The "Making Promises Your Can't Keep" Edition
The "Making Promises Your Can't Keep" Edition
No more slot car racing in NYC, NYC is a top ten "walk your dog" city, a laundromat/bar is opening, this year's hot ducks to look out for, and more.
Today - Low: 31˚ High: 35˚
Partly cloudy throughout the day.
The latest seven-day positivity rate: 22.39%
73.81% of city residents have received two shots, 83.38% of city residents have received more than one shot. Source: NYC Department of Health.
• Photos: The funeral service for 15 of the 17 victims of the Twin Parks North West building in the Bronx. (Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura with photos by Stephanie Keith, Desiree Rios, Ahmed Gaber, and David Dee Delgado for NY Times)
• Governor Hochul announced $2 million of assistance to the fire victims in management services, personal property replacement, relocation assistance, rental assistance, burial assistance, and other forms of support and financial assistance. (Jeffrey Perkins for Patch)
• It's time for Mayor Adams to choose his picks for the MTA board, pointing out that he's looking to appoint people who actually ride public transit and will advocate for the city. The board is 23 members, the mayor gets to select four of those members, and the governor has veto power of all picks. (Kevin Duggan for amNY Metro)
• A mayor's campaign promises will define their success as mayor. Eric Adams's campaign promise of making NYC safer is already being tested. He called public safety the "prerequisite to prosperity." These are the promises that will define his mayorship. (Katie Glueck for NY Times)
• The city stopped booting and towing cars with more than $350 of unpaid and undisputed tickets in 100 days. Towing for blocking traffic or lanes and double parking is still on hold. As Streetsblog points out, this makes the city appreciably less safe and removes millions of dollars of revenue for the city. (Julianne Cuba for Streetsblog)
• Slot-car racing shop Buzz-a-Rama is closed. It's hard to believe that this Kensington staple was open from 1965 with slot car racing and some arcade games, but it had endured. Another unique in New York location becomes a memory. Original owners Buzz and Delores Perri died in May of 2021 after refusing to get vaccinated. (Stephen Nessen for Gothamist)
• New York City is one of the top ten cities to walk your dog. The list, released in celebration of National Walk Your Dog Month, puts Portland, OR at the top of the list. We came in seventh, sandwiched between Los Angeles and Washington DC, taking dings in the "pedestrian fatalities per 100,000" and "Average Dog Walker Rate." (Aidan Seiden for amNY Metro)
• A new wine bar-restaurant from Bushwick-based pizzeria Roberta's is expected to open on Ave A between 1st and 2nd. (EV Grieve)
• The Regal UA Court Street movie theater abruptly closed over the weekend. There are some indications that the building may be redeveloped into a mall/ (Brooklyn Magazine)
• Pearl Lee’s Washtub, a laundromat/bar, is coming to Crown Heights. The brainchild of Theo DuPree, it's expected to open this spring on Rogers Ave and Montgomery. The laundromat/bar is probably my favorite ongoing business idea. (Hannah Bottum for NYCity News Service)
• RIP Ed Schoenfeld, a driving force in introducing New Yorkers to the delights of Chinese regional cooking. (Wendy Blake for I Love the Upper West Side)
Many believe that the highly transmissible omicron variant is more mild than previous variants, but this perception is due in large part to the fact that vaccinated and boosted populations — like the vast majority of NYU’s students and faculty — are typically protected from all but asymptomatic or mild infections.
Opinion: NYU’s reopening is ableist, Srishti Bungle for Washington Square News
• Home health care workers are calling on the state to end the practice of the 24-hour shifts and only being paid for 13 of those hours, suggesting a replacement of 12 hours shifts. The 13 hours comes from the assumption that three hours are for meals and eight are for sleeping. If you've lived with someone who needed a home healthcare worker, you know that these numbers are based on an impossible standard. Some calculations say this policy, upheld by state courts in 2019, robs $1 billion a year from these workers, who are primarily women of color. (Caroline Lewis for Gothamist)
• A look at Mombucha and founder Rich Awn, which calls Greenpoint home, inspired by Awn's mom and her homebrewing of kombucha. (Erin Conlon for Greenpointers)
• Ten secrets of Boerum Hill. (Noah Sheidlower for Untapped New York)
• These are the hot ducks to keep an eye out for this winter. (Kate Hinds for Gothamist)
Featured Pet: Molly!
Thank you to reader Rebekah for sharing this photo of Molly, a very wonderful 12-year old girl keeping warm and stylish in that sweater, with us all. Send your pet shots to thebriefly@gmail.com!
Thank you to the readers who contributed to The Briefly using this Ko-Fi link since the last edition! Your contributions are extremely generous.
My biggest fear in sending out these emails is accidentally swapping the name of the pet and the person who sent in the photo.