Footage shows a vehicle driving into a crowd of about 50 people at a protest on Friday afternoon in the middle of Manhattan, injuring multiple people. The incident happened after 4pm at the corner of 39th Street and Third Avenue in midtown east, police said, adding that the woman behind the wheel of the BMW sedan who drove into the crowd was detained for questioning by law enforcement.
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Multiple people injured after vehicle plows into crowd at New York protest
Six people were taken by ambulance to local hospitals, the New York fire department said
A vehicle plowed into a crowd of about 50 people at a protest on Friday afternoon in the middle of Manhattan, injuring multiple people, the New York City police department said.
The incident happened after 4pm at the corner of 39th Street and Third Avenue in midtown east, police said, adding that the woman behind the wheel of the BMW sedan who drove into the crowd was detained for questioning by law enforcement.
Continue reading...Rats besiege New York Chipotle, eating avocados and attacking staff
Rodents were so brazen that the Upper West Side location closed after the wiring systems were chewed through
As columnist Mary Schmich once said, in life, there are certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, and – I’m going to add one – you can always count on New York for a good old rat story.
Today that story is of the Upper Manhattan Chipotle food chain rats, who have been feasting on avocados and burritos – and, by the sounds of it – disturbed staff.
Continue reading...‘It was a little awkward’ – how Rick Schatzberg shot his old friends topless
They grew up in a ‘nowhere’ suburb in the 70s, smoking skunk, going for rides and dating girls. The photographer reveals why he decided to capture the ravages of time on his old childhood gang
Rick Schatzberg had a dark epiphany a few years back, when two of his friends died in quick succession, one from a heart attack, the other from an overdose. “When two people you know and love die within six weeks of each other,” says the photographer quietly, “you realise that death is not just something that happens to other people, to the unlucky people. It’s something that is suddenly very present.”
Schatzberg’s response was to undertake a project about encroaching mortality – his friends’ and by extension his own. The result, several years in the making, is The Boys, a photobook that is both nostalgic and brutally realistic: a visual evocation of youth in all its instinctive carefreeness; and old age in all its debilitating inevitability. Composed of casual colour snapshots of his male friends in the 1970s, and large-format contemporary portraits of their ageing bodies, it lays bare what the novelist Rick Moody, in his accompanying essay, calls “the sobering action of time”.
Continue reading...Huge blaze engulfs New York church housing Liberty Bell – video
Firefighters in New York battled a large blaze in the early hours of Saturday morning that gutted a historic church in lower Manhattan. The Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village caught fire before dawn after a blaze spread from an adjacent five-storey vacant building about 5am. Video posted on Twitter showed flames shooting from the roof and the church’s stately front window glowing from the conflagration inside. The church houses New York’s Liberty Bell and its congregation dates from the earliest days of the city’s settlement.
Continue reading...‘It can be uncomfortable’: how a New York farmhouse is facing its racist past
In a new exhibition, three artists reckon with the history of slavery at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum with a range of challenging pieces
When people think of buildings in Manhattan, chances are they think big and brash, cloud-piercing skyscrapers for tourists to marvel at.
But the borough is also home to the far more modest Dyckman Farmhouse, a white clapboard home built in 1765. It’s the oldest farmhouse in the city, and just off 204th Street in Inwood, once home to Dutch farmer William Dyckman, his family and their slaves.
Continue reading...US braces for post-Thanksgiving Covid surge as 100,000 are hospitalized
Hospitalizations are at twice as many as in April and July spikes, while more than 150,000 test positive nearly every day
Americans are bracing for a surge in Covid-19 cases following the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, as the number of people hospitalized hit an all-time high on Wednesday.
More than 100,000 people are hospitalized, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project, the highest number yet recorded, and nearly twice as many people as were hospitalized at the peak of earlier coronavirus waves in April and July.
Continue reading...‘The Aids epidemic is not yet over’: inside a project with a vital message
For World Aids Day, a new audio project will play important speeches and clips that catalogue the ongoing fight against HIV/Aids
“Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Homophobia has got to go!”
This was a chant from New York’s ACT-UP demonstration in 1989. Now the audio clip of this protest will echo throughout Greenwich Village in the coming month.
Continue reading...‘People in their 40s were crying’: the sad final days of New York’s coolest record store
Other Music fuelled New York’s 00s indie boom, boasting Vampire Weekend and Animal Collective among its fans. Then it closed. A new documentary tells the story of the store’s tragic demise – and its ‘terrifying’ staff
A lot of skulking went on at Other Music, the celebrated New York record store. It was an odd kind of dance: nervous customers, hiding behind CD racks or LP sleeves, trying to conjure up a question that wouldn’t result in utter humiliation. The staff there had quite a reputation, after all.
The experience is relived in a surprisingly moving new documentary about the shop, also called Other Music. Notable fans Regina Spektor and Jason Schwartzman still sound daunted by Other’s intense atmosphere. “If I’m completely honest, I was never just ‘chill’ in there,” confides Spektor, to camera. “I always got that first-day-of-school feeling, like: OK, just don’t fuck up.”
Continue reading...US Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths rise amid Thanksgiving rush
US reported 181,490 new cases on Wednesday as millions defied official advice to travel and gather for Thanksgiving
The US reported 181,490 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a third daily rise in a row, as hospitalisations hit a record for a 16th day in succession, at 89,959.
Related: Supreme court bars Covid attendance limits at New York houses of worship
Continue reading...New York’s Andrew Cuomo cancels Thanksgiving with 89-year-old mother after Covid backlash
New York governor had planned to spend holiday with mother and daughters, despite urging constituents to limit gatherings due to pandemic
Andrew Cuomo won’t be having Thanksgiving with his mother after all.
The New York governor had announced on Monday that he would be spending Thanksgiving with his 89-year-old mother and two daughters in Albany, New York, despite urging his constituents to refrain from gathering for the American holiday amid a rise in coronavirus cases.
Continue reading...Covid rampages across US, unifying a splintered nation as cases surge
The virus is on the rise so uniformly across the vast landmass of the US, that records are being shattered daily
The Disunited States of America are united once more. After a brutal election that exacerbated bitter partisan divisions and left the country feeling as though it had been torn in two, it has at last been thrown back together.
For all the wrong reasons.
Continue reading...Ivanka Trump calls New York fraud inquiries ‘harassment’
Authorities reportedly looking at consulting fees that may have gone to president’s eldest daughter
Authorities conducting fraud investigations into Donald Trump and his businesses are reportedly looking at consulting fees that may have gone to his daughter Ivanka Trump, prompting her to accuse them of “harassment”.
The New York Times said there were twin New York investigations, one criminal and one civil.
Continue reading...‘I don’t care what you think’: Cuomo lashes out at reporters at Covid briefing
- Governor faced a backlash for berating journalists in response to questions about New York City school closures
- New York City schools to close again as Covid cases rise
Watching Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus press briefings was once a household ritual for many in the US and around the world. But on Wednesday, the New York governor lost his cool.
Continue reading...New York schools to close again as US approaches 250,000 Covid deaths – live
- New York City public schools to close again on Thursday
- President-elect Biden peaks virtually with healthcare workers
- Trump campaign to request recounts in two Wisconsin counties
- House Democrats reelect Pelosi as nominee for speaker
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The US coronavirus death toll has now surpassed 250,029, representing a higher death toll than any other country in the world.
According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, x number Americans have now died of coronavirus, more than eight months after the start of the pandemic.
Walmart, McDonald’s and Uber are among the companies that have the most employees on food stamps and Medicaid, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO looked into the matter at the behest of Bernie Sanders. “These giant corporations pay starvation wages – wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps,” Sanders said, pointing to several fast food and other companies whose workers have to rely on benefits because they do not make enough money to survive.
These giant corporations pay starvation wages—wages so low their workers have to rely on Medicaid and food stamps to survive:
Walmart
McDonald’s
Dollar Tree
Uber
Burger King
FedEx
Wendy's
This is what a rigged economy is about. We need a $15 living wage and Medicare for All. https://t.co/GFzfK9ERae
New York City public schools to close again as coronavirus cases rise
- Closure plan after city reaches 3% Covid test positivity rate
- Mayor Bill de Blasio: ‘We must fight the second wave’
Public schools in New York City will close again on Thursday, officials announced, after the city reached a 3% Covid test positivity rate.
Related: Covid deaths near 250,000 as US urged to act to stop 'unrelenting' spread
Continue reading...Harvey Weinstein is sick and being ‘closely monitored’ in prison
Spokesperson for the disgraced mogul would not ‘confirm or deny’ he has tested positive for Covid-19
Harvey Weinstein is unwell and is being “closely monitored” in prison, a representative for the disgraced Hollywood mogul said.
Continue reading...Viral video of ballerina with Alzheimer’s shows vital role of music in memory
Music’s primal power for those living with dementia has inspired thousands of YouTube views for a clip of a former dancer
We see a frail and elderly woman in a chair, her eyes downcast. She motions for the music to be turned up, a swelling melody from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and with a little encouragement her hands begin to flutter. Then suddenly her eyes flash and she’s Odette the swan queen at the misty lakeside, arms raised. She leans forward, wrists crossed in classic swan pose; her chin lifts as if she’s commanding the stage once more, her face lost in reverie.
The woman in the film is Marta Cinta González Saldaña, a former ballet dancer who died in 2019, the year the video was shot. But the clip has gone viral since being posted recently by Spanish organisation Música Para Despertar (Music to Awaken), which promotes the value of music for those living with Alzheimer’s. Many of the details accompanying the video on its journey around the internet have been erroneous. Marta Cinta was not a member of the “New York Ballet” (there’s no such company) or the actual New York City Ballet, but seems to have run her own dance company in the city; the ballerina performing in the intercut video is not her but Ulyana Lopatkina, who is not even dancing Swan Lake but Mikhail Fokine’s The Dying Swan. Yet none of that takes away the impact of watching someone seemingly light up and have their memories unlocked by the power of melody. It’s as if you’re seeing Saldaña inhabit her true self.
Continue reading...Covid-19 is rising again in New York. Can the city prevent another surge?
Officials have started rolling back some reopenings, and appear poised to close all public school classrooms
It seemed unimaginable: months after Covid-19 killed thousands of New Yorkers, the city and state finally seemed to get the virus under control. Infections, hospitalizations and deaths plummeted here and in neighboring regions, while surging elsewhere in the US.
Continue reading...Lucky Grandma review – gambling granny goes on fun knockabout caper
Former Bond girl Tsai Chin confounds expectations brilliantly as an older woman who gets mixed up with the Chinese mafia
Sentimentalising, patronising and generally disrespecting our elders is by now enough of a movie trope that any title including the words “grandma” or “grandpa” causes an involuntary shudder. That Lucky Grandma isn’t one of those films is mostly down to its star, Tsai Chin, whose many attributes include the ability to conduct full conversations with a lit cigarette suspended from her bottom lip. One look at Grandma’s stern face tells us she did not come to play.
Related: Tsai Chin: 'What was it like being in bed with Sean Connery? Fine'
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