The "Ham Sandwich Running for Congress" Edition
The "Ham Sandwich Running for Congress" Edition
The Times bought Wordle, Cuomo escapes (again), where to eat in Little Italy, a Tribeca duplex, new restaurants openings, a Valentine's date for your dog, and more
Today - Low: 32˚ High: 35˚
Clear throughout the day.
The latest seven-day positivity rate: 7.87%
74.97% of city residents have received two shots, 84.36% of city residents have received one or more shots. Source: NYC Department of Health.
• The city settled out of court with a protestor shoved to the curb during the George Floyd protests of 2020. The city will pay $387,000, with NYPD Officer Vincent D'Andraia paying $3,000 personally. The NYPD's D'Andraia is still facing a criminal misdemeanor charge for the shove and is still a part of the NYPD. (Reuven Blau and Yoav Gonen for The City)
• The CCRB found that officers engaged in serious misconduct, including hitting one boy with a car, pointing a gun at another, and wrongly arresting three teens. Then the NYPD intervened. (Eric Umansky for ProPublica)
• In light of the impending paywalling of Wordle after being purchased by the New York Times, Subwaydle is here to challenge your ability to get around the city. (Subwaydle)
• Equality New York, New Pride Agenda, and the LGBT Community Center are collaborating to advance four LGBTQ initiatives in New York. (Matt Tracy for Gay City News)
• Resigned-in-Disgrace Andrew Cuomo avoided sex-crime charges in all five criminal investigations into his inability to keep his hands to himself. (Grace Ashford with contribution from Jonah E. Bromwich for NY Times)
• Groundhog Staten Island Chuck's prediction of winter will be live-streamed at 7:20 am on the Facebook page of the Staten Island Zoo. With Mayor de Blasio out of office, there's a much greater chance that Chuck survives the day. (Emily Davenport for amNY Metro)
• Taking a look at the proposed borders of Republican Nicole Malliotakis's congressional district, it appears that a ham sandwich could beat her in the next election if it were running as a Democrat. (Brooklyn Magazine)
• Where to actually eat well in Little Italy, instead of strolling down the street and rolling the dice, saying "this place looks alright I guess, what do you think?" (Robert Sietsema for Eater)
• The city announced that only students who test positive or fail the city’s health screener would be eligible for remote instruction, reversing the policy announced two weeks ago. The change is in response to decreased Covid-19 positivity rates and the mayor's obsession with shoveling children back into classrooms. (Alex Zimmerman for Chalkbeat)
• One thing that hasn't changed with falling Covid-19 rates and an increase in tourists: Garbage pickup. Members of the City Council sent a letter to the city calling to restore slashed funding to the Department of Sanitation to increase street can pickups, restore the street sweeping schedule, and bring back composting. The Department of Sanitation's response to this was to tell Council Members to gibe them money use their discretionary budgets. (Sophia Chang for Gothamist)
• Real Estate Lust: A $4.25 million Tribeca duplex with 2,029 square feet, one bed, 21-foot ceilings, two terraces, and more. (Michelle Cohen for 6sqft)
• It's not a speakeasy, but Nothing Else Matters feels hidden inside the downtown-bound 50th St 1 station. (Amber Sutherland-Namako for Time Out)
• The city is installing weight sensors on the triple-cantilever section of the BQE to catch illegally-overweight trucks, which account for 11.1% of truck traffic on the highway. It's such a priority to get these installed that it will probably take a whole year to get them installed. Kevin Duggan for amNY Metro)
• The number of Covid-19 tests in the city recently fell dramatically. Before you go high fiving your roommates and inviting 70 people to your birthday in the back room of a tiny bar, the number could be declining due to long waits for results, at-home tests, and closing of testing sites. (Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky for Gothamist)
• Opinion: The MTA Should Equip Stations With Railings for Safety. (Charles Gans for Streetsblog)
• Photos: Inside LaGuardia Airport's new Terminal B. (Anna Rahmanan with photos by Jeff Goldberg for Time Out)
• Demolition began on the interior of Hotel Pennsylvania, part of Governor Hochul's Godzilla-esque plan to level everything within a few feet of Penn Station. (Max Scott for Untapped New York)
• Three in four applications by families seeking homeless shelter got rejected last year — the most since the Department of Homeless Services started disclosing numbers a decade ago. The city's red tape is ordinarily challenging to navigate, but the pandemic made it virtually impossible to get a family into a shelter. (Suhail Bhat and Josefa Velaquez for the City)
• Bronx tenants and Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA) are expected to launch a new campaign called Eviction Free Bronx this week to keep renters in their homes following the end of the statewide eviction moratorium with a rally on Tuesday at 11 am outside the Bronx Housing Court. (Dean Moses for amNY Metro)
• A jogger discovered a decomposing body behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a scene reminiscent of a cold open of Law & Order, near E 79th and East Drive. (E.L. Danvers for East Side Feed)
• Valentine's Day date suggestions, even one if your Valentine if your pooch! (Rianne Shlebak for The Infatuation)
• The Pool, by Brooklyn-based artist Jen Lewin, is a new installation at Industry City that uses 100 interactive circular pads to create a touch-activated "pool"” It will be on view daily from 3 pm - 9 pm through March 28. (Anna Rahmanan for Time Out)
• New restaurant openings for January 2022. (Nikko Duren and Kenny Yang for The Infatuation)
Featured Pet: Skeech!
Thank you, reader Jimmy for sending in this photo of Skeech! It’s a photo sent in a few weeks ago; I can’t say for sure if Jimmy still has a Christmas tree on display. We only took our down three days ago in The Briefly household.
Send in your pet photos to thebriefly@gmail.com! I get so much spam due to including my email address in these posts!
Congrats and good luck to Richard Kim, the new Editor-in-Chief of The City, Mary Ruthie, the new Director of Development, and reporter George Joseph, all are starting today.
How many dividers am I including? Just this one where I say thank you so much to everyone who has contributed to The Briefly using this Ko-Fi link.