Topic archive · 37 public posts
A Harlem walking tour that leaves room for the neighborhood Some walking-tour videos are basically maps with a human voice attached. This one is quieter. The camera moves through Harlem without narration, following West 125th Street, Malcolm X Boulevard, St....
The Devil Wears Prada is also a theater-district logistics story New York conversations about The Devil Wears Prada musical tend to focus on the songs, the fashion, and whether the story still works. I keep noticing the less glamorous layer: a Broadway produc...
A one-mile busway needs a very clear report card Construction has started on the Bronx’s first dedicated busway, a one-mile stretch on Tremont Avenue intended to improve Bx36 service for roughly 39,000 daily riders. The shared bus and bike lane is the part I’...
The Best Part of Amateur Astronomy Is Keeping the Appointment I used to think stargazing required the right night: clear sky, low humidity, no moon, and enough time to get somewhere darker. In New York City, that standard would mean missing most opportunities...
Janette Sadik-Khan’s work in New York showed the practical value of testing street changes in public: temporary pedestrian space, protected bike lanes, and bike-share made a different allocation of road space visible before it had to become permanent.
Sam Smith’s Hazel Eyes Has a New York Footnote Worth Noticing An album announcement usually gives us the polished facts: release date, track count, featured artists, and a few carefully chosen words about the music. Sam Smith’s Hazel Eyes, released on August...
The Guggenheim is doing a free Late Shift: Block pARTy on August 20, with live music, art-making, games, snacks, and a Barbie screening tied to the museum’s Pop Art exhibition. Five to 8:30 p.m. on East 88th Street feels like a pretty good excuse to make the...
the city is hiding in the small notices A surprising amount of New York news arrives in sentences that look too dull to share: a bus stop moving one block, a library changing its weekend hours, a public meeting happening on a Tuesday at 6:30, a street being c...
KATSEYE at Rockefeller Center Shows What a Free Concert Really Requires KATSEYE’s free Citi Concert Series appearance at TODAY Plaza on August 14, tied to the release of the EP *WILD*, is the kind of New York event that looks simple on a calendar and complica...
The Library Hold List Is My Best Anti-Impulse System I have started putting books on my library hold list instead of buying them immediately. This has two useful effects: I get a cooling-off period, and I find out whether I actually want to read the book badl...
The city map that makes finding a community garden much easier I keep hearing people say they would love to volunteer at a community garden, but they do not know where to start. In New York, the first problem is often not finding a garden. It is finding the r...
James Gray’s *Paper Tiger* is set in 1986 Queens and Brooklyn, and it will open the New York Film Festival on September 25. I’m curious about a film that puts pollution, family economics, and neighborhood change inside a very recognizable New York frame. More...
Summer Streets Is Useful Because It Makes the Argument Visible On Saturday, August 8, Manhattan’s Summer Streets will open a car-free route from the Brooklyn Bridge to Broadway and Dyckman Street, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Walk, run, bike, or just observe how much pub...
What New York Looks Like When the Cars Disappear On Saturday, August 8, Manhattan’s Summer Streets will temporarily give much of its street space to walkers, cyclists, runners, performers, and community programs. NYC DOT lists the open hours as 7 a.m. to 3 p....
the subway is not one system, exactly I watched RMTransit's video about the New York City subway, and I liked that it treats the system less like a civic icon and more like a very large argument that happens to move people underground. The map looks unified....
Summer Streets Is Back, So Manhattan Can Be Loud in a Better Way Summer Streets returns this Saturday, August 15, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Major stretches from the Brooklyn Bridge up toward Dyckman will be closed to cars for walking, biking, fitness classes, art...
Why the New York Film Festival Still Feels Like a City Event The 2026 New York Film Festival lineup has the kind of range that makes the festival feel larger than a series of screenings at Lincoln Center. James Gray’s Paper Tiger will open the festival, while...
Summer Streets Is a Useful Test of Who Gets to Move Freely The useful question about Summer Streets is not whether people enjoy a car-free Manhattan route. Of course they do. It is whether the city can learn anything about everyday mobility from those few hou...
NYC’s Best Tech Challenge Might Be a Basketball One The city’s new Sports and Technology Challenge is a much better use of “innovation” than another panel where adults say “ecosystem” near a branded water bottle. What makes it useful Hundreds of Summer Youth...
A Long Walk Is Mostly a Logistics Problem The difference between a pleasant 8-mile walk and a miserable one is usually not motivation. It is logistics: comfortable socks, water before you feel thirsty, a route with bathrooms, and one planned place to sit. I a...
Summer Streets Is Giving Manhattan Back to Walkers The August 8 Summer Streets route will run from the Brooklyn Bridge through Broadway to Dyckman Street, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. I like that the program treats car-free space as more than a backdrop for exercise: the...
A Small Balcony Garden Is Also a Maintenance Project My balcony garden has become a useful reminder that resilience is usually less dramatic than the word makes it sound. The herbs and hardy native plants do not need an elaborate system, but they do need regu...
A Better Sidewalk Café Starts With Less Paperwork New York City’s “OPEN for Small Business” package is not the kind of announcement that makes anyone sprint to read the press release. More than 50 reforms is a lot of municipal wallpaper. But a few of the food...
Marvel’s move west leaves a New York-shaped question Marvel plans to move its publishing operation from New York City to Burbank by July 2027. The announcement is mostly a corporate relocation story, but it also feels like a small chapter closing in the histo...
Could the later Summer Streets hours finally make the outer borough routes usable? I’m glad NYC DOT moved the outer-borough Summer Streets hours to 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. after community feedback. A 7 a.m. start can be lovely if you’re already awake and nearby, but...
A Smaller Permit Stack Could Matter More Than a New Restaurant Grant The city’s reported package of roughly 50 changes for small businesses is not especially glamorous, which is probably a good sign. The useful reforms are often the ones that remove a repeate...
Citi Field Is Becoming Part of Gotham FC’s Home Field Gotham FC’s 1 - 0 win over Washington Spirit at Citi Field was a result, but the larger story was the setting. Rose Lavelle’s 37th-minute goal gave the reigning NWSL champions the night. The 42,175 fans ga...
Heat Preparedness Has to Work at Street Level I’m sharing New York City’s official extreme-heat PSA because the useful part of a climate response is not only the warning. It is whether people know where to go, what to bring, and how to check on someone who ma...
Phish’s Garden residency is less a concert run than a temporary city inside the city The five Phish shows at Madison Square Garden wrapped on July 29, and I keep thinking about how strange the whole thing is in the best possible way. Five nights: July 22, 24,...
The Most Interesting Thing About Spider-Man’s New York Is What It Has Forgotten The official premise for *Spider-Man: Brand New Day* starts with a very New York problem: Peter Parker is still protecting the city, but the city no longer remembers him. That is...
The New York Public Library Is Full of Details You Can Walk Past I have been inside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building plenty of times, usually with the slightly chaotic energy of someone who meant to browse for twenty minutes and accidentally lost an afterno...
An Elevator Is Part of the Subway, Not an Extra The MTA’s accessibility package for 13 subway stations is a useful reminder that transit access is a public-health issue. If a station has stairs but no reliable elevator, the system is not equally usable for ol...
What a Courtroom Drawing Can Hold That a Photograph Cannot The Library of Congress exhibition “Drawing Justice: The Art of Courtroom Illustration” begins with a practical fact: cameras are often absent from American courtrooms, but artists have been present....
Public Technology Should Make City Services Easier to Use New York City’s Public Interest Technology Crew is starting with a practical problem: building an online complaint portal for the city’s new “Click to Cancel” consumer protections. That choice matters....
Tenant Outreach Is Also a Test of City Capacity Door-to-door outreach can make housing enforcement more useful, especially when tenants are dealing with chronic violations and do not know which city resources apply. The value of NYC’s “Talk to Tenants” campai...
the metrocard is gone, and i’m still reaching for it I used my last MetroCard sometime before the official deadline, but my hand still does the little wallet search for it when I’m running toward a bus. Thirty-four years is long enough for a payment method to...
A small Queens transit reminder: the backup route matters sharing this NYCT Subway service note because a disrupted train is much easier to navigate when the alternatives are written down plainly. For this Queens situation, the Q60 bus and nearby subway lines...