Outdoor dining is becoming the new normal as New York City enters phase 2 of reopening. But in residential areas like Sunnyside, Queens, restaurants are resuming business in ways that don’t necessarily involve putting out tables on a sidewalk or roadway. More →
Drivers or pedestrians who passed by Second Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets couldn’t help but notice the balloons where cars used to park. “Welcome back to outdoor dining,” read a colorful sign belonging to Barnacho, a Mexican restaurant. Behind the balloons, there were six tables on the asphalt where customers will be seated, in addition to seven tables occupying the sidewalk. Welcome to phase two of New York’s reopening. More →
I first met dominatrix Charlotte Taillor in February at her home in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, where her male submissives were curating pastry spreads and rolling her spliffs. While she usually sports a leather catsuit, this day she wore sweatpants and a t-shirt reading “sex worker rights are human rights.”
Charlotte runs The Taillor Group, a feminist kink collective that encourages explorations of BDSM and other fetishes. The operation is entirely female-centric, comprised of about 30 dommes, and rather an anomaly in the world of kink; dominatrixes usually fly solo. “BDSM is the only way I’ve found for women to achieve the agency we’ve been striving for,” Charlotte told me confidently, before bellowing at one of her subs: “Roll me more spliffs!” More →
Earlier this month, over 50 smashed storefronts were boarded up after a night of looting. Two weeks later, Soho has turned into an open-air art gallery.
“Color is not a crime” reads a message painted on the plywood boards covering one store, against a rainbow-hued skyline. More →
A year ago, the streets of the West Village were resplendent with rainbow flags sporting the number 50 to mark the bicentennial of the Stonewall Riots and New York’s first time hosting World Pride. Throngs of people from across the globe spilled out of the neighborhood’s iconic LGBTQ drinking establishments, swapping sweat and saliva. More →
Sitting in her Greenpoint home on a Friday night, Lorraine Leckie opens up a Zoom video session and gets ready for a night of crafting songs. Around 7:30 p.m., video squares begin to pop up on her screen, revealing her friends’ heads and torsos and a snapshot of their living rooms. The Greenpoint Songwriters Exchange had to move out of Leckie’s home to an online platform to accommodate for social distancing rules, but just because gigs are canceled doesn’t mean writing new material has to stop. More →
When Kirsten Midura started Engines for Change in 2019, she was merging her love for motorcycle riding and environmental activism. The nonprofit started off hosting beach cleanups. But as times quickly changed and the coronavirus pandemic hit New York City hard, Engines for Change volunteers began using their motorcycles to transport groceries to those who are unable to leave their homes, and they delivered Personal Protective Equipment to hospitals and health care centers across the city. With times changing yet again, the group is once again shifting gears – this time to support New Yorkers protesting police violence against black people. More →
After scraping by during the Covid-19 shutdown, East Village businesses were looking forward to New York’s reopening when police-brutality protests broke out around the neighborhood. The looting that followed quickly became a talking point for conservative commentators looking to discredit protestors, but many local shopkeepers who experienced break-ins continue to support the ongoing protests even as they pick up the pieces.
“We support the Black Lives Matter movement, and it being a movement and not a moment,” said Laura Sewell. More →
Monday, June 8, was one of the busiest days of The Mysterious Bookshop’s history. Ironically, though, the 3,000-square-foot room, with its high shelves holding the largest variety of crime books in America, was almost entirely empty save for employees preparing books and other mystery-related products for shipping and pickup. More →
Late last month, video of a confrontation between an avid birder and a dog walker in the Central Park Ramble went viral. While Twitter and the op-ed pages rightfully prioritized the degree to which white privilege, prejudice, and misplaced fear motivated the dog walker’s more than inappropriate response, the exchange also underscored long-standing tensions between birders and dog walkers in the Ramble, and sparked broader conversations about city park usage in general. That conversation has become all the more timely now that parks are playing host to massive protests against police brutality and systemic racism. More →
