New York City

Saturday

Ben Clerkin

Zohran Mamdani’s toxic social media socialism

Zohran Mamdani is discovering how much more difficult seizing the means of production is than posting about seizing it on social media. To date he has delivered just one of the many radical campaign promises he algorithmized to become New York City mayor. And when he took to social media to crow about that partial win on taxing the rich, he may have inadvertently ripped a new financial blackhole in the city’s budget. Nevertheless, the Democratic party establishment, that pointedly refused to back the radical’s mayoral bid, is being seduced by his social media socialism. Barack Obama recently visited New York to be photographed with him, and Governor Kathy Hochul caved to some of his tax and spending plans. Unsurprisingly, when she gave an inch, he took a mile.

Mamdani

Wednesday

Gearóid Ó Riain

Zohran Mamdani and the death of Irish New York

When asked about a united Ireland earlier this week, Zohran Mamdani admitted that he “hadn’t thought enough on that question.” The Mayor of New York then recited a stiff set of platitudes about “solidarity” in language that he repeated word for word in his St. Patrick’s Day address.  There was an incongruity between his comments and his attendance at the James Connolly Irish-American Labor Coalition’s annual luncheon, where he schmoozed for selfies with Sinn Féin politicians. There was incongruity, too, with past mayors like Ed Koch and David Dinkins, the latter of whom lobbied for Irish republican prisoners. Context is everything, though, and both the city and the Irish national struggle have changed over the past 30 years.

Thursday

Ben Clerkin

Mamdani’s People’s Republic of New York

Proudly displayed in the window of my local Barnes and Noble are copies of a children’s book called Zohran Walks New York. It’s a graphic novel that shows our city’s new perma-grinning mayor meeting residents who are overwhelmingly happy to see him. A more instructive text for the children of Park Slope was tucked away in the corner of the basement: Animal Farm. I bought it for my 11-year-old daughter at the weekend. She’s into dystopian novels.  More people will become hooked on state benefits and more staff will be needed to shove piles of cash towards them I thought of Orwell’s allegory of the Russian revolution this week when our mayor threatened to increase property tax to pay for his huge $127 billion budget.

Saturday

Josie Cox

Roaches: the spirit animal of New York City

Over the past few years, I’ve written regularly for this magazine about my devotion to New York City. I love the cultish exercise classes that test your psychological mettle and the cryptic linguistic idiosyncrasies of the people you meet here. I love the know-it-all doormen – the actual kings of Gotham – and that any day, a celebrity might move in next door. I love that this is home to the world’s most audacious rats and, yes, I love Staten Island – proof that my affection extends beyond accepted social norms. Only here would someone say ‘I named a roach after you’ and consider it a heartfelt gesture of affection When a recent email landed in my inbox, though, it ignited a whole new appreciation for this brazen metropolis.

roaches

Thursday

Gage Klipper

Loser’s: the campy and ironic bakery making made-to-order cakes

Going downtown in New York used to be cool. Before Soho became a glorified shopping mall, it was a haven for starving artists. Before Chelsea became family-friendly, Michael Alig was throwing Blood Feast parties at the Limelight. The rebel heart of downtown, which attracted generations of avant-garde creatives, is much harder to find today. All of Manhattan has seemingly “gone uptown.”  But Loser’s Eating House, a made-to-order bakery operating out of a tiny Soho ghost kitchen, is still serving up a little slice of downtown realness. Loser’s style is campy and ironic. The cakes rely on exaggeratedly large piping, done in a purposefully messy style Loser’s was launched in 2021 by baker Lizzy Koury, who was, until very recently, her company’s sole employee.

Friday

Mickey Down

New York, I love you, but I need to get home

I reached New York for the premiere of the fourth series of Industry in a mild state of delirium. I was traveling from Lamu, and it had taken four flights and 20 hours in the air to reach the US. Lamu is so beautiful that it briefly makes you consider whether to bother with western civilization at all. On the rickety flight to the island from mainland Kenya, I had sat next to a German count I vaguely knew. ‘You looking to get a little fucked up?’ he asked. I mumbled something about ‘family time’. He nodded and wished me luck. On New Year’s Day I ran into him again, by which point he had abandoned all pretense of dignity. It felt fitting, then, that I should follow this holiday with a work trip to New York to party with abandon.

Josie Cox

The subway deserves some respect

A few weeks before the end of the year, I was invited to a house party at which I had the misfortune of becoming embroiled in a conversation with a man I’ll call Joe, because his name was Joe and I don’t feel inclined to offer him the dignity of a pseudonym. There’s a theory I’ve corroborated since moving to New York in 2020. Every conversation at a party in this city eventually gravitates toward one of five subjects: traffic, the weather, real estate, sex or the mayor. The ultra-rich are among the subway’s most devoted riders Joe told me he works in finance (which he pronounced “fin-ants”) and it seemed he wasn’t bothered about the weather. He wasn’t a tax-optimizing Connecticut commuter, so had no unsolicited opinions to share about traffic.

Monday

Roger Kimball

Beware Mamdani’s ‘warmth of collectivism’

One of the things I admire about Zohran Mamdani is his candor. You know where you stand with him. Mamdani, who was sworn in a few days ago by Senator Bernie Sanders as New York’s first Muslim mayor and also its first avowedly socialist mayor, makes no bones about his ambitions. He was elected as a “democratic socialist,” he said, and he intends to govern as one. “We will,” he said in the most commented upon phrase from his inauguration speech, “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” “The warmth of collectivism.” If you are not a political simpleton or a conniving totalitarian (or, as often happens, both), that phrase should send a shiver down your spine.

Mamdani

Wednesday

Diane Cole

In defense of Renoir’s pretty pictures

Those who think it’s chic to dismiss Renoir have a rethink coming, courtesy of the absorbing, highly informative exhibit Renoir Drawings, now on view in New York. Not so long ago, the idea of ousting Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) from the canon of western art sparked a movement of sorts. “RENOIR SUCKS AT PAINTING,” proclaimed a protester’s sign at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2015. The performance artist Max Geller had organized the demonstration to condemn Renoir as a purveyor of “treacle.” His female nudes objectified women, it charged; even when clothed, they smiled and blushed too prettily. Indeed, Renoir’s work held value only for the unsophisticated and its popularity represented the triumph of the cliché.

renoir
Josie Cox

Hold on to your peppermint mochaccinos – the Rockettes are not from New York City

In some ways, it feels like I stepped off the plane at JFK from London mere days ago – wide-eyed, naive and still convinced that “winter” would be charming and cozy rather than a six-month endurance test in avoiding frostbite. Yet here I am, somehow entering my sixth year of participating in the annual pageant that is the New York holiday season: that weeks-long spectacle beginning with the first delicate whiff of PSL-something and ending in the far-too-slowly receding hangover on an insultingly arctic New Year’s Day. The first year, Covid-tinted and therefore emotionally reminiscent of a half-deflated Macy’s parade balloon, was not what one might call festive. But things have really picked up since.

rockettes
Michael Wolff

Why I corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein

Olivia Nuzzi, the young and talented Trump reporter, committed the apparently cardinal sin of becoming romantically entangled with a subject. And, worse than that, the subject was widely reviled, particularly among journalists: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-Kennedy. And then it turned out –her jilted fiancé, another journalist, was telling all – that there were other politicians she’d been involved with, too. This scandal, which has consumed the journalism world, was good for me because it forced the heaps of opprobrium I was getting from other journalists for my emails with the reviled Jeffrey Epstein off the front page.

Gage Klipper

A chef’s twist on the Feast of the Seven Fishes

My Italian-American family gathers every Christmas Eve to cook a Feast of the Seven Fishes. And every year, it’s always just a little disappointing. Sorry, Mom. While the Feast must include seven distinct seafood dishes, there’s no correct way to prepare it. It’s entirely open to personal preference or family tradition and typically relies on whatever fish is readily available in the American northeast. Still, a touch of gourmet precision can help refine some of Nonna’s age-old recipes. The Feast is a quintessentially Italian-American tradition – one rooted ostensibly in Old World Catholicism and the abstention from meat until Christmas Day. Yet there’s very little record of it ever taking place in Italy.

Friday

Cockburn

‘Dear libs, don’t boycott the Kennedy Center,’ top orchestras beg

Cockburn is a cultured character with a longstanding fondness of the high arts. He was therefore amused to read an open letter, titled “The Kennedy Center Boycott and Its Impact on Artists” from the Orchestra Committee of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera Orchestra, in a recent issue of International Musician. The letter effectively amounts to classical musicians pleading with liberal patrons to attend Kennedy Center shows – despite President Trump’s overhauling of the institution. “While we respect every patron’s right to personal expression, withdrawing from beloved music as an act of protest is a shortsighted response that hurts the very artists who make that art possible,” the committee writes.

Tuesday

Jane Stannus

How to make an unforgettable Christmas dinner

In the early 1970s, celebrity chef Jacques Pépin and his wife bought a dilapidated house in the Catskills so they could go skiing on the weekends. It was a real fixer-upper. Groups of friends would come up from New York City and pitch in on the renovation effort, and Pépin would serve dinner at the end of the day. These weekends were so much fun Pépin decided to memorialize them by hand-lettering and painting special menus. How Pépin convinced his friends to let him sit in the kitchen sketching petits poissons and heads of broccoli while they slaved away at framing and drywalling his winter getaway is, admittedly, mysterious.

Christmas

Friday

Neal Pollack

When Donald met Zohran

“I’ll tell you,” the President was saying. “The press has eaten this thing up. I had a lot of meetings with world leaders, and the press didn’t care. The biggest people in the world come over and nobody cares. This one, they care about.”   President Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, wearing a red tie. Standing next to him was the Boy Wonder, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York City, wearing a blue tie. Their hour-long meeting at the White House had just concluded. In recent weeks, Mamdani had called Trump a fascist. Trump had called Mamdani a communist and a “lunatic.”  Anyone expecting acrimony or fireworks, though, would have been disappointed by this joint press appearance. Cats and dogs, living together.

zohran mamdani

Tuesday

Curtis Sliwa

Andrew Cuomo was the spoiler, not me

In the final weeks of the New York City mayoral campaign, there was heavy involvement from billionaires and masters of the universe. Donald Trump and Elon Musk joined the chorus of the Democratic Establishment. And the message was clear: a vote for me was a vote for Mamdani. There was a 72-hour barrage from super PACs running this message on conservative radio and news shows in an attempt to convince Republicans and conservatives to abandon their beliefs and principles and effectively join the Democratic party. No longer was the focus on what each candidate stood for. The point was to rewrite history and distance fact from reality. We had Andrew Cuomo – a failed governor who left office in disgrace – being presented to the public as NYC’s only savior.

Curtis Sliwa
trader joe's
Josie Cox

How Trader Joe’s became a way of life

A young woman recently approached me as I stood outside Trader Joe’s on the corner of 93rd Street and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. “Excuse me,” she said, “I’m visiting from the UK and I’m just wondering if there’s anything worth seeing around here.” This is not an unusual occurrence. It’s always tourist season in New York. People come for the cherry blossoms in Central Park, for the magic of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and for the vague hope of running into Timothée Chalamet at a downtown brunch place. They even come in the sweltering heat of summer when I, personally, would rather be anywhere else – ideally somewhere without the pungent smell of hot garbage and misplaced ambition.

Wednesday

Gage Klipper

Zohran Mamdani’s policies will make restaurants bland and expensive

There’s no shortage of catastrophic predictions for New York City under Zohran Mamdani’s leadership. While we probably won’t see breadlines, the wildly expensive, exhaustingly derivative restaurants that dominate the New York food scene are likely to become more dominant. Mamdani’s big pledge on food is to “make halal eight bucks again.” But it’s a “false promise” of street-food affordability according to Heritage Foundation economist Nicole Huyer. She says Mamdani’s economic program, which includes higher taxes, steeper leasing regulations and a pledge to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030, will effectively make restaurants even more expensive.

zohran mamdani

Tuesday

Josie Cox

New York City belongs to the rats

Before I moved to New York City five and a half years ago, the warnings were never about astronomical rent prices, apocalyptic winters or days-long subway delays. They were about rats. Former Manhattanites authoritatively spoke of them with the kind of hushed dread usually reserved to conjure biblical plagues. These weren’t mere animals, I was told, but tiny demons in fur coats – miniature Tony Sopranos with tails – who were quick to scuttle from the shadows at the merest whiff of a discarded bagel, bold enough to set up camp in your kitchen and perfectly willing to maul a callow pug or nibble on an unsuspecting baby. One friend cautioned me to keep the toilet lid shut at all times.

rats

Wednesday

Neal Pollack

Zohran Mamdani pledges free everything on Fox News

Ahead of tomorrow night’s debate with Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, Democratic socialist and future mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani appeared on Fox News this afternoon for the first time.   Anyone expecting a clash of cultures, or 15 minutes of pure ideological arguing, would have been disappointed. Fox anchor Martha MacCallum asked tough, pointed questions, but it was a respectful exchange between two New Yorkers who clearly don’t summer in the same ZIP code.   That doesn’t mean the interview lacked news value. The most shocking part came before the commercial break, when Mamdani said it was “too early” to give President Trump credit for the Middle East peace deal.

Zohran Mamdani (Fox News screenshot)