This year’s tedious “Is New York dead?” debate has a strong contender in Team No—Mary-Kate Olsen, fresh off her split from Olivier Sarkozy and a summer spent in the Hamptons, is back to her stomping grounds of Manhattan. Predictably, cameras have followed. According to an unnamed source quoted in Entertainment Weekly, “there is no shortage of things in [Mary-Kate’s] life that bring her joy” these days. […]
New York City
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The inflammatory social media personality who allegedly incited the assault of a Jewish journalist in Brooklyn during Wednesday night demonstrations against new pandemic-related restrictions says he will be allowed to turn himself in to police on unspecified charges after this weekend. Harold “Heshy” Tischler—caught on video swaggering through crowds of irate ultra-Orthodox Jewish youths with a Trump bumper sticker on his shirt, and apparently goading protesters […]
“Cocaine is a hell of a drug,” proclaimed Dave Chappelle’s Rick James, and the same is true of gambling. For proof, just ask Craig Carton, whose world collapsed in 2017 thanks to an addiction to blackjack and the ensuing fraud he perpetrated to pay off his debts. A counselor featured in Wild Card: The Downfall of a Radio Loudmouth equates playing cards for money with snorting […]
The truck-revving, banner-waving, loudspeaker-blaring pro-Trump rally took place, conveniently, on Sept. 19, the first Saturday of early voting in the swing state of Virginia, in a parking lot where voters in Democratic-leaning Fairfax County were lined up to cast their ballots. Some Trump supporters drove circles around the voters while others—many without face masks—mingled with the line, chanting and waving flags. “We had a couple poll […]
We’re teetering on the brink of an unthinkable future. Our democracy hangs by a thread. “How are you doing?” feels like a useless greeting; everything is bad now. Americans are simultaneously fed up and burned out. We feel a fiery rage and debilitating grief. But hey: at least Katie Holmes is having a good time. The 41-year-old actress is, as the New York Post put it […]
A New York City wedding ended in disaster Friday night after cops busted the illicit gathering of almost 300 guests and took the venue owner into custody, according to local reports. After receiving an anonymous complaint, the New York City Sheriff’s Department broke up the wedding at the Royal Elite Palace in Woodside, Queens just before midnight, NBC News New York reported. Upon entering the hall, […]
For several months last spring, New York City was the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic: Hospitals were overwhelmed by patients, a makeshift morgue was erected in Manhattan, and residents feared to leave the safety of their homes. But after a months-long lockdown, New York gained the upper hand on the virus, and since then, the city’s number of COVID-19 cases has remained low, even as […]
As Sofia Coppola has gotten older, so too have her protagonists, which makes it easy to see them—and their plights—as reflections of the aspirations and anxieties currently preoccupying the auteur. That’s once again true with On the Rocks, the story of a 39-year-old writer struggling with insecurity, suspicions about her husband, and the long shadow cast by her larger-than-life father, here played by Coppola’s Lost in […]
The legendary hotelier and nightclub veteran Ian Schrager is bullish when it comes to the post-pandemic future. “In the history of humanity, historically, any crisis that I have been witness to, or experienced, we have always recovered. And after we have recovered, we go back to normal, not a new normal, the same normal we were accustomed to before.” Schrager talks a thousand miles a minute, […]
At Middle School 839 in Brooklyn, teachers say there aren’t enough custodial staff on hand to carry out the city’s recommended pandemic cleaning plan. The electrostatic sprayer for disinfecting surfaces is missing parts and doesn’t work, they allege, while classroom windows only open three inches, making ventilation an issue. And the school only has about two weeks worth of face masks instead of the 30-day supply […]
There is a building on Lexington Avenue in the 70s that’s easy to ignore. Its facade is three stories of rain-streaked beige in a sea of taller apartment blocks and tonier shopfronts. A slate-grey door with a faded gold mail slot hides in a recess on the ground floor. Its intercom has four buttons, three of which are covered with tape. The fourth, however, is shiny […]
New York City is not dead, but the Hamptons have sure had a good pandemic so far. From Southampton to Montauk, the exclusive holiday towns strung along the south fork of Long Island have been hopping all summer. Unsurprisingly, many New Yorkers who can afford it are now planning to stay out east until coronavirus is no longer a threat. It’s a prospect that could change […]
I dare you to examine the 1989 murder of Yusuf Hawkins and tell me America has changed. Yusuf Hawkins was a 16-year-old Black teenager who, along with three friends, went to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, one summer night to look at a used car his buddy Troy had found for sale in the newspaper. Yusuf didn’t know anyone in Bensonhurst, but he and his friends found themselves surrounded […]
Earlier this week, a New York Times article read: “Hands are out as Congress is set to begin negotiating a new round of pandemic stimulus. Airlines, hotels, restaurants. Military contractors and banks. Even Broadway actors.” That “even” hit many of us working theater artists hard. Let me tell you why. The arts in New York City is a major economic engine. According to a study commissioned […]
A federal magistrate judge overseeing US President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen’s lawsuit against Justice Department officials over his recent incarceration has scheduled a hearing for a temporary restraining order on Thursday. Cohen will be released from prison to home confinement if the judge grants the order. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union and law firm Perry Guha LLP on behalf […]
For the second time in two years, a democratic socialist upstart from the Bronx has knocked a powerful Democratic congressman from office. In the Tuesday primary for New York’s 16th Congressional District, progressive challenger Jamaal Bowman defeated Rep. Eliot Engel, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to the Associated Press. The win, which took nearly one month to tally, all but ensures Bowman’s […]
A former assistant to tech entrepreneur Fahim Saleh, whose dismembered body was found in his luxury Manhattan apartment earlier this week, was taken into custody by the NYPD on Friday. Tyrese Haspil, 21, was being held in connection with the gruesome slaying of the 33-year-old startup whiz. He was expected to be charged with homicide. A law enforcement source told The Daily Beast that detectives began […]
As NYPD detectives sought the black-clad monster who beheaded and dismembered 33-year-old tech entrepreneur Fahim Saleh in his $2.2 million Manhattan apartment, his family issued a plea for justice. “No words or actions to provide any of us comfort except the capture of the person who exhibited nothing short of evil upon our loved one,” the family statement said. “We need and urge the NYPD and […]
Amy Cooper, the white woman who called the police in May and falsely accused a Black man of threatening her life after he asked her to leash her dog in Central Park, faces charges for the incident, prosecutors announced Monday. Cooper, 41, will be charged with filing a false report, a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to a year in jail, for making the May 25 […]
When 27-year-old Samantha Shader was first arrested for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at police, she told detectives that the supplies—including glass bottles—were given to her by a group of Black men and women, according to federal court records. But weeks later, on Friday, police arrested a white man who admitted to providing the materials, 29-year-old Timothy Amerman. According to court records and a Facebook page […]
Thousands of protesters flooded the streets of lower Manhattan on Sunday for the Queer Liberation March for Black Lives and Against Police Brutality, a rallying cry against police violence that combined the spirit of Pride with the ongoing calls of the Black Lives Matter movement. Late afternoon reports on social media showed disturbing moments of confrontation after a largely peaceful march, with the police pushing through […]
On Monday, New York City moved into Phase II, allowing New Yorkers their closest sense of normalcy in months. But even though the transition to the second phase of reopening symbolizes New York City’s progress in containing the coronavirus, it doesn’t necessarily provide a reprieve from the restrictions and worries for New Yorkers. “The reopening has not really changed how I feel,” Dior Vargas, a 33-year-old […]
Jamaal Bowman did what most thought was impossible for a middle school principal with no political campaign experience to do: He is set to oust Eliot Engel from Congress after 30 years in office. With an abnormally large number of absentee ballots still being counted, Bowman sits above 60 percent while Engel’s vote tally hovers at just 35 percent, and as Bowman said in a presumptive […]
Chelsey Drapeau, a hair stylist in Brooklyn, bought an avocado-printed dress for her first appointment since the New York shutdown began. “I was like, ‘What to wear?’” Drapeau told The Daily Beast. “The season has changed since I last worked [in March]. I went through my closet and got rid of stuff during COVID. So I got something new!” Hairstylists know much about the restorative power […]
Rep. Eliot Engel and President Barack Obama didn’t always see eye-to-eye on issues of foreign policy. The New York congressman, as staunch a Middle East hawk as there currently is in the Democratic Party, was the most high-profile House Democrat to oppose Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the biggest foreign policy initiative of his presidency. Now, Engel, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is […]
In 1986, Ricky Powell was selling Frozade lemon ices on the streets of New York City, he never imagined he’d become a legendary hip-hop photographer. But that year, Powell ditched the cart and joined opening act the Beastie Boys on Run DMC’s “Raising Hell” tour across America. He eventually became the Beastie Boys’ photographer of choice, capturing the trio (Adam Horovitz, Adam Yauch and Mike Diamond) […]
Nearly two weeks into protests against the killing of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis police custody, a slew of different cities across the country have been forced to confront the brutal methods used by their own police officers as videos emerged of harrowing incident after harrowing incident. And on Friday, it seemed a reckoning of sorts was in the air: Police officers in multiple cities […]
On Wednesday morning, New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot F. Shea tweeted a low-resolution video of an unidentified officer picking up blue plastic crates on a city street corner. The crates, which appeared to be filled with chunks of masonry, had apparently been left next to a garbage can near Avenue X and West 3rd Street in Gravesend, a neighborhood by the water on Brooklyn’s south […]
Twenty minutes after leaving his job at a Brooklyn hospital on Saturday night, 32-year-old Rayne Valentine was lying in the fetal position on the sidewalk. He’d been beaten and kicked by New York police officers, his hospital ID smeared with his own blood, he told The Daily Beast. Valentine, a Marine veteran who worked as a chef before the pandemic hit the restaurant industry, got a […]
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo openly hypothesized on Tuesday about overthrowing NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio after rampant looting and destruction swept across Manhattan on Monday night, overwhelming the NYPD and leaving the city looking like a war zone. “I’m disappointed and outraged by what happened in New York City last night. That criminal activity hurt everyone,” he said. De Blasio had doubled NYPD officers out […]
President Donald Trump may have shown diminishing concern for the threat posed to the American public by the novel coronavirus in recent weeks, but his administration and allies are increasingly pointing to the pandemic as a justification for further longstanding policy goals on immigration. For months, the Trump administration has utilized the pandemic as a pretext for raising the barriers for entry into the country, effectively […]
As protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody boiled over in New York City on Saturday and video of an NYPD vehicle driving into demonstrators sparked outrage, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would not “blame” police officers facing such an “impossible situation.” “If those protesters had just gotten out of the way and not created an attempt to surround that vehicle, we […]
MINNEAPOLIS—Hours after a now-fired Minneapolis cop was charged with murder in the death of 46-year-old George Floyd on Friday, protests exploded in major U.S. cities across the country, with demonstrators demanding that all police officers involved be brought to justice—fast. In New York City, where dozens were arrested in Manhattan a day earlier, hundreds of people swarmed to meet police officers outside the Barclays Center in […]
Beleaguered Americans long to return to their favorite restaurants and other non-essential neighborhood spots as soon as it is safe to do so. We are ready for late weekend mornings spent over a cup of diner coffee, or calendars booked again with familiar rituals like haircuts or color appointments. Something we might not be prepared for: the lines outside those businesses, which will undoubtedly have new […]
The moment came on Mother’s Day, as it happened, in front of Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Once again New Yorkers were cheering for essential workers on the front lines fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Four young men stopped their car. They set up an electric organ and an amp, and one climbed on the hood. He started to sing “America the Beautiful.” Erika, […]
“Current and former administration officials said the conflict” with his own top health official stemmed from the leader’s “apparent distrust of experts and his dissatisfaction with public health recommendations, which are often based on scientific analysis of imperfect and at times incomplete information” while the leader “prizes certainty, decisiveness and directness.” Remind you of anyone? Actually, that’s New York City’s mayor, as described in the New […]
A Queens, New York, man accused of threatening mass shootings and buying illegal weapons was also a prolific internet troll targeting Jews and people of color online. Joseph Miner was arrested Tuesday along with another man, Daniel Jou, after allegedly trying to buy assault-style weapons with the serial numbers removed from an undercover agent at an airport hotel. Miner allegedly used Instagram to post about “martyring” […]
In the early hours Friday, those braving tourist-free Times Square were treated to an arresting sight: a white billboard projecting the words ‘Trump Death Clock’ in big black letters; underneath, a counter in red reading ‘44,809.’ These are the deaths that, according to two of the world’s leading epidemiologists, could have been avoided had the Trump administration acted just one week prior to March 16, when […]
Three New York children have died from pediatric multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome tied to COVID-19 since the pandemic began, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday. A 7-year-old boy from Westchester County died late last week, the county confirmed on Friday. A 5-year-old boy died earlier in the week from the same syndrome at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital in New York City. Cuomo did not give any details […]
New York City remains under seemingly interminable pandemic lockdown. But as researchers around the globe chase the promise of antibody tests—which have faced criticism for their mixed accuracy and dubious reputation as harbingers of COVID-19-immunity—a new wave of such testing in America’s largest city offered a glimmer of hope. Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday detailed a plan to ramp up antibody testing locally, and specifically […]
A powerful cryptocurrency investor is suing a New York high-school senior who he alleges led a “gang of digital bandits” to steal nearly $24 million in multiple cryptocurrencies from him in 2015. Michael Terpin, the founder and chief executive officer of Transform Group, filed the complaint against Ellis Pinsky in federal court in White Plains, New York, on Thursday now that Pinsky has turned 18 years […]