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Valentine’s Day Won’t Be Quite as Sweet For Local Bakeries

Red Gate Bakery is hoping for a busy Valentine’s weekend (Photo: Trish Rooney)

Red Gate Bakery opened in December of 2019, two months before Valentine’s Day and three months before the pandemic hit. This year, during the East Village bakery’s second Valentine’s Day rush, they’ll offer a Red Velvet bread, heart-shaped Linzer cookies, and the strawberry Oreos that landed them on a Forbes list of best Valentine’s desserts in New York City. More →

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A Food Pantry Offers ‘Pretty Legendary’ Meals to College Students, No Questions Asked

Volunteers outside of College Student Pantry. (Photos: Kenna Beban)

“So what I did is I made a salad with the greens,” said Ana Moritz, NYU senior and home chef. “This super fancy thing of greens that was all these different kinds of kale I’d never heard of. And I made a creamy dressing with mustard, egg yolk, olive oil, and red wine vinegar, some honey. And then I had those greens with chickpeas, I got a can of chickpeas. And I also got an apple, so I put apple in the salad.” More →

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A Taste of What Food Pantries Are Doing to Combat NYC’s Mounting Hunger Crisis

In September and October, nearly one-third of adult New Yorkers reported that they had used a food pantry in the last year, according to a report published by Robin Hood in partnership with Columbia University. The staggering numbers represented a 250 percent increase relative to January and February, before the Covid-19 pandemic began in earnest. More →

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NYPD Violence Against Black Lives Matter Protesters Was Part of a Plan

(Photos: Erin O’Brien)

Early in the evening of June 3, 2020, Mattie Barber-Bockelman marched from Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn towards Cadman Plaza, near the Brooklyn Bridge. This was Barber-Bockelman’s first protest after months of lockdown, but she knew what to do from posts on Instagram and Twitter. Barber-Bockelman is white, and positioned herself at the edge of the crowd, between Black protesters and the police.  More →

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Manhattan’s Last Home For Artists Weathers Another Storm

Westbeth’s exterior (Photo: Steven Bornholtz, via Wikimedia)

In the middle of the night in early November 2012, Karen Santry dressed in a wetsuit and skulked down the stairs of her West Village apartment building, hoping not to wake anyone. Hurricane Sandy had just struck the East Coast, battering much of New York City. Santry’s home had been without power, heat, and water for days. In the week following the storm, she and her fellow residents of Westbeth Artists Housing used flashlights to navigate darkened corridors. The more intrepid shuttled water in buckets up the stairs of her 13-story building.   More →

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Meet the 16-Year-Old Parks Forager Who Gives New Meaning to ‘Outdoor Dining’

The average New Yorker might see mostly weeds and shrubs when they walk through a greenspace like Forest Park. For Violet Brill, a 16-year-old forager, they’re a source of nutrition and healing. She’s been plucking wild edible and medicinal plants growing on city grounds since she was a child. Now, with the pandemic bringing a renewed interest in foraging, more and more New Yorkers want to pick her brain. More →

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With Protests on the Back Burner, Where Is the Black Chef Movement Headed?

(Photo courtesy of Turner Johnson)

As people took to the streets of New York City following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis back in May, members of the Black Chef Movement took to their kitchens to prepare healthy meals for the protesters on the movement’s frontlines. An initial Instagram post on June 3 asking for volunteers led to an organization of nearly 100 members and an Instagram following of more than 8,000. While the movement has been a success, it’s experiencing some growing pains now that its original mission is fading along with the protests. More →

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Photographer’s Avenger, Judge’s Nightmare: The Case of Copyright Lawyer Richard Liebowitz

(Photo courtesy of Richard Liebowitz)

In the five years his firm has been opened, Richard Liebowitz, a photographer turned attorney, has managed to file more than 2,500 copyright infringement cases. In that same period, he has earned another distinction: he has become the most frequently sanctioned lawyer in the Southern District of New York. 

Federal judges in the District and elsewhere, exasperated with the number of cases and Liebowitz’s alleged misconduct, have labeled him the “copyright troll.”  More →