Monday, July 7
Intervals of clouds and sunshine, with possible thunderstorms this morning. High 87.
The rest of the week is predicted to be cloudy, hot, and humid, with daily thunderstorms.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
On Wednesday, July 9, Goddard Riverside’s final Housing Clinic of the summer will be held at 6 p.m. at the nonprofit’s headquarters at 593 Columbus Avenue (at West 88th Street). There will be a presentation and a Q&A on rental-assistance resources, as well as an opportunity for a free consultation with a housing attorney. The event is co-sponsored by TakeRoot Justice. There will be no housing clinic in August; the monthly series will resume in September. For more information, call 212-873-0282.
Upper West Side News
By Laura Muha
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has dropped charges against a bicyclist who was arrested after colliding with an electric unicycle in Central Park last week, leaving the unicyclist in critical condition.
Carolyn Backus, 30, of Harlem, turned herself in on Wednesday and was charged with leaving the scene of an accident resulting in serious injury.
However, a spokesperson for District Attorney Alvin Bragg said a review of the case determined that Backus did not flee after the collision; rather, she “remained on scene for about 45 minutes after the crash and waited for paramedics to arrive to treat the injured person,” spokesperson M’Niyah Lynn told Streetsblog.
In addition, the charge filed against Backus applies only to those operating motor vehicles, and Backus was pedaling a non-motorized, non-electric bike, Lynn said. Electric unicycles are not legal in New York City.
The crash occurred around 4:30 p.m. last Monday, near 60th Street and West Drive. The unicyclist, publicly identified only as a 40-year-old man, was admitted to Weill-Cornell Medical Center in critical but stable condition.
Read the full story – HERE.
New Yorkers living in the city’s roughly 1 million regulated apartments – about 25,000 of which are on the Upper West Side – could begin paying more for their monthly rent as soon as this fall.
The Rent Guidelines Board voted last week to raise rent by 3% on new one-year leases and 4.5% on two-year leases signed on or after Oct. 1.
The board’s decision comes during a mayoral race in which presumptive Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani has made affordable housing a core campaign issue; last year, the assemblymember from Queens was arrested while protesting a 2024 rent increase.
Mayor Eric Adams, who urged the board ahead of the vote to approve “the lowest rent increase possible,” afterward expressed disappointment that board members had approved more than the minimum.
Read the full story – HERE.
New York’s drop in international tourism has had a big impact on the Metropolitan Opera – or at least, that’s how Met officials are explaining a decrease in season attendance, at a time in which they had expected it to increase.
The opera house filled 72 percent of available seats during the 2024-25 season, just as it did in 2023-24. But Met officials had projected it would increase slightly, to 75 percent capacity. And although the same number of tickets sold this season as last season, more of them were discounted, so the Met realized only 60 percent of potential income on ticket sales, compared to 64 percent in the previous season.
“We were on track to continue to improve,” Met general manager Peter Gelb told the Associated Press. “We were disappointed by the sales in the last two months of the season — our projections were much higher and I attribute the fact that we didn’t achieve our sales goals to a significant drop in tourism.”
New York City Tourism + Conventions, the city’s marketing organization, says it expects 2 million fewer international travelers this year than last year. The Met reported that 11 percent of ticket sales this season were to international visitors, compared to the 16 percent they had anticipated.
Gelb told the AP that worries about the economy likely also affected sales. “The stock market jumping up and down made people feel insecure,” he said. “In one week we saw an enormous decline in our advance for next season. Then it picked up again.”
The Magic Flute was the season’s most popular performance, with 87 percent of tickets sold. Un Ballo in Maschera was the least popular, with only 56 percent of seats filled.
Read the full story – HERE.
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i believe Un Ballo in Maschera was staged the previous season
If Mandani is elected tourism will continue to decline.
You’re looking at the wrong election.
And so will quality of life and wealthy taxpaying citizens. Hello, Miami.
These jokers just love to fearmonger about Mandani…. Trump’s unpopularity will damage our international standing and tourism will take a hit there, but tourism went up under BDB, no reason to think they would stay away underMandani
Y’all ought to learn how to spell the gentleman’s name correctly. Please, at the very least, extend him that courtesy.
Speaking as one guilty of committing the same misspelling, it thankfully didn’t stop me from ranking him #1 on my ballot. At least our hearts are in the right place, some of us.
Say, can anyone tell me how to edit one’s posted comments here? I’ve looked around a bit for that info but evidently not in the right place, or perhaps I’m disabling too much Javascript in my browser. I’d be more than happy to fix my own typos (not to mention everyone else’s)!
Yeah. And globalize the intifada. Such a gentleman.
Trump was president for half of BDB’s mayoralty. Who gets the credit?
NYC gets the credit for being the greatest city on earth.
Mamdani is the wages of their greed.
True — because His Feloniousness, whose deranged policies are the source of America’s tanking tourism, will still (barring a tidal wave of good fortune) occupy the Oval Office. Surely that’s what you were getting at.
Be Realistic. First of all, his name is Mamdami. Second of all, exactly what did he do to frighten away tourists? Impose tariffs? Tank the stock market? Prohibit women and LGBTQ folk from controlling their own healthcare? Fire two million government workers? Cut the National Parks budget? Cut the budgets of museums, libraries, and archives? Cut the budget and staff of the National Weather Service? Inquiring minds want to know …
Wel, if police protection declines and subway crime increases,tourism might decline.
It’s actually ‘Mamdani’.
I agree that the drop in international tourism affected Met opera ticket sales. The city became very unfriendly towards tourists followed the huge migrant influx. The hotels were taken by the migrants, crime rose to the point that there were shootings at the tourists, robberies on scooters, etc. The city truly went downhill and there are consequences everywhere including but definitely not limited to the tourism and opera tickets sales
I’m not sure it’s possible to emphasize enough the wrongheadedness of this take.
Debating the MAGA trolls quickly runs into Brandolini’s law: the amount of energy needed to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it
UWS Dad,
Can you ever, maybe just once, respond with an actual argument without resorting to your usual “MAGA, trolls”, etc. epithets?
Not everyone who disagrees with you are MAGA or trolls.
No. He can’t. The robots just reflective their tropes. Original thought and independent comments are not encouraged.
I’m actually as we speak (type?) trying to engage with OPOD with actual data and only getting MAGA slogans in response…
Ah, the ever-handy “invasion” trope, wildly exaggerated.
“The hotels were taken.””The city truly went downhill.”
But no mention of the pandemic’s effect on tourism, or inflation’s, or the fact that America in general has become a less attractive place for internationals such as Canadians to visit. Calm down, friend, and remember which Texas governor was responsible for sending us those busloads of migrants.
Calm down, Carmella, snap out of your mass media brainwashed think. Don’t forget what mayor was meeting and greeting those buses and encouraged them to come. And provided free lodging, meals, medical care at NY taxpayers expense.
There’s a big green lady in the harbor who would tell you where to shove it if she could speak. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” ring any bells?
Here! Here!
“…and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling Texas governor!”
-Sanctuary cities and states
Raj, if you belong to any of the ethnicities that commonly use that name, I hate to break it to you, but MAGA does not distinguish between you and the migrants you slander. Better keep your passport on you at all times.
Sarah,
Please don’t educate me about what and who I should be afraid of because of my ethnicity. All you are doing is spreading foolish paranoia
It’s not migrants that made the City unfriendly to tourists.
Peter Gelb never ceases to amaze me. I am surprised he didn’t invoke the “cat ate my homework” excuse. The root of the Me’ts problems in my opinion is that his obliteration of classics, many of which he replaced with dreck (he seems to have an affinity for cut off jeans and staging his operas in truck stops) and the many flops of new operas “The Hours”, “Aindamar” “Grounded” “Malcolm X” “Fire Shut up in my Bones” etc etc have driven long time supporters like me away. I used to subscribe but that became totally unnecessary as one can get a ticket for just about anything. I mustn’t be skilled at the discount game because the cost of attendance has become somewhat of an impediment for me. I say “somewhat” because I’m happy to pay for the ballet, performances at the Phil, and many many nights at Carneige Hall. I am astounded that Gelb has not been fired. Any other CEO with his long history of underperformance and repeatedly missing the marks that he set for himself would have been gone years ago.
I agree with this comment completely . But also believe that the drop in tourism affected tickets sales as well. I don’t know which one contributed the most.
I’d imagine it’s a combination of Gelb’s policies, tanking tourism, and — just conceivably! — the pandemic, in what proportions it would be hard to say.
And yet the lowest-grossing performance was Verdi, and the third-highest the company premiere of Moby-Dick (2010)! I love a number of the hoary old classics myself, but you can’t build a long-term audience on old people wanting to see Le Nozze di Figaro for the 47th time. Opera has to remain a living art form.
Out of curiosity, did you go to any of those “flops” to see if they had artistic merit?
But patrons will come because there’s a new interesting singer cast in a lead roll in the Marriage of Figaro, and other classics.
I’ve been to see Figaro many times, and I’m sure I’ll go again! It is meltingly beautiful. But a living art form has to have new works, not just infinite recastings of ones already a century to several centuries old.
Listen to Bach.
You are confusing me with someone without a classical education! As much as we may appreciate our glorious traditions, we can’t live in them.
Avoid the term traditions here. Bach by way of example expresses things not touched upon by any other composers. But of course Bach didn’t write Grand Operas.
You’re correct, we “can’t live without them”. Remember many defending these antics at the Met Opera have gone out of their way to disparage “Porgy and Bess” a Gershwin was white.
I know you didn’t ask me, but I saw 3 operas this year. Aindamar, Moby Dick and a very modern Marriage of Figaro. Enjoyed all 3! Many young people in attendance each night, I might add. Cheers !
Hobbling the Met Opera Guild and Opera News magazine was also a huge mistake. The problem isn’t tourism. Old patrons are dying and young people don’t care about opera. This problem is nothing new, but particularly bad now. And The Met has no idea how to remedy this, coming up with one goofy, out-of-touch idea after the next.
I didn’t realize Gelb had killed of Opera News, that’s huge mistake.
I thought “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” did well? The rest no so much. You’re correct it largely program of tokinism.
Didn’t Peter Gelb have a hand in ruining Sony Classical, not that other record companies haven’t suffered with the advent of crappy MP3s?
According to Gov. Kathy Hochul, Broadway posting its “biggest season ever” with $1.9 billion in ticket sales. Per amNY, in a piece about congestion pricing.
Linda Rich: Good point. And supports George’s theory (above).
The ever increasing price of Bdwy tickets has a lot to do with this
Possibly all true but senior opera lovers of years past find it easier to go to afternoon performances on High Definition screens. I have gone to weekly opera for over 50 years and miss it all so much…but the Walter Reade theatre is totally occupied most opera productions , at least those I have attended. So we still love opera but can not afford to remain up at night and pay those steep prices.
Try joining tdf.org. Great discounts on excellent performances, including the Met.
The Met Opera could play to a full house every night if they gave unsold tickets to local people who can’t afford to buy high-priced “discounted” Lincoln Center tickets but would jump at the chance to attend. It would improve morale and community relations and would make for rousing ovations the singers and orchestra would enjoy. And a full house is a full house (and a half-empty one is depressing). Come on, Mr Gelb, give some tickets to your neighbors for chrissakes.
Good idea! They can have a low-price lottery like many Broadway shows do. Creates a buzz and doesn’t alienate the regular ticket holders.
You all know they sell rush tickets, right? https://www.metopera.org/season/tickets/rush-page/
It is incredible that Lincoln Center has decided to spend massive amounts to redo Damrosch Park and take down a wall…..
but in the meantime, tickets for LC performances are quite expensive and not possible for many people.
Instead of spending to take down a wall, LC could use money to help with ticket affordability, provide music-instruction classes for low-income kids, help the Met, etc.
Trump made everybody broke.
Metropolitan Opera has a size problem, that big barn of a place simply is too large.
Old Metropolitan Opera House at 1411 Broadway had a seating capacity of 3,625 with 224 standing room places.
New MET at Lincoln Center has 3,794 seats and 245 standing room places making it the largest repertory opera house in world.
Consider largest opera house in Europe is the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden with a capacity of 2,256.
Times are vastly different than 1960’s through late as 1990’s or so. Demographic and other changes mean you just don’t always have numbers to fill even 75% of every performance at the MET.
During 1990’s it was almost impossible to get seats for anything remotely popular unless one subscribed, and even those seats sold out.
Other thing is you just don’t have singers of old, Nilsson, Pavarotti, Callas, Domingo and others that people would gladly queue up in pouring rain to get tickets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQpm6A4SF_Q&ab_channel=vilaph
Well, MeToo# has kept some singers away from the Met.