It’s getting warmer out, which means that America’s Most Expensive Garbage Islands are about to become America’s Most Expensive Visibly Rotting Garbage Islands (Because They’re Covered in Disgusting Cockroaches). Are you ready, New York City?
If I had to guess the Big Idea communicated by the Atlantic Ideas Festival in New York City yesterday, it would be: wear a blazer, but not a tie. That seemed to be the key to getting on stage on the Atlantic Ideas Festival.
The NYPD has released surveillance footage of an NYPD officer opening fire on man reportedly armed with a hammer in midtown Manhattan today. The video appears to show the suspect—who allegedly attacked four people on Monday—lunging at a police officer before being shot by her partner in the middle of 8th Ave.
In response to last week’s New York Times reports about the dangerous work conditions, low pay, and racism running rampant in New York nail salons, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced late Sunday a series of “emergency measures” and vowed that the state would no longer “stand idly by as workers are deprived of their hard-earned wages and robbed of their most basic rights.”
New York City’s last mayor was a hawk-faced billionaire. Our current mayor, Bill “de” Blasio, is supposed to be a populist by comparison. Still, the process of riding the sub-way is enough to confound and mystify our city’s leader.
Fifty-two-year-old Michael Kneitel is a man of principle. He will not rest until the $75 ticket he received for using the door between subway cars to escape a pissing passenger is overturned.
The Empire State Building—the apple of our apple, the diamond of our city, the second best-looking skyscraper we have—is often lit up for some dumb occasion, like a Yankees win or Christmas day. On Friday, however, art will be the star as the building is illuminated with works from the new Whitney Museum.
In many cities around the world—New York, San Francisco, London—most people find the rent to be unaffordable. Buying is out of the question. Perhaps that is because your city’s housing stock is now just another fungible financial instrument, like pork bellies.
Freewheeling rebels with nothing to lose, de Blasio and his safety cronies are coming for you. If the one thing keeping you in New York is the knowledge that riding shotgun in NYC’s taxis means the cool breeze blowing behind your neck and back, the life-affirming push of your hand against the dashboard during a stop made too short, and best of all, a chance to feel fear again, then you’re not gonna like the mayor’s latest: De Blasio is trying to make it illegal to ride in the front passenger seat of an NYC taxi without a seatbelt.
Gothamist reports on the harrowing tale of a woman who got in an Uber and took the “car ride from Hell” to get from Williamsburg to Midtown East, after which she had to dispute a $12,000 bill for her trouble. Sure, surge pricing was in effect, but she didn’t know it was going to be platinum surge pricing.
The MTA—our savior, our friend, our enemy, our betrayer—released data from an annual report that showed subway ridership surging 2.6 percent from 2013 to 2014, reaching levels not seen since the end of World War II. The neighborhoods with the highest increase in passengers were Bushwick and Long Island City, Queens.
When it was announced last July that NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development approved a high-rise building with separate entrances for low-income and wealthy tenants, outrage dutifully followed. But now that applications for the building are open, the city’s housing problem appears to be worse than we thought.
