New York City

Tuesday

Ben Domenech

The poor health of America

This week, the nation focused on the deaths of two men in New York City. In one case, a mentally stable man confronted a mentally unstable man on the F train. Out of an intentional drive to protect the lives of those around him, the stable man — a twenty-five-year-old Marine from Long Island — put the unstable man in a chokehold that resulted, directly or indirectly, in his death. In the other case, a mentally unstable man targeted a mentally stable man as a consequence of his job leading one of the largest health insurance companies — shooting him in the back as he walked down the street.

health

Monday

Ben Domenech

The Daniel Penny verdict is a hopeful sign that sanity can rule in our cities again

It was a gray May afternoon in New York City when a thirty-year-old homeless man named Jordan Neely — who had dozens of encounters with law enforcement, suffered from schizophrenia and other mental health issues and was under the influence of synthetic drugs — boarded the F train and began ranting and raving at the straphangers on board. He said he was ready to die, that someone would die today, screaming that he didn’t mind going to jail or getting life in prison. Scared passengers backed away, with one young mother barricading her five-year-old behind a stroller. Witnesses attest to what happened next: a young man headed to the gym, an ex-Marine named Daniel Penny, did what others wouldn’t be brave enough to do in this situation.

daniel penny

Thursday

Toby Young

At 61, it’s official: I’m ‘young old’

From our UK edition

I read with some disappointment recently that the Encyclopaedia Britannica considers 61 – the age I am now – to be the beginning of old age. It defines ‘middle age’ as being between the ages of 40 and 60, which means that’s in my rear-view mirror. The only crumb of comfort is that some more charitable encyclopaedias describe the years 60 to 69 as ‘young old’, which is better than being an old Young I suppose. When I turned 60 last year, I told myself that you’re only as old as you feel and took succour from the fact that I’ve never spent a night in hospital, apart from when I got knocked off my bike, which doesn’t count. My energy levels remain high and I can still put in a 14-hour shift – even pull an all-nighter – when required.

Sunday

Grace Curley

Why Trump made inroads in the Democrats’ urban strongholds

Cities never sleep, but neither does Donald J. Trump. That might explain why he managed to make inroads in the most unlikely of places.  Trump’s gains in the Big Apple were able to do some damage to the Democrats’ star candidate and helped contribute to his popular vote win. “Kamala Harris won New York City by a thirty-seven-point margin, far shy of the nearly fifty-four-point margin of victory that President Biden held over Donald J. Trump in 2020,” Dana Rubinstein and Stefanos Chen wrote in the Times.  So how did he do it? It depends on who you ask.

donald trump inroads

Monday

Roger Kimball

Trump calls for America’s New Golden Age at Madison Square Garden

No one with an open mind — you can even scratch the adjective — no sentient sapiens period can have witnessed Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally without a frisson of awe. Even the most tireless Trump supporter must be a little jaded with Trump’s rallies by now. Just as in 2016, they have been building to a crescendo in both size and frequency. And even avid politicos might be forgiven for thinking they had been there, done that.  But Sunday’s rally at Madison Square Garden was something different. Perhaps other rallies were as large. We’re told that the MSG event boasted a capacity crowd of nearly 20,000 with more than 70,000 lined up to view the festivities on screens set up outside.

madison square garden

Monday

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Dining with the Chinese food pioneers of New York

For first-time restaurateur Bolun Yao, New York is a city to experiment in: “I feel like New York is the city that is always exploring new things. If you have a new idea, you put it here.” The Chinese-born entrepreneur — who has also spent significant time in New Zealand — came to NYU to complete a master’s degree in food studies. He quickly fell in love with the fine-dining Korean scene, including the two-Michelin-starred Atomix and COTE, America’s only Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse. Both merge contemporary and traditional techniques and ingredients. “Wow, that’s really, really smart and really creative,” the twenty-eight-year-old recalls thinking. “Why is there not a Chinese restaurant that does the same thing?

Chinese

Friday

Cockburn

Donald Trump, king of comedy?

In spooky season, it’s only appropriate that the “joy” has been drawn out of the Harris campaign like a demon facing an exorcist. It may have found a new host in her opponent: former president Donald Trump brought down the house at the Al Smith dinner for Catholic charities in New York City last night, which Kamala opted to skip. Trump has also faced criticism this week for canceling events and dodging interviews with CNBC and the Shade Room. His remarks are worth watching in their entirety (you can do so below), but here are some choice one-liners. Clearly Trump has benefited from keeping the company of comedians Andrew Schulz and Theo Von lately. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

comedy

Friday

Cockburn

Eric Adams’s Turkey trot

“Brooklyn is the Istanbul of America,” now-Mayor Eric Adams told a pair of Turks on camera after they asked him for political favors in a cameo he made in a Turkish romcom. Now, in real life, Adams is accused of doing just that, following a sweeping indictment unsealed by prosecutors in Manhattan who allege that he fraudulently obtained $10 million in public campaign funds and accepted over $100,000 in bribes in order to facilitate a new Turkish consulate.“In 2014, Eric Adams, the defendant, became Brooklyn borough president.

Thursday

Cockburn

New York mayor Eric Adams indicted on federal charges

Talk about making history: New York City mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by a federal grand jury, the first sitting NYC mayor to face a federal charge while in post. Adams, who has served as mayor for three years, has been the subject of a federal investigation into whether his campaign was on the receiving end of illegal foreign donations from the Turkish government. New York is currently hosting the annual United Nations General Assembly; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's president, left the city hours before Adams's indictment. The indictment itself remains sealed, with more details expected to be revealed later today. Adams previously served as Brooklyn borough president and was an officer in New York City police forces for two decades.

eric adams

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Why New York is a city built on the written word

When I visited New York for the first time in a decade recently, one of its most famous living writers, Paul Auster, died on the day I arrived. This was not, I hope, anything to do with my presence in the city he spent decades memorializing; he had been suffering from terminal cancer for a considerable time. Yet as I sat at my desk at the first hotel I was visiting, the Frederick in Tribeca — a comfortable and well-located spot, let down slightly by its surly and unhelpful staff, but redeemed by stylish touches like a tiled map of nineteenth-century Manhattan built into the well-appointed shower — and started to write a tribute to Auster for our website, it made me wonder what, exactly, I was trying to find out about literary New York. Was I exploring its distinguished past?

new york

Tuesday

Calla Di Pietro

A cultural summer in the city

New York is gilded in beguiling art. It has an excess of riches and though summer is one of the best times to visit, quenching your cultural thirst can be difficult, as the arts patrons decamp to the Hamptons and watering holes ending in -an. From museums to galleries to street art at subway stations or parks, each borough is a canvas, so much so that it is often an afterthought against a landscape of pavement and honking cars. Will you be uptown for the first Monday in May? While the performances on the Met Gala’s red carpet are an art form in themselves, the exhibit the gala underwrites offers plenty to check out uptown as the tulips bloom on Park Avenue.

New York

Thursday

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

One-on-one with Broadway powerhouse Betsy Aidem

For the last few years, Betsy Aidem has immersed herself in historical trauma. In 2022, the Broadway powerhouse starred in Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award-winning play, which follows the lives of a Jewish family in Vienna in the first half of the twentieth century.  The same year, she took on a part in a similar vein: that of the feisty Marcelle in Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic, which ended its Broadway run on March 3. The action flits between 2016 France, when antisemitism is on the rise and the far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen is gaining traction as a presidential candidate; and the 1940s, when Marcelle’s grandparents hide from the Nazis in their Parisian apartment.

betsy aidem

Thursday

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Meeting Eric Ripert, chef of America’s best restaurant 

For Eric Ripert, cooking is like jazz. Ad-libbing, balance, motion. “One day the garlic is very pungent, one day it is not pungent. One day the onion is very juicy and sweet, one day it’s less, so you have to adapt all the time,” says the celebrated chef, who is the co-owner of Manhattan’s Le Bernardin, a close friend of the late Anthony Bourdain and a TV personality in his own right. “So, it’s very similar to music — I do not play the same notes all the time, I take a lot of freedom and liberties. Because I can.” Ripert is French but has — like his storied restaurant — become a New York institution. The chef lives on the Upper East Side with his glamorous, dark-haired wife Sandra (a real-estate broker who is Brooklyn born-and-raised, of Puerto Rican descent).

Ripert

Thursday

Cockburn

Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy baubles

Rudy Giuliani may sometimes carry himself like the Grinch, but the former New York City mayor loves Christmas enough to try his hand at ornament making. Even following a $148 million defamation judgment, Giuliani hasn’t given up the season's spirit. On Wednesday’s episode of his livestreamed program, America's Mayor Live, Giuliani seemed to have more on his mind than his financial woes. He shared a clip of his Christmas tree adorned with Nature’s Promise bottles, a fruit and vegetable supplement targeted at elderly conservatives. Still looking for that perfect stocking stuffer? Consider Nature's Promise: not only does it makes a great gift, every purchase helps Giuliani to "fight the traitors.

honorary rudy giuliani

Wednesday

The Spectator

Cuomosexual conversion therapy

Why apologize when you can just wait and hope people forget what you did wrong? As we enter the season of goodwill and gratitude, that’s the question posed by disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who this year is thankful for the complicity of his allies as he attempts to stage a comeback.While New York City mayor Eric Adams chokes on a different kind of Turkey, Politico writes that Cuomo has “begun in recent days to gauge the viability of a potential mayoral bid.”Cuomo resigned as governor in ignominy back in August 2021 after an investigation by New York attorney general Leticia James claimed that he had sexually harassed as many as eleven women.

Tuesday

William Newton

Comic Con with a Shakespearean twist

Recently, when I shared that I would be attending New York Comic Con in cosplay, I was met with a mixture of applause and derision. Why would an art critic want to participate in such an activity, let alone write about it? To me the appeal was obvious, since cosplay stems from the same impetus to tell tales, share values and dazzle the spectator that can be found throughout thousands of years of artistic expression. The first comic book conventions, popularly known as “comic cons” or simply “cons,” began as get-togethers for comic book aficionados to share their love of illustrated popular storytelling. Over time, cons absorbed other genres and forms of entertainment to become major social events and trade fairs.

comic con
rolf's
Zack Christenson

Deck the halls at Rolf’s

It’s a common lament each year — starting around October, people love to complain that the Christmas season continues to creep further and further into the fall. But for some, that creep is a welcome one. If that’s you, I know a place. At 3rd Avenue and 22nd Street in Manhattan, you can get your Christmas fill for around six months of the year — at least if you wander into the narrow German restaurant on the corner. You might almost miss it if you walk by during daylight hours. At night, it’s hard to miss. In this rather unsexy portion of Manhattan, Rolf’s has been a New York institution since 1968.

Monday

Charles Lipson

In the Eric Adams case, the FBI’s leaks and bias persist

Over the last couple of weeks, the FBI has been ramping up a corruption investigation of New York mayor Eric Adams. The mayor is a political newcomer who was formerly a senior police official in New York, elected, in part, to restore public safety. He has failed to do so. Now, he’s the center of a federal corruption investigation, centered on illegal foreign contributions. No one has been indicted yet. The first shoe to drop publicly was a raid on the Brooklyn home of Adams’s top fundraiser, Brianna Suggs. She was only twenty-three when she headed that major effort. The FBI conducted a surprise search of her home and seized documents and electronic devices. Although the search warrant has not been released, the New York Times reports that they obtained it.

eric adams

Friday

Josie Cox

The secret lives of New York’s doormen

The first test was the audacious cockroach that sidled into our apartment about three days after we moved in. Hardly enough of a native Manhattanite to calmly swat it and flush it and go on eating my pizza, I pollyannaish-ly sprinted downstairs instead. “Excuse me,” I breathlessly announced to the crossword-solving bald guy manning the front desk — I hadn’t even had the courtesy of introducing myself to him yet. “There’s a cockroach in my living room.” Visibly unimpressed but with an air of professional politeness that almost hid what he actually wanted to say (“suck it up, princess”), he looked up at me sympathetically: “The exterminator comes Tuesdays.” It was Friday.

doormen

Thursday

Cockburn

Lady Gaga’s dad takes on NYC’s ‘Bad Romance’ with migrants

Lady Gaga’s dad is giving New York City a Million Reasons to tackle the 90,000 migrants and asylum-seekers who have descended on the city since last spring. Sixty-six-year-old Joe Germanotta is fed up with “all the mayhem” some 500 illegal migrants staying at the Stratford Arms Hotel are inflicting on his Upper East Side neighborhood, he told the New York Post “If it was like this when my girls were growing up, I wouldn’t be living in New York,” Germanotta said. According to the Post, he’s also “compiling a list of local residents’ concerns to take to lawmakers, the NYPD and the homeless services in protest.” Germanotta said the influx of migrants was carried out as a rapid “stealth operation” because “they didn’t want anybody to know what was going on.

lady gag joe germanotta bad romance