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. A confusing statement given, you know, everything. Still, I wish The Row designer buckets full of happiness, not unlike the bowls of cigarettes that were reportedly available to guests at her 2015 wedding. Ecstatic as […]
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 into striking reporter Jacob Kornbluh earlier this week—announced to his Twitter followers Friday afternoon that he was “being arrested” Monday morning at the local police stationhouse, but insisted he would “be pleading not guilty.” The […]
“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 fine china, since both produce a high that can only be replicated through endless—and increasingly reckless—repetition. There’s clear evidence that it was a quest for that rush, and a sense of control, that did in […]
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 observers there that had to actually escort voters in because we saw people that would get to the edge of the parking lot, and see this giant group of Trumpers yelling and screaming,” Jack Kiraly, […]
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 this month, “The queen of public make outs.” Like your friend who can’t read the room and won’t shut up about her new boyfriend after you tell her your grandmother just died, Holmes has spent […]
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, filled with mask-less guests in formal wear, deputies found “large groups of people entering the location through what appears to be an indoor parking area as well as loud music coming from the location.” The […]
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 other states continue to grapple with troubling outbreaks. As a result, America’s largest city opened schools for in-person classes on Sept. 21—but the phased reopening has been anything but smooth. By the end of the […]
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 Translation headliner Bill Murray with more mega-watt vivacity than he’s shown in years. Premiering online at the New York Film Festival before debuting in theaters (on October 2) and on Apple TV+ (on October 23), […]
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, in the thick New York accent he acquired growing up in Brooklyn. “Go back to Noah and the flood. After the water goes down, life goes on. “I really don’t believe in paradigm shifts. We […]
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 they were promised, the teachers claim. Because of this, MS 839 faculty—who are only permitted to work from home if they have specific underlying medical conditions—are urging parents to choose the “fully remote option” for […]
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 white from use. A yellowed slip of paper next to it reads, in elegant if faded capital letters, “OSMAN.” Osman was the name of the founder and first Sultan of what would become the Ottoman […]
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 the Hamptons into a resort with no off-season, a prospect that sharply divides local opinion. While some welcome the firehose of cash that Manhattanites bring, others fret that pressure on services could overwhelm local infrastructure […]
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 by a mob of 30 young white men swinging baseball bats, wielding handguns, and accusing them of not belonging in their all-white neighborhood. The mostly Italian men forced themselves between Yusuf and his friends, pinned […]
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 last year by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Entertainment, theater is responsible for $1.3 billion in annual economic output, 8,409 jobs, and $513 million in salaries. The Broadway closedown, effective from March 12, has […]
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 of Cohen, also states that the disgraced attorney’s tell-all book will describe how the president made racist comments about former US President Barack Obama and the late South African leader Nelson Mandela. “Mr. Cohen’s book […]
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 place in Congress next year. “From the very beginning, we anchored our campaign in the fight for racial justice,” Bowman said in a statement on Wednesday. “We spoke truth—about the police, about systemic racism, about […]
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 zeroing in on Haspil after finding message exchanges in which Saleh had accused him of stealing tens of thousands of dollars over a period of time. Investigators ran a credit-card check and determined that Haspil’s […]
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 other members of law enforcement to work diligently to get to the bottom of this horrific crime and bring justice for Fahim.” The family described the brutality of the killing as beyond comprehension. “The headlines […]
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 complaint against Christian Cooper, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said. “Good,” Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted after the announcement. “Her racist behavior could have had dire consequences for a Black man. Glad she’ll face consequences […]
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 that appears to belong to Amerman, he works as a painter in Saugerties, New York. Amerman faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of civil disorder or civil disorder conspiracy, for which he […]
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 crowds of protesters and appearing to detain multiple people. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that two people were arrested in the act of graffiting a police vehicle, and that pepper spray was […]
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 resident of Upper Manhattan, told The Daily Beast. “My assumption is to just hunker down, stay in, and see what happens next. I’m very wary of making any sudden movements.” COVID-19 hit Vargas and her […]
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 victory speech Tuesday night in Yonkers, he is set “to get to Congress and cause problems for the people in there that have been maintaining a status quo that has literally been killing our children.” […]
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 of looking good. In her Bushwick salon, decked out with wood-paneled mirrors and leafy green plants, Drapeau hoped her laid-back uniform might offset some first-day-back jitters. “I’m anxious about interacting with people constantly,” she said. […]
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 fighting for his political life amid a primary challenge to his left from Jamaal Bowman, a former high school principal. Obama administration alumni want him to know they haven’t forgotten his vote—and that they don’t […]
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) on the “Licensed to Ill” and “Check Your Head” tours, and even earned a shout-out on the track “Car Thief” off Paul’s Boutique: “Homeboy throw in the towel / Your girl got dicked by Ricky […]
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 were suspended, hit with charges, or stripped of their powers after they were caught on camera treating peaceful protesters like combatants. In New York City, where earlier this week authorities had praised the police department’s […]
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 end that’s been largely untouched by the protests elsewhere in the borough and the city. “This is what our cops are up against: Organized looters, strategically placing caches of bricks & rocks at locations throughout […]
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 job in March at Kings County Hospital Center. He has spent the past several months moving medicine and patients around the facility, as well as piling hundreds of dead bodies—many of them COVID-19 victims—into refrigerated […]
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 on the streets to 8,000 on Monday night and imposed an 11 p.m. curfew after three nights of protests against police brutality were overshadowed by violence. But it was not enough to stop rampant looters […]
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 halting most immigration into the United States for the duration of the crisis, refusing to issue COVID-19 guidances for those still stuck in the immigration legal system, and using a quarantine law from the late […]
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 would not be talking about this,” de Blasio said in a call-in appearance on NY1 just before a hastily scheduled late-night press conference. That was his first live appearance in over two nights of nationwide […]
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 Brooklyn. Around 7:30 p.m., cops unleashed pepper spray on the chanting crowd. In Atlanta, thousands of demonstrators marched to protest Floyd’s death, a largely peaceful gathering until clashes with police erupted outside CNN Center. Pepper […]
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 capacity caps limiting how many people may enter at a time. Sure, the past two months have conditioned many to accept the kind of interminable tediousness—and muscle aches—unique to time spent waiting in line as […]
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, a traveling nurse who immigrated from Brazil more than 35 years ago, and who had come to New York from her home in the Carolinas to try to help, put her hand over her heart. […]
“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 York Times’ story, He Saw ‘No Proof’ Closures Would Curb Virus. Now He Has De Blasio’s Trust. The article details how Bill de Blasio shoved away the city Health Department—with more than a century of […]
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” himself in a mass shooting. Miner’s reported account, which contained a white supremacist reference, was also used to harass accounts for a leading Jewish organization and a black Instagrammer, according to posts reviewed by The […]
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 nationwide mitigation measures were first introduced to the public. “I looked at those numbers and thought, just as the National Debt Clock warns us of the costs of reckless borrowing, we need a National Death […]
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 about the third New York child on Saturday. “We still have a lot to learn about this virus and every day is another eye-opening situation,” he said, adding that the emergence of the illness was […]
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 to survey about 140,000 people over two weeks in order to “understand COVID-19 spread and provide New Yorkers with more clarity,” as his office explained. Five testing sites will be set up in each of […]
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 old. In the complaint, Terpin claims that Pinsky seems like “an ‘all-American boy,’” but in reality the suburban Westchester County teen is an “evil computer genius” who led a “gang of digital bandits” in a […]