The Briefly for July 5, 2018 – The NYC Food Cart Black Market, the Statue of Liberty Protester ID'd, Is de Blasio a Liar, and More

George Wesley Bellows's Excavation at Night from 1908 depicts the original Penn Station dig.

This must be some kind of record for Christmas trees.

Opening a fire hydrant to cool off is a tradition that goes back over a century. Reminder: you can request a spray cap from the city.

The story behind Lou Gehrig's famous July 4th retirement speech.

Food cart permits are selling for as much as $25,000 on the black market because the city capped the number of permits at 5,100. Mayor de Blasio it trying to revive a plan to add 3,000 more food cart permits over the next ten years.

Hot dogs were eaten, records were set.

Filming Around Town: Amazon's The Tick is back at 37th St and 34th Ave in Astoria, Netflix and Spike Lee's She’s Gotta Have It is in Brooklyn Heights near the promenade, The Deuce is at Pleasant Ave 118th St, CBS' The Code is at Greenwood Cemetery, and Showtime's Ray Donovan is at W 58th and 8th.

The NYPD released new information about an unsolved 2016 explosion in Central Park, hoping for some new leads.

Therese Patricia Okoumou, a 44-year-old immigrant from the Democratic Republican of Congo free-climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty in protest of many of President Trump's actions. Rise and Resist had a scheduled protest on Liberty Island but claims Therese wasn't part of their group.

Is de Blasio a liar? City Comptroller Scott Stringer thinks the city has to come clean about the NYCHA lead paint scandal.

10 can't miss summer art shows from The New York Times.

State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried has "workaround" legislation to counter the SCOTUS union decision. His legislation would allow unions to include collective-bargaining costs in their contracts with government agencies to replace the mandatory fees that SCOTUS banned.