When I plugged in disposable red earbuds to a headphone jack on TopView’s double-decker bus on a recent Tuesday, Frank Sinatra greeted me with a nostalgic rendition of “New York, New York.” More →
For the last few months, Big Reuse, a compost processing site in western Queens, has been fighting to try to stay on its current land. But at the end of the month, it may have to find a new place to process the roughly 1.7 million pounds of residential food scraps and park leaves it handles every year. More →
When the pandemic started in March, performing arts venues all over the country closed. In June, Off-Broadway fixture The Playroom Theatre shuttered permanently, and many of New York’s independent theater owners, directors, and administrators feared they would be forced to do the same. More →
A native New Yorker, Azikiwe Mohammed has always envisioned a space where Black and brown people can feel safe expressing themselves. More →
McSorley’s Ale House hasn’t changed much in the last century: its floors are still lined with sawdust bought from the same Long Island-based family for the past 80 years, black-and-white photos line its walls containing centuries of history, and a centrally located iron fireplace still burns wood to keep it warm during the winter. But in 1994, Teresa Maher de la Haba became the first McSorley’s bartender with a soprano voice. More →
Following a nearly three-hour long virtual hearing on Friday, the fate of Elizabeth Street Garden, a 20,000-square-foot public green space, continues to hang in the balance. More →
One month after Sierra Fraser participated in a demonstration against New York City’s high school admissions testing, she’s visibly distressed about the experience.
“It was rough,” the 18-year-old college freshman tells me over Zoom, her hair sitting atop her head in a tight bun and her voice quickly turning from quiet and composed to loud and frustrated. Sierra adjusts her glasses and looks up at the ceiling: “We were chanting ‘Black students matter,’ and they yelled back ‘All students matter.’ Their signs said ‘Education for all,’ but how can you say ‘Education for all’ and not support a more inclusive education system for Black and brown students?” More →
A little over a year after it closed its doors, The Bean has reopened its Second Avenue location, bringing a neighborhood staple back to NYU students and other East Village locals. The coffee shop’s reopening on Nov. 18 was the result of a rent break brought on by the pandemic, but with a second wave of COVID-19 threatening to hit New York City, it remains to be seen how long the silver lining will gleam. More →
As winter approaches, the city’s restaurants have scrambled to replace their outdoor dining areas with structures that offer shelter from not just the sun but also the wind, cold, and snow. But how safe are these “covid cabins,” as they’ve been snarkily coined on social media? More →
On a sunny afternoon in Manhattan’s Chinatown, masked residents can be seen wandering the streets, chatting with friends. In the alleyways, a handful of customers are seated at outdoor dining tables. The once deserted streets of Chinatown have come back to life. But local advocates believe the area could be more inviting after dark, and they’re hoping to brighten it up with hundreds of lanterns. More →