Zohran Mamdani has consistently polled second to Cuomo — if a distant second — and has rapidly built up name recognition through social-media channels Cuomo mostly ignores a proud democratic socialist who has won a bevy of new fans through his witty videos and promises to freeze rents and make buses free and he’s outraised every candidate in the race though the ex-governor can still pound the airwaves with his super-PAC (Disclosure: When I ran for office in 2018 Cuomo and Mamdani couldn’t be more different Cuomo is a 67-year-old white man who has been in the maw of politics longer than Mamdani has been alive He spent much of his career as an executive He has close relationships with corporate executives and real-estate developers; he loathes the progressive left and has made his mayoral campaign a referendum on their policies including defunding the police and not sufficiently supporting Israel Cuomo and Mamdani briefly overlapped in Albany: The democratic socialist entered the Legislature in 2021 representing the leftist hotbed of Astoria and was one of the lawmakers who might have voted to impeach the governor if he hadn’t resigned Mamdani, meanwhile, has spent much of his life in the trenches of pro-Palestinian activism. In the past, he has identified as an anti-Zionist, and he is a supporter of the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement against Israel. After the Trump administration tried to deport Mahmoud Khalil the former Columbia student who led protests against the war in Gaza last year Mamdani emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the MAGA movement In New York City, like America, Israel may be the greatest dividing line between voters in their 20s and 30s and those who are older The youngest voters take an increasingly dim view of Israel; among Democrats it’s almost impossible to find an Israel hawk who is overly popular with a voter born after 1984 or so Liberals of a certain generation can still recall Labor Zionism and a time when the right wing of the Israel was marginalized That 2021 primary could have been a generation-gap election, but there were too many viable candidates and the polling remained far more volatile. That year’s Mamdani equivalent was probably Dianne Morales, a political neophyte who excited leftists but presided over one of the more chaotic campaigns in living memory a former de Blasio administration official also gobbled up votes from younger Democrats but she lost out in ranked-choice voting to Kathryn Garcia a relative centrist who won over more affluent liberals largely Black region where Cuomo should perform quite well professional-class voters are registered as Democrats and showing up in primaries Bernie Sanders campaigns taught at least one lesson to these progressives: Better register as a Democrat to matter in New York Mamdani’s campaign will be a test of how far pro-Palestine politics can go in a New York mayoral race It’s not an exaggeration to say that there has never been a competitive candidate like Mamdani in a citywide Democratic primary before; he’s young Orthodox Jewish voters and many moderates won’t go near him Progressives will do anything they can to elect him One wild card that does transcend generations is the Muslim and South Asian vote New York is home to an increasing share of both visiting mosques and temples and touting his work helping city taxi drivers a mix of working- and middle-class Black and Latino voters along with older white ethnics anti-Cuomo candidates can’t perform better Cuomo may also swallow up some of Garcia’s voters in lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn Mamdani has performed as well as anyone could have imagined for a state legislator who is still too young to legally serve as president But whether that’s enough to slow Cuomo’s juggernaut remains to be seen By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York Her focus is on polling and California politics including the 2024 election and pro-Palestine protests at U.S Martha joined Newsweek in 2024 from The Independent and had previously freelanced at The Sun She is a graduate of Durham University and did her NCTJ at News Associates You can get in touch with Martha by emailing m.mchardy@newsweek.com either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content New York City officials announced on Sunday plans to install hundreds of panic buttons in bodegas in an effort to tackle ongoing crime The announcement comes after a series of recent violent incidents inside bodegas across the city's five boroughs a 33-year-old man was fatally stabbed multiple times inside a bodega in Harlem In another incident last month, a gang of suspects dressed up like NYPD officers stormed into a store in Bedford-Stuyvesant a 24-year-old Harlem bodega worker was stabbed in the neck with a knife during an attempted robbery Mayor Eric Adams announced on Sunday during a press conference outside a deli in The Bronx that the city will invest $1.6 million to install up to 500 panic buttons in hundreds of bodegas following a series of recent violent incidents at them The devices will connect directly to the NYPD's central command center bypassing traditional 911 dispatchers to help reduce response times The mayor added they will be installed in stores in "hotspot" crime areas which will be installed by the company SilentShield The United Bodegas of America (UBA) has been requesting funding for panic buttons with the first call coming when New York Governor Kathy Hochul introduced the idea a year ago This is not the first time panic buttons have been installed in bodegas A pilot program launched in June by UBA and SaferWatch had installed 50 panic buttons in high-crime bodegas but critics noted inconsistent response times due to poor integration with police New York City Mayor Eric Adams said: "Instead of just having the cats keeping away the rats we're going to have a direct connection with the police to keep away those dangerous cats that try to rob our stores and what this is going to do is add an extra layer of safety for those who actually have the panic buttons and the direct communication to the police the element of surprise — 500 of these devices throughout the entire city." NYPD Chief of Department John Chell said at the Sunday press conference: "SilentShields aside from giving workers peace of mind as it serves It allows quick response by a potential violent situation on police officers to save lives It gives our responding officers situational awareness to keep them safe and it gives our detective squad great tools to catch people after the fact it helps keep everyone safe and sends a message..." United Bodegas of America spokesman Fernando Mateo said Sunday: "Panic buttons is what's going to save the lives of so many Not just the lives of bodega owners and workers; the lives of so many that have ran into a bodega seeking safe shelter and they've been killed." The buttons will be installed in the coming weeks and will be distributed through an emergency grant to the UBA Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsweek is committed to journalism that is factual and fair We value your input and encourage you to rate this article Newsletters in your inbox See all An official website of the United States government Watch Live at 11:30 a.m. ET: Results of Nationwide Law Enforcement Effort Press Conference View the latest ICE guidance on COVID-19 Get information about how to check in with your local ICE Office here Reportándose con ICE: Obtenga información sobre cómo reportarse a su oficina local de ICE aquí View in other languages Call 1-866-DHS-2-ICE to report suspicious activityReport Crime Learn More About ICE ICE's ERO officers uphold United States immigration laws by focusing on individuals who present the greatest risk to national security View the annual report Media Inquiries Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Ecuadorian national Marcia Lorena Bueno Guartatanga May 1 The 38-year-old illegal alien has criminal convictions for acting in a manner to injure a child for allowing her husband to sexually abuse her daughter predatory actions against children should not be tolerated by the public and will not be tolerated by this field office What makes this situation even more unfathomable is the mother’s role in the victimization of her daughter,” said ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations New York City acting Field Office Director William P “ICE remains committed to prioritizing public safety by arresting and removing aliens who violate children in the most abhorrent manner.” Bueno entered the United States on an unknown date and at an unknown location without admission or parole by an immigration official Bueno was convicted of an act to injure a child less than age 17 and hindering prosecution in White Plains She was sentenced to 95 days in prison and three years of probation She was arrested and indicted for allowing her child to be sexually abused by her husband ICE Fugitive Operations officers arrested Bueno without incident pursuant to a warrant of arrest for violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act She is currently in ICE detention pending removal proceedings Learn more about ERO New York City’s mission to preserve public safety on X at @ERONewYork For media inquiries about ICE activities, operations, or policies, contact the ICE Office of Public Affairs at ICEMedia@ice.dhs.gov. Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world New York Town Beat ICESackets Harbor demanded that Tom Homan return three children and their mother met for its regularly scheduled session on April 15 Sackets Harbor was still a feel-good story Three immigrant students at the tiny upstate New York public school had been apprehended on March 27 in a raid of a local farm They were shipped with their mother to a detention center in Texas after days of silence from federal agencies local news outlets reported the family was in “removal proceedings.” Now those tenants say the luxury tower is beset by cracks Unit owners have filed two separate complaints against the building's developers says the building is plagued with structural issues and accuses the developers of not addressing them accuses the developers of "massive fraud." Renting a unit at 432 Park Avenue can cost $1 million a year a two-bedroom unit is listed for sale for over $10 million while a four-bedroom unit is listed for sale for $35 million a New York City listings site owned by Zillow owners of 432 Park's 104 condos have access to 30,000 square feet of amenities A board representing individual and commercial unit owners at 432 Park listed CIM Group and the company they formed to build the condominium in the 2021 lawsuit "What was promised as one of the finest condominiums in the City was instead delivered riddled with over 1,500 identified construction and design defects to the common elements of the Building alone (leaving aside the numerous defects within individual units)," tenants said in the 2021 complaint They said the developers "refused to accept responsibility for the vast majority of its errors" and didn't properly address the defects The building's developers defended themselves in a 2021 court filing: "432 Park had such issues — no different from any other building have vastly exaggerated the scope of the work that was required (both in the reports of their consultant and in their Complaint) in furtherance of their gambit to exact undue payments from Sponsor." the tenants filed a second lawsuit against the group which is owned by the founder of Macklowe Properties The unit owners said those companies knew "since the outset of construction that the Building's white concrete façade's design was wholly defective and would never hold up." The developers "conspired with the other Defendants to concoct and disseminate fraudulent misrepresentations through the condominium offering plan and the Department of Buildings to conceal these alarming defects from Unit Owners in order to secure massive profits and leave Plaintiffs holding the bag," unit owners said in the April complaint The Wall Street Journal published an analysis from real-estate listings and property records as well as interviews with people familiar with the building that showed that the ongoing issues and legal action have pushed down sales activity and prices Compass realtors Alexandra Hedaya and Jason Haber told Business Insider that they hadn't yet seen any impact on prices as a result of the lawsuits They hold the listing for a 4,462-square-foot five-bedroom on the 55th floor now listed for $29.5 million The home first hit the market in 2022 for $33 million The developer sold it to its current owner for 23.87 million in 2016 according to New York City property records I can't tell you who hasn't called me because they're like I don't want to look in the building.' So I only know the people who contact me about the building," Haber said and the developer group did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider Representatives for SLCE Architects and CIM Group denied the accusations in the April complaint and told BI they planned to move to dismiss it "This matter extends beyond negligence into an alleged calculated scheme the lawsuits offer a glimpse of what it's like to live in the famous building Tenants said they experienced "repeated" leakage and floods in the building's common areas The leaks caused water to enter the elevator shaft shutting down service for two of four residential elevators "for weeks," according to the 2021 complaint suffered water damage," the unit owners said "An investigation revealed that the cause was poor plumbing installation including loose bolts buried under insulation." "Persistent" water infiltration issues have also affected the tower's sub-basement levels Other issues tenants had with 432 Park Avenue's structure were noise and vibration which they called one of the building's "most persistent and disruptive defects" in 2021 Using the trash chute sounds 'like a bomb,'" unit owners said in the complaint "The noise and vibration issues have been so severe that some Unit Owners have been forced to move out for lengthy periods and in at least one case for over nineteen months — during a pandemic — while the issue is remediated." Malfunctions with the building's elevators were also mentioned in the 2021 complaint "While Elevator disruptions have been particularly pervasive in the Residential towers have experienced and continue to experience malfunctions and shutdowns," tenants said "Even escalators in the commercial space have malfunctioned the unit owner said in the complaint that the construction resulted in "wind conditions frequently disrupting the Building's elevator operations." the second complaint from tenants focused on the white concrete façade that comprises the building's exterior Unit owners said the design means the exterior is "plagued with thousands of severe cracks which have led to major water infiltrations and flooding corrosion of the steel rebar reinforcing the concrete columns They said the parties listed in their 2025 complaint knew the façade would "never" hold up and the group ignored warnings about potential defects Residents said there were also visible cracks in the drywall on the walls and ceilings of the condos But that's not all: The 2021 complaint also cited "baseboard pulling and misaligned joints grout joint openings and cracking at walls or floors in ceramic and/or stone tiling gaps and misalignment between wall and ceiling light fixtures Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly I went to the West Village to meet a West Village Girl When I arrived at the whitewashed wine bar she chose just two blocks from the brownstone stoop Carrie Bradshaw made famous Miranda McKeon was journaling in her notebook and sipping a cup of green tea and a black sweatshirt that read SELF-EMPLOYED because she is a full-time influencer — or “creator,” as it is more polite to say in this part of town rosy-cheeked 23-year-old from New Jersey has over a million followers across TikTok and Instagram most often about her charmed life in the West Village: sweating it out at Pilates drinking espresso martinis with her girlfriends Over a photo of herself walking down the street Wear cowboy boots year round if you love them!!! McKeon knew she wanted to rent in the West Village long before she moved to New York In college at the University of Southern California she started hearing from high-school friends that it was the place to live — a cobblestoned paradise where a young woman like herself could live an entire life within a block McKeon started obsessively combing StreetEasy for the perfect postgrad apartment and watched Sex and the City for the first time (She identifies as a Carrie with some of Miranda’s “girlboss energy”; she majored in entrepreneurship.) Now eight months in she likes that the neighborhood reminds her of being back on campus insofar as she is constantly running into people she knows they are girls she follows or who follow her “I feel like a freshman in New York,” she said to be a remarkably well-adjusted and unjaded New Yorker she likes going out for what she calls a “three-drinker” (a nice dinner with her girlfriends with a self-imposed three-cocktail minimum) She knows the names of the important restaurants (the Corner Store “I went out to dinner with two girls last night both of whom live on my street,” she told me Maybe her only complaint so far is her apartment there have been the occasional cockroaches and — just this morning — a strange brown substance that dripped out of the brick wall onto her roommate’s comforter She’s planning to resign the lease next year anyway slapping the table between us with both hands “There’s a cult mentality” to the neighborhood It’s true that many of the young women passing by the bar looked like her clones They move through the neighborhood in packs and hair slicked back into a tight ponytail McKeon cheekily pointed out through the window “I feel like everyone else here in some way,” McKeon told me transformed into a fabulous theme park for young women of some privilege to live out their Sex and the City fantasies They all seem to keep impressive workout routines (“Hot this and hot that,” McKeon said) and juggle busy heterosexual dating schedules (The boys they consort with tend to be of the fratty variety.) They work in finance tech — often with active social-media accounts on the side They have seemingly endless disposable income their lives seem fairly apolitical; as one 27-year-old lawyer on a walk with her best friend succinctly put their collective interests to me one day in April drinks with your girlfriends — that type of energy.” (They may be more political than they appear: “You can have a Cartier Love bracelet and still care about immigrant rights,” said one person who lives in the neighborhood.) This isn’t the first time a generation of socially ambitious young women has descended on the West Village and as one fashion executive explained to me with just a hint of an eye roll “made the neighborhood their whole personality,” fundamentally changing it along the way If Sex and the City washed out the last of the neighborhood’s bohemians two decades ago and turned the West Village into a celebrity playground where real adults with real incomes live the pandemic turned it into something else entirely: a bustling sorority house Let’s go out and have fun and be ourselves Play hard,” said a new arrival from Texas with blonde highlights while polishing off a bottle of rosé with her girlfriends one afternoon “Basic isn’t a bad thing,” a crew of Cosmo drinkers at Anton’s “There’s a reason everyone wants to be like that.” (There’s a sense lately that the entire city or at least much of downtown Manhattan and the trendier parts of Brooklyn “They’re everywhere,” almost everyone I talked to for this story told me.) A so-called real New Yorker might survey a neighborhood overtaken by this homogenized mass and scoff at what was once a haven for artists and gays admiringly described to me by multiple people as like Charleston But to the actual people living in those places who broadcast their lives like reality television to their millions of followers They seem to be enjoying their city more than the rest of us do “Finding a new restaurant to have an Aperol spritz and hang out That’s a new level of enlightenment,” said Kit Keenan an influencer and former Bachelor contestant who helped put this new version of the neighborhood on the map Are the West Village Girls doing something right then a 27-year-old former Refinery29 producer moved to the neighborhood from the Lower East Side styling herself on TikTok as a Samantha Jones type and giving her hundreds of thousands of followers — whom she called her “gorgeous (She popularized the Gen-Z catchphrase “Do it for the plot.”) The neighborhood some of its residents presumably having fled for the Hamptons or Connecticut (save for the diehards holed up in rent-stabilized apartments) Kerrigan rebranded the West Village as a haven for single women dubbing the West Side Highway “Club West Side Highway” and using the newly opened restaurant American Bar as a sort of local country club the restaurant put her name on the menu; you could order the chopped salad “SFK style,” meaning with a negroni a group of girls had taken over an entire section all of them wearing black fascinators as if attending a funeral The hostess explained that it was a young woman named Mallory’s “RIP to my 20s” birthday dinner Kerrigan wasn’t the only up-and-coming influencer posting furiously through the pandemic and giving the neighborhood a younger but the background was the same: the West Village made legible for women fresh out of a Big Ten school She posed with a Blank Street matcha on a stoop; in front of the pastry case at Bar Pisellino; with her iPhone outside the wine bar St Everything in both Keenan’s and Kerrigan’s accounts was calibrated to be just the right level of accessible yet enviable: fast fashion and white sneakers all set against a picture-perfect backdrop of New York City recognizable from everyone’s favorite middlebrow television shows Among its other most attractive attributes: The Friends apartment is there which Taylor Swift featured on Lover in 2019 The young women who follow Kerrigan and Keenan — fellow New Yorkers and transplants alike — soon flooded the neighborhood So many that it became a memeable stereotype: “the West Village Girl.” In a post last September a TikToker named Kayla Trivieri summed up the type under the caption “POV: you’re on a date with a girl from the west village.” The monologue went like this: “So what are you into?” “Pilates and my dachshund …” “What kind of music do you like?” “Sabrina Carpenter and Morgan Wallen once in a while.” When I asked Trivieri about the send-up recently the native Canadian told me she became familiar with the type before she even moved to the States “She was the cultural Zeitgeist on TikTok,” Trivieri said I felt like people in Toronto were even dressing like that in head-to-toe Pilates gear.” (The influencer Tinx sells a $75 crewneck that reads RICH MOM WEST VILLAGE.) To put New York youth culture into high-school terms Kerrigan said the West Village Girls are “the Plastics years after she started posting from the neighborhood she often has to wait on line to get coffee at her favorite shop “I’m thinking about how that’s kind of my fault,” she added But it’s a beautiful sharing of information are a good place to meet friends.) Kerrigan said the West Village is now filled with “young powerhouse women with vision boards,” ambitious zoomers who idolize Alex Cooper and Carrie Bradshaw in equal measure The appeal is “the main-character energy you get when you’re in the West Village,” which feels when the luxury industry was thriving and Sex and the City was in its first run the West Village was an if-you-know-you-know kind of place for the fashion set — publicists and stylists who had just arrived from the provinces and were similarly hoping to have a good time kind of like a college town,” said Bonnie Morrison a former publicist and magazine editor (living in the West Village was a positive attribute in her first interview at Condé Nast) Within convenient walking distance was the Meatpacking District “It was all about coming home at five in the morning coming home in Manolos on the cobblestoned streets,” said the British socialite Lucy Sykes “There was blood everywhere” — there were still slaughterhouses in Meatpacking “You really did not know what could happen The DJ changes the music and then all of a sudden ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ is playing because Axl Rose just walked in,” said Morrison you could hit the all-night diner Florent with the off-duty drag queens “I’d come home and somebody would be passed out in my bed with Sky Ferreira,” said Savannah Engel a fashion publicist who moved to the neighborhood in 2009 “I’d wake up on a Tuesday and there’d be ten people passed out in my apartment We’d all be in black” because that’s what they were required to wear to work “It was fabulous.” Her rent cost around $900 a month called the Greenwich Avenue Equinox the Chic-quinox: “Everybody was there at six in the morning so they could be skinny in their sample sizes for Patrick McMullan,” the party photographer and so did the Sex and the City–loving tourists Bleecker Street had transformed into a proper shopping destination and Brunello Cucinelli opened stores — BLEECKER’S BECKONING the New York Post squawked — and Maison Margiela and Juicy Couture soon followed It became a high-end outdoor mall for window-shopping if not actual shopping “The colorful bohemia has crossed the tracks,” read a 2007 New York Times report “leaving a respectable neighborhood of high rents The children replaced the gays — the men have left for Chelsea gobbling up the newly sanitized neighborhood’s real estate Rupert Murdoch bought his 25-foot-wide townhouse for $25 million in 2015; the next year Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick purchased two adjacent townhouses for $34.5 million Graydon Carter’s Waverly Inn became a “celebrity playground” of “idling SUVs,” as one person put it The Post termed a corner of the neighborhood near West 11th Street “the real Billionaires’ Row,” citing Mets owner Steve Cohen and former Facebook president Sean Parker as residents But the retail scene couldn’t handle the rising rents most of the storefronts on Bleecker Street were vacant “The landlords started jacking up the prices,” said Rowley The pandemic offered an opportunity for a cultural reset which helps online-only brands find and operate their first brick-and-mortar began scooping up tranches of empty addresses on Bleecker The company currently leases 11 stores in a four-block stretch It then staffs and operates the spaces for its brands “Any time we go into launching a cluster of stores we think about whether or not it’s an area we can grow,” said Amish Tolia “Energy begets energy.” (The company now operates more than 100 stores total mostly in trendy but touristy shopping areas like Abbot Kinney in Los Angeles and Armitage in Chicago.) Leap had evidence that its bet on the neighborhood would pay off: Several of its brands were already shipping often to apartments in the neighborhood It was a strategy Brookfield Properties had already been pursuing pre-pandemic (It sold them last year for $20.25 million.) “We merchandised to support the market,” said a Brookfield representative “I don’t think it’s accidental that our businesses were very female oriented We took advantage of noticing who was patronizing this community.” As for the apartments the businesses were shipping to the average one-bedroom in the neighborhood is now $5,995 a month A dingy one-bedroom can easily go for $7,500 (expensive but doable on a finance salary or with help from parents) Most of the young women who approach Compass agent Heather Domi opt to live nearby instead she said: “If the girls aren’t living in the West Village they’re consuming the West Village.” (Still data shows that more 25-to-34-year-olds moved to the West Village between 2019 and 2023 than any other age group.) Now the area has been remade in their image Every other storefront seems to be a coffee shop Everything that isn’t a bar is called one: There’s BeamBar (for teeth whitening) a “charm bar” (for build-your-own bracelets) which hawks monogrammed makeup bags; a TikTok-friendly candy shop; and the ultragirlie ultrasuccessful clothing brand LoveShackFancy selling a Bella Hadid–collaboration two-piece Magnolia Bakery’s signature banana pudding briefly came matcha-flavored The storefronts are filled with fake pink flowers Signs placed on the sidewalks outside seem made to beckon the girlies inside Outside Joe & the Juice: THIS WEEK BEEN SO ROUGH MY COFFEE NEEDS COFFEE “We’re trying to figure out how to manage the amount of traffic we’re getting in stores “The racks will be empty because everyone’s trying almost everything on in the dressing rooms It looks like a Black Friday thing.” In April I visited a new “jewelry bar” on Bleecker called Ana Luisa Jewelry an influencer brand that specializes in affordable rings and earrings It opened in the corner store that used to be Marc by Marc Jacobs and Sarah Jessica Parker’s shoe store before the brand shut down last year Ana Luisa won the location in an aggressive bidding war and sold $1,000 worth of inventory in the first 30 minutes They come here and then to Magnolia Bakery,” he said this is the neighborhood that’s rebounded the fastest.” This month another jewelry store will open 230 feet away The original West Village Girls — those who have remained in the neighborhood and didn’t jet off to Greenwich or to a classic six uptown — aren’t entirely pleased with their new neighbors a former Calvin Klein executive who bought a loft in the neighborhood in 1997 but this is the pinnacle of what happened to this fucking neighborhood,” she said when we sat down at Bar Pisellino was packed with young women ordering spritzes and pastries It’s so unpleasant.” Not to mention it’s impossible to get a table at I Sodi or Via Carota these days two once-neighborly Italian restaurants that were tumbled through the TikTok recommendation machine and came out nearly unrecognizable with lines of day-trippers waiting down the block at all hours of the day “I used to go to I Sodi when they had an answering machine The last time she tried to have dinner with a friend Another common complaint is the neighborhood’s current pedestrian experience Vernon occasionally passes Carrie’s stoop to give the influencers a talking-to: “I say to them That’s actually trespassing.’ ” Earlier this year the resident was granted permission to install a gate to deter them from making what has become a sort of pilgrimage (TikTok is filled with recommendations for other neighborhood backdrops to take photos in front of if you get shooed away from this one.) A curly-haired 20-something sat down across the bar from us and ordered a bowl of olives and a negroni well-dressed woman having a snack on her own.” Another chief complaint among the originals is that these new West Village Girls don’t seem to be having enough fun (or it wasn’t about getting the right workout look,” said Rachelle Hruska MacPherson “It wasn’t so health conscious,” said Rowley noting that her morning walks on the West Side Highway weren’t always as crowded as the New York City Marathon People didn’t walk around in their leggings and sneakers.” The old bars and restaurants are also adjusting to the new whims and tastes “I have regulars who come in all the time and say ‘What happened?’ It’s just an army of Levi’s and white tank tops,” a bartender at Bayard’s a newly popping but long-standing Irish pub on Hudson Street she showed me a box of lost phones and another box of abandoned clothes which she lugs to Housing Works once a month.) In the fall of 2023 the restaurant and bar Cowgirl decided to convert one of its margarita machines into one for frozen espresso martinis I don’t know where they’re getting their money from We never had demand like this.” The Spaniard a cocktail bar by day and a shockingly rowdy hookup spot by night had to hire an entire security team after what one manager described as a “mass exodus” of the older (Its top-three sellers now are spicy margaritas which are pre-batched into kegs.) At L’Artusi told me he’s selling less expensive wine post-pandemic the crowd was kind of that classic West Village type Masters of the Universe with good jobs and no kids,” he said “A $150 bottle of wine doesn’t compare to a vodka-soda.” As a waitress at La Bonbonniere an old-school diner that has been around since the 1930s Now it’s young people with the social media no one would go on the record getting too snarky about any of this; it all makes for good business And some former West Village Girls admitted eventually that in their descendants they could see their younger selves “I think they’re probably doing what I did when I was 20 This is where they want to go around and get drinks and run into people and look cool,” said Hruska MacPherson We were also discovering ourselves.” Annelise Peterson echoed this thought: “We were discovering ourselves I stayed down there until my ex-husband told me it was time to move to the Upper East Side What the West Village will be in 20 years might be something very different It’s easy to get reflective after a few brunchtime cocktails “Was I one of these little fuckers?” Savannah Engel wondered aloud to me one Sunday after Bloody Marys at Cafe Cluny and as the neighborhood is most days of the week but especially on Saturdays and Sundays and especially when good weather calls for day-drinking the scaries away If I hadn’t spent so much time there recently I might have been shocked to pass three stoops in a row all occupied by young women staging photo shoots I met a collection of thin blonde women in pink They told me they work in finance and marketing and had just moved to the neighborhood after graduating from Washington and Lee University “The girls that we knew from college who moved to New York before us told us to go to the West Village and we just kind of trusted them,” said one They do what we do; we live parallel lives they told me they can’t quite imagine staying in New York forever “I don’t think I’ll raise kids here or anything like that,” said the pink puffer a group of two dozen women in matching leggings came jogging by chitter-chattering over their huffing and puffing At the front of the pack was Miranda McKeon “How did people find this?” she yelled to the ladies behind her “Miranda’s a beep-bop girl too,” a brunette who works in marketing and just moved here from Georgetown told me we like to beep-bop around.” I asked the group What are young people in New York looking for it’s clear these young women have found something that eludes most of us “I’ve been really trying to do more in-person things,” said McKeon It’s nice seeing real people.” Upon our arrival several older millennials who appeared to be co-working at the shop grimaced alternately catching up over white-wine spritzers and taking brief breaks to absent-mindedly look at their phones clock in to her Hinge account (no new messages) then throw a few heart reacts into yet another group chat she told me she settled here two years ago after a breakup; it’s a good place to be single By: 7:30 am on May 5 YIMBY photographed the sites of two forthcoming developments on Manhattan’s Upper East Side The properties are likely to give rise to new residential buildings that will add much-needed housing units to the thriving neighborhood 3,472-square-foot interior lot between Second and Third Avenues Demolition has concluded on the former occupant which stood five stories and was owned by the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health The 48-foot-tall structure had served as a community housing building with 36 units managed by the New York City Department of Homeless Services and also included on-site case management and clinical services It is currently unclear what will replace the building The following photos show the site cleared of its former occupant and masonry rubble scattered across the rectangular parcel A lone excavator remains on the property from the demolition Additional photographs below show the site at the beginning of the year when crews were in the process of dismantling the ground level of the former 99-year-old building The below Google Street View image shows the former occupant before its demolition. Stroh Engineering Services filed demolition permits for the structure in December 2022 The nearest subways from the site are the Q train at the 86th Street station to the east along Second Avenue and 6 trains at the 86th Street station to the west at Lexington Avenue and a construction timeline for 222 East 86th Street have yet to be revealed The second development is 1482-1484 First Avenue a pair of interior lots between East 77th and East 78th Streets Demolition preparations are underway on 1482 First Avenue which stands four stories and spans 7,100 square feet which stands two stories and measures 13,600 square feet Demolition is anticipated to cost approximately $900,000 per building Alchemy Properties purchased the assemblage from Parkoff Organization and Prize Network Group for $33.7 million last fall Plans have yet to be announced for the project but given the Alchemy’s history of condominium developments the new structure will most likely be residential The following photos show the buildings shrouded in scaffolding and black netting YIMBY expects both structures to be razed by the summer The below Google Street View image shows the appearance of the occupants before work began The nearest subway from the development is the Q train at the 86th Street station along Second Avenue and construction timeline for 1482-1484 First Avenue have also yet to be revealed Subscribe to YIMBY’s daily e-mail Follow YIMBYgram for real-time photo updates Like YIMBY on Facebook Follow YIMBY’s Twitter for the latest in YIMBYnews Do you have any news regarding the graffiti covered building at corner of 9th avenue Where is the information on the new developments All I see is demolition without any plans for the new construction The UES has a history of “evict and demolish first The biggest offender is currently 1st and 85/86th where Extell is speculating on a full block face of first avenue They are no doubt waiting to put up another medical office building which I find ridiculous since they evicted many rent stabilized tenants due to an imminent residential project Shockingly that project hasn’t materialized So is it going to be a rent stabilize resident place or is it going to be homeless families forst ga('send', 'event', 'beautyofblock', 'Impression', 'https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Standard_336x280-100-2.jpg', { nonInteraction: true }); ADVERTISEMENT ga('send', 'event', 'PCRichards Builders Division', 'Impression', 'https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PCR_Beko_Compact_YIMB_336x280.jpg', { nonInteraction: true }); ga('send', 'event', 'yimby+', 'Impression', 'https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image.png', { nonInteraction: true }); Follow on Instagram var sb_instagram_js_options = {"font_method":"svg","placeholder":"https:\/\/www.newyorkyimby.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/instagram-feed\/img\/placeholder.png","resized_url":"https:\/\/www.newyorkyimby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sb-instagram-feed-images\/","ajax_url":"https:\/\/www.newyorkyimby.com\/wp-admin\/admin-ajax.php"}; © COPYRIGHT New York YIMBY® LLC, YIMBY IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF NIKOLAI FEDAK / NEW YORK YIMBY LLC, 2025 The $160m makeover to the park’s north side is part of a long-term project to address years of neglect Illustration: Susan T Rodriguez/Central Park Conservancy charges and carrier-imposed fees on top of that fare totalled €368.58 meaning the real price for the customer was €398.58 The carrier-imposed fee for transatlantic flights on Aer Lingus from Ireland to North America is €280 return per passenger on economy bordering on interrogation; and articles about what to do when your electronic devices are searched and how to prepare for that eventuality There’s also the perception that a break in the US right now doesn’t exactly scream carefree [ Deportation anxiety in Irish America: ‘I would have a clean slate before travelling’Opens in new window ] slightly fewer than 39,000 people normally resident in Ireland travelled to the US a drop of 27 per cent compared with March 2024 about 105,000 Irish residents travelled to the US compared with 120,000 in the same period in 2024 It’s important to note that the Easter holidays – a big moment for outward travel from Ireland – were in April this year Perhaps a useful comparison will be April 2025 versus March 2024 Low fares from Ireland to the US aren’t unique to Aer Lingus You could also fly from Dublin to Newark this weekend and return the following Saturday on Austrian Airlines for €400.69 A flight from Dublin to Boston next week (with a stop in Reykjavik) on Play Airlines Keep in mind that these fares are for last-minute bookings Purchasing a transatlantic flight with little notice is usually an expensive endeavour if I want to get under the bonnet of the economics of airfares My mother spent most of her working life selling plane tickets Airfares are basically dynamic pricing,” she said when I told her how low the fares to the US were Under €400 is nearly unsustainable as a fare But that sounds like a stagnant market to me that fare would not be that fare if the flight was filling.” [ Irish J1 visa students urged to be informed of potential risks of ‘activism’ in USOpens in new window ] she traversed a moment of extreme fear regarding air travel working for United Airlines when 9/11 happened particularly within and to and from the US According to the US department of transportation‘s data the drop in monthly passengers on aeroplanes in the US in September 2001 was 33 per cent It took until March 2004 for the number of passengers to recover to the level that existed in August 2001 Business class and first class are extremely important to airlines it’s those fares that essentially pay for the flight But uncertainty regarding what may happen on arrival the US will influence people’s choices “I’m sure there’s some exaggeration with the stories we’re hearing It doesn’t matter if the fear is justified but I’m sure at least some of our fellow Europeans looking to travel to the US may now be thinking of an Irish airport as an interesting option We’re not in a unique position when it comes to pre-clearance There are 15 pre-clearance locations outside of the US If an unanticipated denial of entry occurs at US CBP in Ireland [ Alarm bells are sounding over falling visitor numbers to Ireland. But is tourism really in crisis?Opens in new window ] The one thing that does happen with low airfares is that they encourage people to travel. A bargain is a bargain. Facebook pageTwitter feed© 2025 The Irish Times DAC Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon The best of New York straight to your inbox We help you navigate a myriad of possibilities Sign up for our newsletter for the best of the city By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news Sign up for our email to enjoy New York without spending a thing (as well as some options when you’re feeling flush) By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions. New York pork belly and gochujang is heating up downtown Manhattan A little love is coming to downtown Manhattan and it's bringing Sichuan-spiced pork gochujang-slathered Crunchwraps and some serious street food cred to the area Today, May 5, Cariñito ("little love"), a Michelin-recognized taquería from Mexico City with a bold Southeast Asian twist, will open its first-ever New York City location as a six-month pop-up at 86 University Place in Greenwich Village Known for its globetrotting pop-ups in Paris, London Cariñito’s long-awaited NYC debut will feature a menu built for the local crowd including the Cariñito Crunchywrap—a crispy chili-charged homage to the late-night Taco Bell staple—and the What She's Having taco a Katz's deli-inspired pastrami brisket creation with a cheeky When Harry Met Sally nod “We’re thrilled to bring Cariñito to New York—a six-month adventure filled with tacos that carry chilango soul, mezcal, great wine and cumbia,” partner Joaquin de la Torre tells Time Out. “We’re even bringing in our tortillas from Mexico City for maximum flavor.” Expect more menu standouts from the eatery's original CDMX hits like the herb-loaded Issan taco with Thai pork belly and toasted rice powder plus vegetarian gems like the eggplant Laos taco and cauliflower pibil Sides include sweet corn ribs drenched in madras butter and Guacathai a punchy remix spiked with fish sauce and herbs Cariñito keeps it irreverent with rotating natural wines Mexican Coke and the occasional vino guest star via pop-ups with visiting winemakers The Greenwich Village activation takes over the former El Cantinero space a 35-year-old Mexican cantina best remembered for its cameo on Sex and the City (season 4 Now reimagined by Mexican architect Sofía Betancur and CDMX design studio Agrio cumbia and chilango soul—what’s not to love Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon! tiktokfacebooktwitteryoutubeAbout us Contact us California’s Zuni Cafe pops up in New York — and more intel This also means that its on-site dining court The Campsite by food fair Smorgasburg hasn’t opened yet either All the new restaurant openings in New York this month From Tubes To Turns, Jai Glindeman's Surfing is a Treat to Behold Gerry Lopez Goes Deep With Justin Jay On The Plug Podcast Spot Guide: Rincon Queen, of the Coast NewsAll NewsEventsBig Wave NewsWorld Surf LeagueEnvironmentalIndustryWave PoolsPosts List Winners of SURFER's Emerging Brands Grant Announced New Water Quality Regulations in New York Won’t Necessarily Make Water Any Cleaner Just a handful of relatively short miles upriver from New York City’s outer-borough surf breaks a tiny little sliver of river is the involuntary recipient of about two billion gallons of untreated sewage and polluted storm water per anum it should come as no surprise to anyone that when it precipitates on New York City the Harlem River gets dumped on in every sense of that phrasal verb what with that river being so naturally close to the color of our refuse Apart from those with an acute sense of smell save for when we find out the hard way by entering it and emerging with staph infections Still, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has drafted a proposal to update and upgrade water quality ratings throughout the state A number of bodies of water within New York City are receiving newer some of which—like the one suggested for the Harlem River—deem that with the exception of “wet weather” events due to combined sewer (storm runoff and raw sewage) once unfathomably foul waterways are now suitable for recreational fishing and even bathing The newly introduced measure comes under a sweeping measure to improve water quality in and around New York City and is a celebration of how far our waterways have come particularly since the Clean Water Act of 1970 But as is often the case in bureaucracies, “The devil is in the details,” as Dan Shapley, Senior Director of Advocacy, Policy, and Planning at Riverkeeper a veteran (and storied) nonprofit environmental-watchdog organization founded shortly after the Clean Water Act with the Hudson River’s interests in mind “the details here would allow for all of the currently programmed pollution for the Harlem River to continue indefinitely and where surfing and surf-bathing interests are concerned he says “…that will set the benchmark for what we will see elsewhere in the city as other waterways come up next for their spotlight And so that means Coney Island Creek and the East River and Bronx River several tributaries of Jamaica Bay”—just around the corner from our usually small and gutless but nevertheless beloved surf zone—“and other places that are likely to have a similar prescription.” “Riverkeeper is calling on NYC and NYS to take real, lasting action to fix this,” the organization wrote in an Instagram post We’re unable to load this content right now View directly on Instagram even on surfing sticks along beaches here in the Big Apple however septic and fetid it may be on any given day it could stand to get a little less septic and fetid is about the only source for summer swell in the Northeast and tends to bring rain—lots and lots of it So how are surfers and surf-bathers to take caution we might be best behoven by staying out of the water when it rains But would be no testament to our eastern seaboard grit Regardless of new labeling, New York’s water quality standards are sure to stay the same for the time being, which, with more than 21 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted runoff flowing annually, cannot and should not stand. Riverkeeper has drafted a letter on behalf of one and all entitled “Don’t give up on the Harlem River,” which you can edit and sign here and Jamaica Bay are tomorrow's Rockaway jetties A virtual hearing will be held on Monday and an in-person hearing will take place on June 18 NYS DEC – Region 2 Office8th Floor Conference Room 83447-40 21st StreetLong Island City, NY 11101More details on the DEC DEC events calendar Your request appears similar to malicious requests sent by robots Please make sure JavaScript is enabled and then try loading this page again. If you continue to be blocked, please send an email to secruxurity@sizetedistrict.cVmwom with: Though American politics is conducted at the state and congressional district level polling and analysis are largely done at the national level and will use state-of-the art techniques in political science and data science to bring layers of nuance and depth to polling political science research has demonstrated that policy-makers don't understand the attitudes of their own constituents Our first project involves helping reporters politicians and commentators understand the geography of public opinion through multi-level regression and post-stratification Learning about the political climate is pointless unless we can use that information to bring about change so we'll be collaboration with social scientists and data scientists to bring the techniques they use every day in the office to advance common sense solutions that improve the lives of all Americans In 2021, Data for Progress was the most accurate pollster in terms of predicting the first-round result of the New York City Democratic primary for mayor Data for Progress returns with new polling on the race Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor, is seeking a second term, but he faces a hotly contested Democratic primary following his indictment in a federal corruption investigation in September and accusations of being President Trump’s “puppet” after his charges were dropped by the Justice Department in February New York is a heavily Democratic electorate so the winner of the June 24 primary is assumed to be the favorite heading into the 2025 general election in November From March 17-24, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 854 likely Democratic primary voters in New York City using SMS and web panel respondents. The poll was funded internally and not on behalf of any candidate or organization. In accordance with New York City’s ranked choice voting system for city primary elections voters were asked to rank up to five candidates in order of preference and informed that they must rank at least one candidate.  former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo leads the pack with 39% of the vote followed by State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani with 15% New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams receives 5% and the other five candidates tested receive less than 5% of the vote each.  Per the rules of the ranked choice voting system if no candidate receives a majority of the votes (more than 50%) on the first ballot The candidate in last place is then eliminated and voters who chose that candidate have their vote redistributed to the next choice on their ballot This process continues until there are only two candidates left and the candidate with the most votes wins.  In the final round of ranked choice voting on this survey Although Mamdani wins voters under age 45 by a +14-point margin and keeps the margin close among voters with a college degree (-4-point margin) Cuomo comfortably wins all other demographic groups across age as well as voters without a college degree the race is significantly closer in Brooklyn than it is in the other boroughs With three months remaining until the primary election, the dynamics of this race may still shift. Around this point in 2021, Andrew Yang led in public polling by double digits but ultimately finished fourth Data for Progress conducted a survey of 854 likely Democratic primary voters in New York City using SMS and web panel respondents The sample was weighted to be representative of likely Democratic primary voters by age The margin of error associated with the sample size is ±3 percentage points Results for subgroups of the sample are subject to increased margins of error For more information please visit dataforprogress.org/our-methodology Subscribe to our newsletter to get our latest updates This website is paid for by Data for the Social Good We respect your privacy and do not tolerate spam We will never sell or give away your information to anyone without your consent Video available at: https://youtu.be/je-RtHON-UQ New Initiative Aims to Strengthen Public Confidence by Addressing Everyday Concerns Swiftly   Pilot Program to Begin in Five Precincts and One Housing Police Service Area  Division to Combine Police Officers from Existing Community-Based Units  NEW YORK – New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Jessica S Tisch today announced the formation of the NYPD’s new Quality of Life Division — a citywide public safety initiative focused on enhancing trust between communities and the police while addressing everyday issues that impact New Yorkers' sense of safety and well-being.  The Quality of Life Division will unite specially-trained officers from various existing community-oriented roles — including neighborhood coordination officers and traffic safety officers — into a citywide effort to tackle persistent quality-of-life concerns and other issues that affect New Yorkers’ everyday life have risen steadily across the five boroughs over the last six years The Quality of Life Division is the NYPD’s latest effort to respond urgently to these problems ensuring every concerned New Yorker feels seen and — most importantly — safe.  this administration has been clear: We will not tolerate an atmosphere where anything goes we are taking public safety to the next level with the creation of a new NYPD Quality of Life Division," said Mayor Adams We will not rest until we have addressed the issues that affect the lives of everyday New Yorkers and we will continue to make every borough we will protect public safety and make New York City the best place to raise a family.”  “Thanks to the incredible work of the women and men in blue we’ve seen historic declines in major crimes across the city,” said NYPD Commissioner Tisch we’re turning our attention toward the issues that New Yorkers see and feel every day — the things that don’t always make headlines but deeply impact how people live and the Quality of Life Division will take a direct approach to address these issues impacting our streets and public housing developments I am thankful for Mayor Adams’ support as we take the necessary steps to strengthen the trust between our officers and the communities they serve.”  The Quality of Life Division will roll out in phases beginning with a pilot program in five precincts and one housing Police Service Area: the 13th the initiative will be evaluated and refined before expanding to other commands.  Deputy Chief Glynn will manage analytic and administrative support and coordinate with Quality of Life Teams — or Q-Teams — which will operate on multiple levels.  Using a model based on the NYPD’s main crime data tracker, CompStat a new system called Q-Stat will analyze precinct and public service area data related to 311 service requests Q-Stat meetings will be held monthly — like CompStat meetings beginning in May — and will aim to identify neighborhoods susceptible to chronic quality-of-life conditions There will be no extra cost associated with the formation of the Quality of Life Division Personnel will come from internal restructuring at the NYPD to enhance operational efficiency and better align daily with the needs of local communities and existing funding from the NYPD’s budget will be utilized to save taxpayer dollars.   Q-Team officers will undergo additional training beyond what they received in their previous roles including strategies and techniques on how best to address quality-of-life problems and new departmental expectations The training module includes a detailed overview of the current structure of the division as well as instruction on the use of the 311 system Officers will also receive training on specific topics and the use of sound metering devices regarding noise complaints.   New York City’s 311 system, NYC311 is a non-emergency call center and service platform that allows New Yorkers to report non-emergency issues and get helpful information about city services and programs police officers assigned to patrol sectors are tasked with responding to a range of public-safety issues prioritizing emergency 911 calls over NYC311 service requests The Quality of Life Division will work alongside patrol sectors and Community Affairs Bureau personnel allowing precincts and public service areas to directly deploy resources to specific needs within their communities further supporting a more localized approach.   we not only ensure a more responsive police force but also reinforce the importance of community trust," said New York State Senator Roxanne J Persaud.  "The Quality of Life Division reflects a commitment to improving public safety by being proactive and addressing quality-of-life concerns before they escalate “I applaud Mayor Eric Adams and Commissioner Tisch for the launch of the new NYPD Quality of Life Division,” said New York State Assemblymember Nikki Lucas “Communities across our City deserve to have quality of life issues prioritized while leaving a positive impact in neighborhoods where trust for NYPD has been diminished.”  can erode public confidence and fuel a sense of disorder,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez “I commend Mayor Adams and Commissioner Tisch for launching this new division which brings together officers already working closely with our communities to respond more effectively and respectfully to the concerns that matter most to New Yorkers This thoughtful approach has the potential to strengthen public trust and promote safety in every neighborhood.”  “Community well-being and New Yorkers’ quality of life are important elements of public safety,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “We look forward to continuing to work with the NYPD on our shared missions.”  “All New Yorkers have a fundamental right to feel safe in their homes and on the streets of our city,” said New York City Councilmember Keith Powers “Data has shown that quality-of-life issues have risen over the last few years The formation of the NYPD’s new Quality of Life Division will decrease response times and allow everyday New Yorkers to know that their non-emergency needs are being handled with expediency."  “The NYPD’s new Quality of Life Division will be a partner in making sure we are addressing the persistent everyday issues our neighbors care about most,” said New York City Councilmember Justin Brannan “Coney Island’s inclusion in the pilot rollout is going to be a big deal – in a neighborhood where we’ve too often been left without the resources we need and this program will offer a go-to team to address neighborhood conditions with the care and specificity we deserve I look forward to working with both neighbors and the NYPD to make sure this program is a rolled out in a way that makes life better for everyone who calls Coney Island home even when it’s not beach weather.”  "I get just as many quality of life complaints from constituents," said New York City Councilmember Inna Vernikov "This is a really good idea and I look forward to working with this new division of the NYPD please locate a police officer, head to the nearest police facility pressoffice@cityhall.nyc.gov(212) 788-2958 A federal judge on Wednesday formally dismissed the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams granting the controversial request from the Justice Department that generated a public outcry and spurred the largest mass resignation of senior federal prosecutors in decades The order from U.S Judge Dale Ho brings an end to the case against Adams wire fraud and other charges following his indictment last year Ho said he was dismissing the case with prejudice meaning the government could not bring the charges again later — contrary to the Justice Department's request to dismiss the case without prejudice Adams was scheduled to go on trial in April until new leadership at the Justice Department under the Trump administration ordered prosecutors in New York in February to drop the case dismissing the case without prejudice would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor's freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents," Ho wrote and it counsels in favor of dismissal with prejudice." The directive to drop the case from Emil Bove touched off a public uproar and intense internal pushback Attorney for the Southern District of New York saying she saw no "good-faith basis" for dismissing the case She resigned instead of abandoning the Adams prosecution One other prosecutor in New York and five attorneys tied to the Justice Department's public integrity unit in Washington also resigned rather than carrying out Bove's order Adams' attorney rejected allegations that the mayor had struck a deal with the Justice Department to help the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies in return for dropping the case against the mayor Judge Ho concluded that the career prosecutors in the case in Manhattan abided by DOJ guidelines and said "there is no evidence — zero — that they had improper motives" in seeking indictment of the mayor "Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions," Ho wrote After the DOJ had asked for the case to be dismissed Ho had initially declined to immediately do so and instead appointed an outside counsel to examine the legal arguments and assist the court in its decision-making who served as solicitor general during the George W had also advised the court to dismiss the case with prejudice The government had proposed dismissing the case without prejudice a scenario that would allow prosecutors to renew the case in the future Clement's brief for the court also focused on the fact that the threat of another prosecution hanging over Adams would not be in the best interests of his constituents because the decision to discontinue a prosecution belongs primarily to a political branch of government that truly matters," Ho added in Wednesday's ruling Become an NPR sponsor Endorsements are a key piece of the puzzle for mayoral candidates – alongside fundraising and communicating their policies and message to voters They can help broaden a politician’s appeal beyond their base or even deliver on-the-ground votes Major labor unions and political organizations often have detailed interviews and voting processes to determine their pick We’re staying on top of the public endorsements by labor unions, political power brokers, advocacy groups and more. Keep up with all the major nods here. And because there are a couple familiar faces running again, check out our 2021 endorsements tracker to compare and contrast.) Mayor Eric Adams (Democrat running as an independent candidate) Organizations: Executive committee of the Staten Island Democratic Party Others: former state Comptroller Carl McCall, former Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., Black clergy members including Rev Kevin Johnson of Abyssinian Baptist Church and Rev Johnnie Greene of Mount Neboh Baptist Church City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (Democrat) Labor: District Council 37 (ranked No. 1), Communication Workers of America Local 1180, UNITE HERE Local 100 (ranked No. 1), Professional Staff Congress (ranked No Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer (Democrat) Elected officials: Rep. Jerry Nadler, Assembly Member Deborah Glick, Assembly Member Micah Lasher Labor: District Council 37 (ranked No. 3), Professional Staff Congress (ranked No Other: Attorney and former political candidate Zephyr Teachout New York City Comptroller Brad Lander (Democrat) Labor: United Auto Workers Region 9A (with Ramos and Mamdani), Professional Staff Congress (ranked No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3), UNITE HERE Local 100 (ranked No Others: Texas Rep. Greg Cesar, New York City Housing Authority tenant leaders including Aixa Torres Elected officials: Assembly Members Khaleel Anderson (ranked No. 5) and Emily Gallagher (after top choices Lander and Mamdani and with Myrie and Adrienne Adams in no order) Former Assembly Member Michael Blake (Democrat) Organizations: Emgage Action (ranked No. 5), Three Bridges Democratic Club (shared with Ramos and Mamdani) Other: Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman Organizations: New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, NYPD Retired Sergeants Association Other: Former prosecutors including former U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Richard Donoghue Guardian Angles founder and radio personality (Republican) Get out your beanies and ZetroCards – Zohran Mamdani’s supporters are rallying this weekend His New York City mayoral campaign is holding its first major rally of the cycle in North Brooklyn on Sunday – with an anticipated crowd of around 2,000 volunteers supporters and other endorsers expected to be in attendance titled “A City We Can Afford,” and state Sen and New York Working Families Party co-Directors Ana María Archila and Jasmine Gripper will be among the featured speakers Pakistani American singer Ali Sethi will perform New Yorkers just now tuning into the mayoral race will be disappointed if they’re looking for Sunday plans Location details are being kept under wraps by the campaign as the event is already at capacity with invited supporters and volunteers If that feels odd for a candidate who’s still polling in the mid-10s to low-20s it’s because the campaign isn’t focused on bringing in new supporters off the street with the event they see it as breaking through a new stage of the campaign where volunteers from around the city can appreciate the size and energy of the movement behind Mamdani all in one place – and perhaps be inspired to hit the ground running in the next seven weeks “Sunday’s rally will be a testament to the energy and hope that has fueled our campaign since we launched six months ago,” Mamdani said in a statement we’re showing every New Yorker – from those that have been with us since the beginning to those that are just learning about our vision – that a better future is possible selfish politics and win a city working people can afford.” Cuomo is the undisputed front-runner in the race, polling in the mid-30s to mid-40s in recent surveys a democratic socialist and the farthest left of the Democratic Party primary candidates is consistently polling second behind the former governor In 2021, Maya Wiley held a fundraiser/concert with The Strokes at the 1,000-person capacity Irving Plaza in mid-June Spring happens to the city as everything happens here: not at all The forsythia skims the crosstown buses as they swerve through Central Park Magnolias unfurl their petals to flaunt their fancy two-toned manicures cooling their stems behind heavy plastic curtains Long strands of pollen drift down from sidewalk oaks when New York’s too-muchness and its not-enoughness hold in the briefest balance—the cup-filling weeks when those of us wedded to this city for richer or poorer Between the turn of the century and the start of the Great Depression making New York the largest city in the world A four-room apartment in Chelsea rented for forty dollars a month works out to less than eight hundred dollars today who last year made New York history in the competitive category of executive corruption by becoming the first sitting mayor to be indicted on federal charges We hate to see our private maps overwritten the all-night bagel shop that became a cellphone store Stasis is not in the character of the place Sometimes the change is even for the better compost bins and congestion pricing: at last Other changes merely baffle. The other day, passengers taking the F train from Brooklyn into Manhattan discovered that it had metamorphosed, like something out of Ovid without so much as an incomprehensible crackle of speaker static breaking the pact of benign disregard that passes here for privacy Fate and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were cursed all chrome and haze from the smoke drifting in from the wildfires choking New Jersey and the whole crazy place was forgiven again A gray-haired woman marched alone the wrong way down a Christopher Street bike lane brandishing a sign that read “hope over fear.” to think that the greatest threat the city currently faces originates from one of its own The President has Columbia University in his sights New York’s status as a sanctuary city is under attack Immigrants are the very heart of this town; if this spring is more silent than it should be it is from the fear that has kept people indoors No city is more celebratory of the individual “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky,” White wrote Tracking all New York City’s shuttered restaurants this month This list will be updated weekly and is a round-up of the dining and drinking places that have shuttered around the city If a restaurant or bar has closed in your neighborhood Chinatown: Long-time Chinese restaurant Vegetarian Dim Sum House appears to have closed, as Instagram account Vegan NYC posted this week The cash-only restaurant had opened in the late 1980s serving a casual menu of vegan and vegetarian dim sum dishes like tofu skins Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again. Yet nobody can find a spot.Illustration by Pierre-Nicolas RiouSave this storySave this storySave this storySave this storyOne of the first jobs that George Bichikashvili had in America was securing some street-parking spaces in the Bronx for Con Edison didn’t understand why anyone would pay for this “You just take up four spots of parking and sit there until they tell you to leave,” he said Bichikashvili pulled a blue Chrysler minivan onto St He wore a safety helmet and a neon work vest He watched the sunrise in the rearview mirror He’d moved to New York because he was determined to live an interesting life he’d danced in the Sukhishvili National Ballet He loved New York because of the TV show “Suits.” He told himself that in this country he could do anything he passed the day making video calls to Tbilisi but sitting in the car sapped his desire to do anything A supervisor had told him that Con Ed needed him to block off several parking spaces and the manhole so that some repairs could be made No one told him when the work crew might come He woke up every four hours to upload a photo in an app which was every item of warm clothing he had with him he walked around the corner to a Planet Fitness to shower and brush his teeth He got coffee and cigarettes at the bodega He put on all his clothes before going to sleep He spent his first Thanksgiving in the parking spot New York’s problem is that it doesn’t have enough parking and it has too much parking If you arranged all the curbside spots single file about half the cars driving in Park Slope are just circling It’s not unheard of for parkers to stray so far from home that they come back on a bus or in a cab To offer as many spaces per capita as Los Angeles County Unlike the bodega bag or admission to the Metropolitan Museum the domain of one of New York’s weirdest institutions: alternate-side parking The real estate alone—the same as thirteen Central Parks—is worth hundreds of billions of dollars The director Noah Baumbach, who grew up in Park Slope, used parking as a metaphor for entitlement, grievance, and impotence in his films “The Squid and the Whale” and “The Meyerowitz Stories”; the experience of looking for a spot makes you think that you’re the only person who hasn’t got one. In “Bananas,” Woody Allen has a dream in which he is nailed to a cross and carried by hooded figures into a parking spot where the cortege gets into a brawl with another group of hooded figures carrying another crucified man The rhythms of the curb are governed by byzantine alternate-side rules for a ninety-minute period on different days of the week the cars on one side of the street must clear out to allow the street sweeper to go by cars are supposed to vacate their blocks and park elsewhere most people end up sitting in their cars and waiting until the sweeper appears at which point they quickly double-park on the opposite side so they can reclaim their spot in a mad dash once the street has been cleaned more people take part in this ritual than attend church A few hundred thousand city dwellers pay to keep their cars in garages but the monthly cost in Manhattan usually starts at four hundred and fifty dollars you need scrappiness and a certain finesse who ran an AIDS hospice in the West Village in the nineteen-eighties once dropped in at Gracie Mansion unannounced to persuade Ed Koch to give her two reserved spaces Drivers build lives around parking: the work shifts altered to align with the alternate-side-rotation hours the Pavlovian alertness at the chirp of an unlocking car A friend who no longer parks in the city told me that when he encounters a vacant spot he experiences a kind of phantom-limb pain Parking can weasel its way into any conversation When Rudy Giuliani spoke after the September 11th attacks he included the announcement “Alternate-side street parking is suspended.” On St. Theresa Avenue, George Bichikashvili learned that, in order to maintain friendly relations, he had to share his spots. He let neighbors move his cones and park, provided they left their phone numbers and moved when called. One family asked Bichikashvili to make his spaces available during a birthday party. He agreed. They invited him to join, but he wasn’t in a party mood. One day, a Con Ed truck finally showed up. Bichikashvili moved the minivan, and the workers opened the manhole. He asked them, “Today we’re closed? The job is finished?” The crew said he had to stay. Around day twenty, he woke up with a toothache. It became difficult to sleep. A darkness set in. “I had bad feelings for life,” he said. “They say it’s the hot-dog water that makes all the difference.”Cartoon by Pia Guerra and Ian BoothbyCopy link to cartoonCopy link to cartoonLink copied There are universal rules. Parking sharks—poachers who trail the sweeper in order to slip into vacated spaces—are handled through mob justice. Reversing into a spot is regarded as proper. One parker told me, “Head first is barbaric.” Bianchi once found himself in a Seinfeldian standoff in front of his apartment—he backing in ‘I can stay here all night,’ ” he recalled ‘I can stay here all night.’ So I left the car and I sat by the window reading a book until she gave up.” Asking about someone’s preferred parking spot is like asking to see their tax return There are a couple of blocks with a thirty-minute alternate-side window rather than the usual ninety: the parker’s arbitrage Some people know alternate-side blocks where the sweeper never comes “We have actually formally created a law in which New Yorkers have to be in a certain place at a certain time for no fucking reason at all.” Enterprising parkers have found work-arounds A guy named Carmine who used to hang out at a social club in Little Italy moved cars as a side gig One woman paid him a hundred bucks a month “The biggest tension was he would always find a spot by his house two and a half blocks away from mine,” she told me Mostly, people sit in their cars and find ways to fill the time—the nappers, Bible studiers, book readers. Mary Norris, an author and a former copy editor at The New Yorker wrote a blog called The Alternate Side Parking Reader a longtime head writer for “Saturday Night Live,” thought of bits Simpson gags for Norm Macdonald’s “Weekend Update” and lines for Stefon “You’re in this little cocoon,” Downey told me “The ukulele is easy because it fits behind the wheel,” he said the Assyrian king Sennacherib prohibited chariot parking on royal roads One of New York’s first parking panics came in the nineteen-twenties fifty or sixty automobiles would clog Kings Highway a wandering tribe with every hand against them.” But to where City designers at the time were lining streets with little parks In the first decades of the automobile age New York banned parking for longer than a few hours would just drive the illegally parked cars to the police station (A later proposal suggested letting the air out of violators’ tires.) Manhattan’s Parking Violations Bureau is housed in an office building downtown The vast majority of defendants argue their cases online the best defense is not to argue circumstances or evidence but to find an error on the ticket.) A handful show up in person She asked what my neighborhood does when the sweeper comes but not many; the penalty for ignoring alternate-side rules and blocking the sweeper is just sixty-five dollars which is what a few hours in a midtown garage goes for but usually only cars with unpaid fines.) Larry Berezin got into parking after he retired as a personal-injury lawyer “People I beat parking tickets for were more grateful than people I beat criminal charges for,” he told me whose office is in the Parking Violations Bureau where his father scrapped for alternate-side parking Now Tse lives in downtown Brooklyn and pays for a garage His office instructs drivers on how to prepare evidence for their hearings (it helps if photos and videos are time-stamped and show a street sign) He also assists a lot of people who were parked in a legal spot only to be towed—by utility workers or film crews—to an illegal spot Fiorello LaGuardia once sat as a parking magistrate for a day and left in a police car that had been stationed next to a “No Parking” sign the Parking Violations Bureau was transferred to the Department of Finance a former parking judge who now contests parking tickets for clients told me that this creates an unavoidable conflict of interest their mission is to collect money for the city,” he said Judges can see a case every couple of minutes He took off his hat when his hearing began One woman came in with two tickets for using a fraudulent Department of Transportation parking permit I watched one case involving a guy who lived on West Forty-eighth Street The first charge was a street-sweeping violation “I was actually in the car fixing my daughter’s car seat.” Tse told me people often don’t realize that sitting in the car or double-parking for the sweeper isn’t a legal defense parking practices tend to solidify into law New York ended its overnight-parking ban in 1954 The reason cited by the mayor was that no one was following the law The reversal received modest press coverage An argument could be made that it ranks among the most consequential decisions the city has ever made but he was part of an entire industry of professional parkers One consequence of New York legalizing free long-term parking is that much of the city’s critical infrastructure is now covered by parked cars When Con Ed needs to access electric cables or steam lines the company spends millions of dollars on spotting This is how New York has decided to keep the lights on it’s not unusual for spotters to spend days spotters are an easy solution to a persistent problem “We’re as frustrated as anyone is about the difficulty of parking in New York,” Jamie McShane The company farms out the jobs to a big contractor called CE Solutions CE Solutions passes the work on to an array of subcontractors The ideal subcontractor is just a guy who knows guys One subcontractor was a reputed soldier for the Genovese crime family; another was a reggae musician in Harlem Subcontractors typically get twenty-one to twenty-nine dollars per hour of spotting subcontractors get sued for failing to comply with New York’s overtime and minimum-wage laws the minimum wage is sixteen dollars and fifty cents an hour.) Generally courts have found that the layers of outsourcing insulate Con Ed and CE Solutions from liability of using subcontractors in “an elaborate shell game” to skirt labor laws Bichikashvili found the spotting job through a Georgian friend he called Sam He was renting a room from Sam in Gravesend Bichikashvili worked for another subcontractor One former A&M employee has sued the company withheld his pay when his car broke down and he had to leave his spot telling him that she would “make sure he can never get work.” In another lawsuit workers alleged that supervisors controlled their bathroom breaks (Shukurova said in legal filings that she doesn’t have enough information to confirm or deny this.) The year that Bichikashvili was parked on St A&M made eight and a half million dollars New York drivers waste two hundred million hours each year circling for parking This is enough man-hours to build four Nimitz-class U.S Drivers have always complained that parking has never been worse the city considered building a thirty-thousand-space lot beneath Central Park.) Car ownership keeps going up one car was stolen off the street for every fifty residents Parking is the city’s most visible form of corruption Roy Cohn got his start fixing his teachers’ parking tickets A kickback scandal at the Parking Violations Bureau almost took down the Koch administration Eric Adams has used parking as a political favor he rewarded staffers with spots in the middle of the pedestrian plaza outside Borough Hall (Adams compared one anonymous critic of his parking regime to a Klansman.) Back when diplomats at the U.N they often just parked in front of a driveway The Canadian delegation went without a violation for eight years “I addressed what I heard was the best-attended session of the General Assembly ever,” he told me He recalled that the issue united the Arabs and the Israelis the city issues around a hundred thousand parking permits to groups like the police and fire departments Bill de Blasio gave placards to fifty thousand teachers and school employees during his reëlection campaign placards confer limited privileges (you can park in some restricted zones; meters are free) but in practice they can function as blanket immunity placards go for as much as twenty-six hundred dollars On cars parked in bus lanes or beside fire hydrants you can find placards purporting to be from FEMA or the Red Cross or just pieces of paper listing professions: “WORKING PRESS,” “doctor of podiatric medicine,” “NEW YORK STATE FUNERAL DIRECTORS OFFICIAL BUSINESS.” These work surprisingly well wangled special press plates for his car which allowed him to park where most others couldn’t ticketing agents have been arrested for writing tickets to police officers officers were charged with fixing more than a million dollars’ worth of parking tickets said that the practice had been “accepted at all ranks for decades.” On the Upper West Side officers of the Twentieth Precinct double-park their personal cars in the middle of Columbus Avenue but the precinct’s traffic sergeant argued that the parkers had no choice “I can’t tell all the officers they need to take mass transit,” he said the editor of the transportation website Streetsblog Kuntzman hunts for traffic cheats—placard scofflaws (People alter their plates to escape detection on tow cameras.) We wandered Brooklyn Heights to check out some parked cars Kuntzman rode a bike that had a big parking placard on it he had paid seven hundred and fifty dollars to something called the New York State Chaplain Group The first block we looked at was anarchy—placard cheats On the dashboard of one car was a neon M.T.A Because he’s an asshole.” He noticed that it had out-of-state plates We talked about parking over eggs at a nearby diner “The question is not ‘Why is it too hard to park?’ ” he said “It’s ‘Why is it so easy to own a car in the city with the most congestion in the world?’ ” One night, as George Bichikashvili slept in the minivan, the temperature dropped. He shivered in his two jackets. He couldn’t sleep. “Sometimes, a little bit, I cried,” he said. The work crew came again and left again. His tooth ached. He video-chatted with a friend celebrating a birthday. “I had a beer and three shots of whiskey,” he told me. “It was not good.” “Oh, God, I think that’s the Times’ parenting critic.”Cartoon by Liam Francis WalshCopy link to cartoonCopy link to cartoonLink copied After a while, another Con Ed parking spotter showed up: a woman living in a Mercedes, which she parked over another manhole. She was a model and an aspiring influencer. They began talking. The guys in the bodega took a liking to him. They let him pay a little less for cigarettes. He told himself, “I’ve got a fighting spirit for my life goals.” He channelled Kobe Bryant. On day thirty-three, the work crew came again. This time, he was exasperated. He implored, “When will this end?” The average street sweeper collects fifteen hundred pounds of debris every day. “We pick up rats, pigeons,” Antonio Taliercio, who has driven a street sweeper for nineteen years, told me on a recent morning. Piazza nodded his head at Taliercio. “His brother used to sweep in this district and then left,” he said. “It’s frustrating every day. You don’t want to take that home to your family.” The Sanitation Department used to slap neon stickers on the windows of cars that didn’t move for the sweeper, as a shaming tactic, but the City Council forced them to stop. “I believe it was deemed, like, cruel and unusual punishment,” Taliercio said. Taliercio, who wore a green Sanitation hoodie and driving gloves, hopped up into the cab. I got in a jump seat. He used a few dials to control the broom speed and the pressure. At one point, we squeezed past a double-parked car with a few inches on either side. “That’s all experience, my friend,” he said. “I can do this route with my eyes closed.” Basically no cars moved until we were right behind them, honking. Piazza’s job was to drive another car, leading the sweeper and cajoling drivers sitting in parked cars to move out of the way, ticketing non-compliers. This buddy system is deployed frequently in problem districts. (Sanitation issues about a million alternate-side-parking tickets a year; the N.Y.P.D. issues three million.) There’s currently a bill in the State Senate to outfit the sweepers with cameras that would automatically photograph violators and send out tickets by mail. After many years, Piazza can recognize the license plates of serial offenders. He’s more lenient with some buildings—a funeral parlor, a school—because the occupants keep the street clean themselves. He has a good relationship with the doormen along Central Park, who’ll run out of a building to move cars for the broom. Piazza told me, “I’ve had kids in the car, alone. ‘Hi, I don’t have a license.’ Well, tell your parents—they’re getting a ticket.” On Central Park West, he honked repeatedly at one oblivious parker. “This guy’s picking his ear,” he said. The caravan turned onto Eighty-ninth Street. Piazza got out to tell someone to move. “I’ve been sitting in the car. I don’t know how to drive it,” an older man said. “I’ve gotta write you a ticket,” Piazza said. The man said that he was helping out a woman who was away. “She set you up for failure!” Piazza said. He wrote a ticket. On day thirty-three, shortly after George Bichikashvili’s outburst to the work crew, he was notified that the job was closed. He bellowed, “Freedom!” He blasted electronic music and drove straight home. He showered and went to the barber. He had a drink and relaxed. He bought a plane ticket for somewhere warm. He spent New Year’s in Miami. He found that, despite the job, he did love America. On the flight back from Miami, he felt himself longing for New York. “It was a feeling of coming home,” he said. He quit spotting after nine months. Recently, he joined a lawsuit against CE Solutions, A&M Transport, Shukurova, and others, for failure to pay minimum wage and overtime. He’s moved on. He reminded himself that he is a world-class dancer, and that, in Tbilisi, he’d run two small businesses. “I have two hands, two legs, two eyes. I can do everything,” he said. “I just need my time.” Recently, he has worked as a driver for Access-A-Ride and Lyft. One perk is that, when he’s working, he never has to park. ♦ and Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo—the daughters of Andrew Cuomo the former New York governor—walked into the sanctuary exchanging good-mornings with Black men and women in their Easter best looking smaller and grayer than he did when he was in office He was quickly enveloped in a swarm of church hats “it felt like a pall had been lifted from the capitol building,” one state senator recalled Cuomo is the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York City revisited the high point of Cuomo’s career: the early weeks of the pandemic when he became a national figure by holding daily press conferences that distinguished him as a stern fatherly foil to the conspiracy-addled President His lilting Queens accent and snug polo shirts inspired the term “Cuomosexual.” Less than a year before he was ousted some Democrats called for Cuomo to replace Joe Biden on the Presidential ticket watched Andrew Cuomo every day,” Hall told the congregation beginning his remarks with an extended ribbing of his son-in-law who was known as “the Boyfriend” during the pandemic pressers “We got off to a little rocky start early on,” the former Governor said He read dutifully from Bible passages that evoked humanity’s need for salvation the creases in his forehead scrunching like an accordion when he was especially animated “They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated they will renew the ruined cities,” he said was itself a devastated place—too unaffordable we celebrate the power of resurrection.” On those last two points he was technically homeless; in his third term the governor’s mansion was his only permanent address He crashed with his sister Maria at her estate in Westchester and filled his days with extracurriculars that evinced a desire to return to public life: private legal work and the emphatically named nonprofit Never Again earned the nickname Hamlet on the Hudson for his tortured deliberations about whether to run for President The younger Cuomo’s style has always been more Richard III Cuomo found his opening last September, when Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York City, was indicted on federal corruption charges he commandeered a midtown apartment where his thirty-year-old daughter was suspected of trying to pass off his son’s Brooklyn apartment as his own.) His old allies from Albany formed a super PAC and swiftly began collecting checks from New York’s élite Political figures such as Representative Ritchie Torres endorsed Cuomo before he officially announced that he was running Cuomo has scrupulously avoided his opponents an approach that’s been described as a “Rose Garden” strategy “He’s a terrible campaigner,” a former aide told me “We saw this in the polling—when people saw Andrew an aura of inevitability has hardened around Cuomo a thirty-three-year-old democratic-socialist state assemblyman; a handful of progressives mired in the single digits in polls; and Adams who has lately courted the favor of Donald Trump to avoid possible jail time Perhaps the city’s current crises—crumbling public infrastructure the President’s attempts to strangle his home town—have reminded New Yorkers of a different period of chaos After being cheered off the stage at Calvary Baptist the ex-Governor herded his daughters into the back seat of his black Dodge Charger For every Fiorello La Guardia or Michael Bloomberg there are dozens of forgettable and ignominious characters in New York’s mayoral lineage had ties to the slave trade and was an associate of the pirate Captain Kidd was an anti-Revolutionary loyalist who was implicated in a plot to kidnap George Washington crooked “Night Mayor,” who took office in the Roaring Twenties came closer than any before him to being removed from office by a governor and evaded criminal corruption charges by taking a steamer to Europe who was once considered a national hero for his leadership during 9/11 and who went down in a spray of legal and financial troubles after tying himself to Trump of mayors who are both ignoble and indelible Eric Adams seems destined to join him there The courtship spilled into public view in October an annual white-tie fund-raiser for Catholic charities a fellow criminal defendant: “I was persecuted who during Trump’s first term called the President an “idiot,” hired the celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro the Mayor called to congratulate him; later he told the city’s senior agency heads to refrain from criticizing the President-elect (“Surreal,” one attendee said.) When Trump was asked if he would consider giving Adams a pardon he appeared to consider the question for two seconds before saying an ex-marine and a longtime Brooklyn power broker who had served as Adams’s City Hall chief of staff to arrange a meeting between the Mayor and the soon to be reinstalled President Over lunch at Trump International Golf Club described to me as “pleasant surprises of commonality.” But Carone vigorously dispelled any notion of an arrangement between Adams and Trump “I’ll give you the facts—reality,” he said “There was no discussion with President Trump about his case Maybe there didn’t need to be a discussion Adams ditched local civil-rights commemorations to attend Trump’s Inauguration a senior official in Trump’s Justice Department Attorney’s office in Manhattan to put Adams’s case on hold arguing that the charges were interfering with the Mayor’s ability to help enforce White House immigration policies The move looked to many like a quid pro quo: legal favors in return for Adams’s coöperation with Trump’s crackdown on immigrants The impression was reinforced by a disastrous joint appearance between Adams and Tom Homan I’ll be back in New York City,” Homan said of Adams ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ” Adams grimaced The federal judge who eventually dismissed the case It was untenable to keep the case hanging over the Mayor’s head Adams himself liked to point out that he had been surviving allegations of corruption throughout his entire career But his new relationship with Trump was different: he was making a city with more than three million immigrants vulnerable to a virulently anti-immigrant Administration and Governor Kathy Hochul took meetings with civic leaders including Adams’s longtime ally Al Sharpton to discuss whether she should exercise her power to remove him “He was the front-runner until he went on ‘Fox & Friends’ and blew up his career,” an Adams adviser told me a former New York Civil Liberties Union head when he was a cop fighting discrimination in the N.Y.P.D “I thought Eric would be a transformative mayor,” he said “I can’t fathom how this guy is going to govern in August There’s going to be five people left in this building.” sees his alignment with Trump as a lifeline toting a copy of “Government Gangsters,” by Trump’s F.B.I gleefully announced that he was indeed running for reëlection—but he would skip the Democratic primary and appear on the ballot in November as an independent It was a gambit that would strip Adams of party infrastructure in exchange for six months to rebrand himself (He is now collecting signatures for two ballot lines of his own invention called Safe&Affordable and EndAntiSemitism—the latter clearly a dig at Cuomo who has called antisemitism the “most important issue” in the race.) At his first City Hall press conference after the dismissal of the charges Adams strode in victoriously to his usual walk-on song—Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” spliced with a loop of himself intoning the words “Stay focussed and grind.” He was wearing a tight T-shirt emblazoned with an American flag and the words “In God We Trust.” It was a reference to his Orphean political journey to Hell and back The dream of a comeback has led some mayoral hopefuls astray. In 2013, Anthony Weiner a former New York congressman who had resigned after sending lewd photographs to women online and spent several weeks that summer as a front-runner (Polls showed that he performed especially well with women.) His campaign tanked when it emerged that he had never dropped the sexting; he had merely adopted the pseudonym Carlos Danger he pleaded guilty to one count of sending obscene material to a minor and went on to serve eighteen months in prison who won with a rare coalition of Black voters and white progressives initially seemed poised to be a transformative force in city politics He established universal pre-K and presided over historically low crime rates and people who wanted to defund the police (The groundhog later died.) He made a wayward Presidential run de Blasio briefly tried to run for Congress in the Tenth District which covered his neighborhood of Park Slope “Time for me to leave electoral politics,” he tweeted I met de Blasio at his regular coffee shop in Park Slope He had just come from the gym—the same one that he’d insisted on commuting to every morning from Gracie Mansion no matter how much grief the press gave him for it—and was wearing sweats He held forth among his fellow-patrons with a spirit of magnanimous greeting a startled man by the door with a familiar “How you doing brother?” and ordering his breakfast (scrambled egg whites and tomato on multigrain toast) as “mi sandwich especial.” These days de Blasio most often makes the news for his love life or for such momentous moves as dyeing his salt-and-pepper crewcut But he’s sensed a bit of de Blasio nostalgia creeping into town 1 thing that people come up to me on the street and talk about is pre-K,” he told me lacing his iced espresso with a heavy pour of simple syrup 2 thing that people talk about is that Onion headline.” He quoted it for me not so easy to find a mayor that doesn’t suck shit The headline ran in June shortly before Adams was declared the winner of the Democratic primary and before a Cuomo mayoral run was even a distant possibility but who relentlessly undercut him from the governor’s mansion when Cuomo rejected de Blasio’s attempt to tax the wealthy to pay for universal pre-K Cuomo gave de Blasio only a fifteen-minute heads-up before ordering a general shutdown of the subways the first snow closure since the system opened Despite what de Blasio sees as Cuomo’s callousness toward the city he wasn’t surprised that his old foe was dominating the race “When you have an incumbent mayor in crisis and lots of candidates it’s like a perfect storm that has opened the door wide for someone with a lot of name recognition,” he said Perhaps the nostalgia is not for de Blasio but for his political moment when loathed political figures seemed to stay gone “I think we are in a post-shame era of politics,” Lis Smith a veteran Democratic strategist who counselled Cuomo through his sexual-harassment scandal “I don’t know that without Donald Trump you have an Eric Adams comeback or an Andrew Cuomo comeback.” Eliot Spitzer the former New York governor who resigned after he was caught patronizing a prostitution ring told me that he recently offered advice to a mayoral candidate who was struggling to compete with Cuomo’s name recognition ‘There are three ways to get into the public consciousness: be around for a very long time I did all three at one point.” In this environment even Weiner has got the idea that New Yorkers might give him another shot He’s running for City Council in Manhattan and it might have been four out of a hundred people who refused to sign because of my scandal,” he told me in March “But there might have been five people that didn’t sign because I’m a Zionist.” Cuomo’s competitors are hoping that voters aren’t quite so ready to forgive and forget nine mayoral candidates appeared together at a memorial service for elderly New Yorkers who died after Cuomo ordered nursing homes to readmit COVID patients from hospitals—a jab at the former Governor who sold a five-million-dollar memoir commemorating his pandemic leadership before there was even a vaccine the former city comptroller Scott Stringer invited reporters to join him on what one adviser described as “a bus tour of places in the city Andrew Cuomo fucked up.” The stops included One57 intended to symbolize the city’s housing crisis and the Fifty-ninth Street–Columbus Circle subway station the dreary midtown rental tower that serves as Cuomo’s city address then hurried back inside at the sight of reporters which he’d picked up to welcome Cuomo into the race—a local’s dig at a carpetbagger from Albany saying that the Governor’s undermining had made his work “intolerable.” In early 2020 the official in charge of the renovation of Moynihan Train Hall having spent the final weeks of his life fretting over a looming deadline to complete the project his partner wrote that Evans had killed himself “after being terrorized by Gov Andrew Cuomo.” (“A lot of us are still saddened by this loss,” a spokesperson for Cuomo said “As was reported at the time: Evans rarely spoke to the governor.”) a former state official who was the first woman to publicly accuse him of harassment said that she has spent nearly two million dollars on legal fees fending off the aggressive tactics of Cuomo’s taxpayer-funded lawyers “He will go to all lengths to destroy people who have not been quote-unquote loyal to him,” Karen Hinton Cuomo declined numerous requests for an interview as the rumors of a Cuomo comeback persisted I wrote an article arguing that few people in New York wanted Cuomo or his style of politics back his approval ratings were below forty per cent and he had few remaining friends in public life “Either the world changed or you were wrong,” he wrote “You pick it.” He declined to answer further questions a few hundred Brooklyn Democrats gathered at Medgar Evers College issue-oriented forums that mayoral contenders are made to endure is a subject of dark jokes among the candidates and their staff It was hosted by Black leaders in the Brooklyn Democratic Party Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn—a longtime Adams ally who had recently thrown her support behind Cuomo It was also one of few occasions in which Cuomo deigned to appear in a lineup with his competitors The night began with an interruption from Paperboy Prince the activist and perennial gadfly candidate who hijacked the stage wearing clown makeup and white gloves denounced the organizers for excluding him from the forum please!” one organizer shouted at some N.Y.P.D Let him speak!” a woman in the crowd shouted back making short speeches and taking questions from Ayana Harry a progressive state senator wearing a suit and neon-yellow Nikes talked about his plan to build a million more homes in the city spoke about racism and maternal-mortality rates Stringer did his Borscht Belt-comedian-with-an-M.B.A referring to Trump as “that schmuck.” Brad Lander rattled off racial disparities in net worth for New York families sounding like a companionable guest on an economics podcast called for freezing rent on rent-stabilized apartments establishing government-run grocery stores “I think New Yorkers are hungry for a different kind of politics,” he said speaking with the polished sincerity of a socialist who went to Bowdoin “He’s got a guru factor.” An older woman in the row ahead of me wrote his name in a notebook that she’d brought with her She crossed out what she’d written and spelled his name again straining their wrists to preserve a glimpse of the man members of groups called Planet Over Profit and Climate Defiance came down the aisles and assembled on the stage Cops jostled with the demonstrators for several minutes trying to force them from the stage before they could unfurl their banners the vice-chair of the Brooklyn Democratic Party I’m going to say this: One of the issues and problems with the Democratic Party—we claim to be a big-tent party—is that if you don’t have a certain view And I think it’s a disgrace when I see a bunch of young white progressives trying to tell Black people who we should vote for.” Not everyone in the protest group was white but this last line prompted the event’s biggest applause anyway he felt little need to dwell on the specifics of policy it had emerged that his housing plan was written with help from ChatGPT.) When he was asked about the disconnect between falling crime statistics and persistent fears about crime in the city “Don’t tell me that my feeling is wrong,” he said of his perception that the city has become unsafe “My feeling is legitimate because that’s what I feel.” The statement was a notable contrast with how Cuomo has discussed the women who accused him of sexual harassment—a subject that he wasn’t once asked to speak about that night Most of the Democrats running for mayor are not scandal-tarred political titans of yore but they would rather talk about nearly anything other than the foibles of Adams and Cuomo “Celebrity is flashier than competence,” Lander Adrienne Adams told me that she meant to pick up where Kamala Harris’s campaign had left off offering voters a chance to elect a Black female leader She has suffered from what consultants call a “name-I.D problem,” not least because she shares a last name with the embattled incumbent the only non-Cuomo candidate to consistently breach double digits in polling has done so because he’s the most ideologically distinct and social-media savvy He began his campaign for State Assembly in 2019 as young leftist politicians in the mold of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were being elected around New York He still retains the idealism of those days though his platform reflects more modest ambitions: free buses “Ideas are only as good as our ability to implement them,” he told me over adeni chai at a Yemeni coffee shop on the Upper West Side Outlets such as the Post have defined Mamdani by his opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza and his support for the Boycott calling him “preposterous” and “dangerous”—a framing that Cuomo and his allies have happily embraced Though Mamdani has yet to surpass twenty-five-per-cent support in any poll he believes that he can appeal to voters beyond his leftist base “I’ve had a lot of uncles at mosques across the city come up to me and show me a selfie of them with Eric Adams at the same mosque four years ago,” he told me Some say that the city’s current predicament is just a Queens thing “We all have this gritty outer-borough attitude,” Frank Carone the Adams ally who arranged the fateful lunch with Trump We have that bond.” Trump grew up in a mansion in Jamaica Estates the son of a millionaire housing developer was one of six siblings raised in an eight-hundred-square-foot house in nearby South Jamaica a shared code of power and grievance overrides such differences “We had to come up through the school of hard knocks,” he said when the ex-Governor was still politically radioactive publicly dining with him at Osteria La Baia a midtown Italian restaurant where the avowedly vegan Mayor was known to order the fish Now Cuomo is trying to capitalize on his moment of weakness “I was here already,” he told reporters a couple of weeks ago at City Hall It’s like almost when you have a house somewhere and someone is trying to move in—it’s one gets the sense that Adams is excited to spend the summer sparring with Cuomo “You can’t campaign through tweets and videos,” he said in March “Come out here and [answer] tough questions.” It’s been nearly fifty years since Cuomo was last involved in a mayoral race he helped manage his father’s doomed run against Ed Koch held a decades-long grudge against the Cuomo campaign Not the Homo” signs that reportedly appeared in Queens that summer In a seventeen-minute video that he used to launch his campaign as Trump tries to impose his will on New York City “That’s part of the pitch—that we need this Several people who have fallen out with Cuomo made the same comparison if that’s who New Yorkers want to vote for What would Mayor Cuomo’s posture be toward President Trump Cuomo has appeared to be of two minds on the subject Cuomo expressed a neighborly view of the President During a private event in Washington Heights at around the same time he assured a roomful of people that he would fight Trump on their behalf: “We’re going to be able to handle President Trump—don’t you worry about it.” One former aide to Cuomo told me that the two seem to understand each other he calls him ‘boss,’ ” the former Cuomo aide said “I’ve never heard him call anyone else ‘boss.’ ” (The Cuomo campaign denies this.) The former aide continued “I think he and Trump get along very well—he kind of admires him.” ♦ The dreary weather continued Monday and is expected to last into Tuesday around the New York City area with a lot of rain and cooler temperatures As a lingering area of low-pressure parks itself over the Ohio Valley rounds of showers and thunderstorms are likely to persist through at least Wednesday A First Alert Weather Day was issued for Monday and lasted into the evening The rain earlier in the day was heavy at times totaling up to 3 inches in some areas and fueling fears of localized flooding Additional periods of heavy rain are likely to persist from Monday night into Tuesday Up to 4 inches of rain is probable between Monday and Tuesday with some locations possibly receiving higher amounts which have the potential to finally wipe out the existing drought across the Tri-State Area a return to more seasonable readings is anticipated for most of the week Click here to check the latest conditions.