Recent quotes:

Study finds 1.7 million New Yorkers have been infected with SARS-Cov-2 and virus was in NYC earlier than reported -- ScienceDaily

Notably, seropositive samples were found as early as mid-February (several weeks before the first official cases) and leveled out at slightly above 20 percent in both groups after the epidemic wave subsided by the end of May. From May to July, seroprevalence and antibody titers stayed stable, suggesting lasting antibody levels in the population. "Our data suggests that antibody titers are stable over time, that the seroprevalence in the city is around 22 percent, that at least 1.7 million New Yorkers have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 so far, and that the infection fatality rate is 0.97 percent after the first epidemic wave in New York City," said Florian Krammer, PhD, Mount Sinai Professor in Vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine and corresponding author on the paper. "We show that the infection rate was relatively high during the first wave in New York but is far from seroprevalence that might indicate community immunity (herd immunity). Knowing the detailed dynamics of the seroprevalence shown in this study is important for modeling seroprevalence elsewhere in the country."

The problem with “shop local,” explained by Jeremiah Moss - Vox

They’re curated by these developers, but there’s nothing organic. There’s nothing truly urban or diverse about them. You can’t start a business with a one-year lease. In the first year, you don’t make any profit. If we are a society, we need each other, and we need those small-business people to maintain the social network of our neighborhoods, and they’re being destroyed. Pop-ups are not going to replace that.

Who Was the Falling Man from 9/11? - Falling Man Identity Revealed

Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower, lost seventy-nine of its employees on September 11, as well as ninety-one of its patrons. It was likely that the Falling Man numbered among them. But which one was he? Over dinner, Cheney spent an evening discussing this question with friends, then said goodnight and walked through Times Square. It was after midnight, eight days after the attacks. The missing posters were still everywhere, but Cheney was able to focus on one that seemed to present itself to him—a poster portraying a man who worked at Windows as a pastry chef, who was dressed in a white tunic, who wore a goatee, who was Latino. His name was Norberto Hernandez. He lived in Queens. Cheney took the enhanced print of the Richard Drew photograph to the family, in particular to Norberto Hernandez's brother Tino and sister Milagros. They said yes, that was Norberto.

The Thrill of Losing Money by Investing in a Manhattan Restaurant | The New Yorker

Restaurant investing tempts because it allows one to be part of a project that is taken seriously in places like the Times. You can’t own one-forty-second of the next Zadie Smith novel. Restaurant investing is also tempting because of its relatively low entry price, compared with, say, backing a movie. And it seduces because of a category error: I thought I knew something about the business of hospitality, just because guests at a dinner party once said nice things about my panzanella.

Truman syndrome and the Internet

“Think back a few hundred years,” Joel Gold says. “The idea of walking into Times Square would have been crazy-making to absolutely anyone. For most of human history, there weren’t strangers bumping into you. You lived in a place where there were fifty people, and you knew all of them intimately.” Now such collisions are constant: a smartphone is a Times Square that we carry around in our pocket. “If living in New York City is a risk factor of psychosis, then why not the Internet?” Gold continues. “We’re not saying, ‘Don’t let your children surf the Web—they will be psychotic.’ We are saying, ‘This is something we should think about.’ ” Just as Times Square is a diversion for some people and a stressful place for others, the cyclopic camera above a laptop’s screen might, for a certain type of person, become a source of corrosive unease.

Two years after buying Elite Daily, the Daily Mail says the Facebook publisher is worthless - Recode

The owner of the Daily Mail, the publisher that bought Elite Daily in January 2015, says the New York-based startup has been a bust, and has written down all of its investment in the money-losing company, citing “poor performance.” It is taking a $31 million loss in the process. […] “audience retention and revenue growth have been disappointing and losses have exceeded expectations,” leading to the write-off.

Inside the Rise & Fall Of A 1970s Upper West Side Cult: Gothamist

After the raid, the pillagers returned to their seven-story co-op at 2643 Broadway. “We were prepared for them to invade,” says Paul Sprecher, a member of the Sullivan Institute for over a decade. “We had security down at the front door to make sure they would be duly chastised. I don’t remember, I think one guy showed up to complain and he was manhandled.” (According to a 1989 New York Magazine article, the complaining tenant was “beaten by more than a dozen members,” one of whom “broke four knuckles punching the young boy in the face.”) The paint splatter that started the ordeal is still visible today, on the brick wall just above the Metro Diner on 100th and Broadway. It is perhaps the last physical reminder of a psychotherapy cult—informally known as the “Sullivanians”—that once had 500 members living in three buildings on the Upper West Side.

Street for Cyclists May Be Solution as NYC Faces Subway Shutdown - Bloomberg Politics

New York is building 18 miles of protected lanes this year, yet officials don’t want to promise more than 10 per year because street changes can have unanticipated consequences, Russo said.  The most radical alteration would be to close 14th Street to create more mobility for the hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise be traveling beneath it. The idea of such a transitway reserved for buses, cyclists and pedestrians was first proposed by the Regional Plan Association, an influential policy study group that in 1929 advocated a northern Manhattan site for the Hudson River span now known as the George Washington Bridge. The proposal would open the street overnight to allow truck deliveries.  Keep up with the race of a lifetime. Get our politics newsletter daily. Sign Up Much of the infrastructure to support it has already been installed. The East River bridges into Lower Manhattan now handle an average of more than 15,000 bikers a day in warm-weather months, up from about 6,600 a decade ago, according to the DOT. The de Blasio administration intends to build protected lanes from the Williamsburg Bridge, the most heavily bike-traveled, to Delancey Street on the Lower East Side, which could connect via a north-

Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass

“New York is a city for the rich by the rich, and all of us work at the mercy of rich people and their projects,” says Choire Sicha, Gawker’s top editor (he currently employs a staff of five full-time writers). “If you work at any publication in this town, you work for a millionaire or billionaire. In some ways, that’s functional, and it works as a feudal society. But what’s happened now, related to that, is that culture has dried up and blown away: The Weimar-resurgence baloney is hideous; the rock-band scene is completely unexciting; the young artists have a little more juice, but they’re just bleak intellectual kids; and I am really dissatisfied with young fiction writers.” Sicha, a handsome ex-gallerist who spends his downtime gardening on Fire Island, is generally warm and even-tempered, but on this last point, he looks truly disgusted. “Not a week goes by I don’t want to quit this job,” he says, “because staring at New York this way makes me sick.”

New York’s Sidewalks Are So Packed, Pedestrians Are Taking to the Streets - The New York Times

“I don’t mind the walk, it’s just the people,” Ms. Singh, an account coordinator for the Univision television network, said. “Sometimes, they’re rude. They’re on top of you, no personal space. They’re smoking. It’s tough.” Ms. Singh is just one among many pedestrians experiencing a growing phenomenon in New York City: sidewalk gridlock.

Donald Trump in New York: Deep Roots, but Little Influence - The New York Times

At Goldman Sachs, employees have directly contributed since 2013 more than $94,000 to Mrs. Clinton and more than $199,000 to one of Mr. Trump’s opponents in the Republican race, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, according to the commission. Records show just one Goldman employee, a financial adviser in the wealth management division, has donated to Mr. Trump — $534.58, to be precise. That employee’s name is Luke Thorburn. Public records show Mr. Thorburn trademarked the phrase “Make Christianity Great Again” and is selling hats that mirror Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” caps. Mr. Thorburn declined to comment.

The Lives and Lies of a Professional Impostor

He strolled into the police station in Chelsea on Jan. 4 wearing a Harvard sweatshirt, a “Wounded Warrior” cap and military dog tags dangling from his neck. He said he was Jeremiah Asimov-Beckingham, a veteran of Afghanistan, wounded in combat, now working as an executive for an airline. He had come to the station to pick up his car. His new BMW had been impounded, he believed, as evidence in a random crime. But it was a ploy. The police were hoping to lure a man suspected of forging checks in Cambridge, Mass., to steal $70,000 and the BMW, which they had tracked to a Manhattan garage. They put Mr. Asimov-Beckingham in handcuffs and charged him with larceny. Investigators soon learned that the man’s name was not Asimov-Beckingham. He had never been wounded in combat, nor had he ever served in the military. New York detectives and Homeland Security agents found an Indiana birth certificate in his immigration file showing his name as Jeremy Wilson, born in Indianapolis in July 1973. It was the oldest document in the file, so they charged him under that name.

Grifting is alive and well

On Jan. 11, a woman going by the name Theresa Lordes entered the Victoria’s Secret store in Herald Square and fell down. She went to the Hoboken University Medical Center and left with a bill for $6,625.80. She also visited a plastic surgeon, who gave her an estimate for a $17,000 procedure to fix her nose. The woman was identified as Teresa Butch, 28, a cousin of Ms. Edwards who remains at large. Ms. Butch’s claim was denied. Similar claims were made at the Henri Bendel store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and a Food Emporium in Brooklyn. Ms. Edwards and several others were arrested and charged with racketeering. In all, prosecutors said, the women submitted claims for $150,000 and were paid $36,000. A chunk of that came from another cousin, identified as Ericka Mitchell, 32, in a 2013 claim against a Walmart in New Jersey. She submitted a bill and was paid $12,500.

Midsummer Night's Dream

If you’re not familiar with the play going in, you’ll likely find the results initially disorienting, even confusing—but that’s how you’re supposed to feel. All you need do is throw away your preconceptions and surrender to the thrill of the moment, and you’ll be swept away by the phantasmagorical illogic of the parade of dramatic events.

Tommy Craggs and Max Read Are Resigning from Gawker

represented an indefensible breach of the notoriously strong firewall between Gawker’s business interests and the independence of its editorial staff.

Tommy Craggs and Max Read Are Resigning from Gawker

Tommy Craggs, the executive editor of Gawker Media, and Max Read, the editor-in-chief of Gawker.com, are resigning from the company. In letters sent today, Craggs and Read informed staff members that the managing partnership’s vote to remove a controversial post about the CFO of Condé Nast—a unprecedented act endorsed by zero editorial employees—represented an indefensible breach of the notoriously strong firewall between Gawker’s business interests and the independence of its editorial staff. Under those conditions, Craggs and Read wrote, they could not possibly guarantee Gawker’s editorial integrity.

What Donald Trump was up to while John McCain was a prisoner of war

“One of the first things I did was join Le Club, which at the time was the hottest club in the city and perhaps the most exclusive–like Studio 54 at its height,” he wrote. “Its membership included some of the most successful men and the most beautiful women in the world. It was the sort of place where you were likely to see a wealthy seventy-five-year old guy walk in with three blondes from Sweden. “It turned out to be a great move for me, socially and professionally. I met a lot of beautiful young single women, and I went out almost every night,” he added. “Actually, I never got involved with any of them very seriously. These were beautiful women, but many of them couldn’t carry on a normal conversation.”

Wishing (again) that Carr2n was around to write about this one

Today’s unprecedented breach of the firewall, in which business executives deleted an editorial post over the objections of the entire executive editorial staff, demonstrated exactly why we seek greater protection.

Perez Hilton, Dad - The New Yorker

Where might the ethical boundaries lie in reporting on a toddler who happens to be the child of a celebrity celebrity-watcher?

Weekday Car Traffic to Be Banned in Parts of Central and Prospect Parks - The New York Times

The change in Central Park will take effect on June 29, and in Prospect Park on July 6. Cars will be banned on park drives north of 72nd Street in Central Park, which are now open to traffic during certain morning and afternoon rush hours on weekdays.

Real New Yorkers Can Say Goodbye to All That - Bloomberg View

The New York of my heart was the Upper West Side of the 1970s and 1980s. If you've seen Annie Hall, you know what it looked like. It was not a glamorous place, nor particularly bohemian; it was Jewish and Puerto Rican and black and Irish and Italian, living side by side in the faded grandeur of buildings erected before the Depression and barely maintained in the years since. The cheap "ethnic" food was good, the "good" food as terrible as in any midsize Midwestern city. There were lots of working musicians and actors who survived by rent control and luck, and it seemed as if every other parent you met had gone to Communist summer camp.

Does gentrification lead to generification?

In the longer term, high commercial rents also damage what made neighborhoods like the West Village attractive and appealing to buyers and renters in the first place. One usually pays for distinction, and there is nothing distinct about a neighborhood where new businesses are national chains or safe, high-margin operations. The preservationist Jeremiah Moss, the author of the Vanishing New York blog, points out that Greenwich Village has been a bohemian center since the eighteen-fifties, but, since the rise in rents, it “no longer drives the culture,” and instead is becoming what James Howard Kunstler termed “a geography of nowhere.”

Urban Blight Comes to the West Village

Cafe Angelique reportedly closed when its sixteen-thousand-dollar rent increased to forty-two thousand dollars. A Gray’s Papaya on Eighth Street closed after its owner reported a rent increase of twenty thousand dollars per month.

Pizza FTW

Now, here are the particulars of Kuban’s pies: They are perfectly round and saturated with color like a particularly sweet memory, or a cartoon. Their structure, in profile, is lifting slightly away from the pan as if encouraging you to go ahead, pick us up. They are thin and crisp, but pliable enough to fold a little when hot. You’ll notice some extra weight along the perimeter where Kuban, who builds each pizza himself, has tapped the dough into the edge of the pan with his fingertips, then sprinkled over some extra cheese. This fuses in the hot oven, developing into a deep golden lace of caramelized cheese and pizza crust that mimics the best bits on a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s totally delicious.

Not the New York I knew in the 1980s

Parkgoers on Sunday were uneasy after learning about the attacks. “I’m totally shocked! I mean, any place, but especially here. I am really shocked,” said Upper West Side resident Gun Bauchmer. “In Central Park, a place like this? You don’t think that can happen, you know,” said Rachel Mitskaris, of Riverdale. “It’s scary. I’m feeling like I have to watch my stuff right now, you know?”

My Year Ripping Off the Web With the Daily Mail Online

As part of my initial training session, I was told that any link or attribution in an aggregated piece should be placed no higher than the first set of images in the post—which were typically three or four paragraphs in, where a reader might overlook the fact that the information provided in the preceding paragraphs had no attribution. If the original report was an article in the New York Daily News, a direct competitor of the Mail's, I was sometimes instructed to not give attribution at all. (The Mail, contacted for comment, maintains that its standards for attribution are high: "We often link above the first three photos and we link to the NYDN on a daily basis," it says. "We always strive to attribute." After this article was first published, a spokesperson followed up: "We always strive to make the story better, whether through a new angle, new photographs, or additional information and quotes.")