Monday, November 17th, 2025
Today’s forecast calls for partly sunny skies, with a high of 44. The rest of the week should be slightly warmer — highs in the upper 40s for the next several days, then approaching 60 on Friday — with a mix of sun and clouds. No rain in the forecast until Friday.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper right-hand corner to check.
The West 79th Street traffic circle is closed overnight through December 20th. Hours of closure are 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. weekdays, and 12:01 a.m. to 7 a.m. on Saturdays
City Councilmember Gale Brewer says she’s received dozens of ideas from District 6 constituents as to infrastructure projects they’d like to see covered by the district’s $1 million 2026-27 participatory budgeting allocation, but she’s looking for more. Submit ideas via the city’s idea collection map by Friday, November 28th, or stop by her district office at 563 Columbus Avenue between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. weekdays and fill out an idea card. For inspiration, check out last year’s funded projects — HERE.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
Let’s hear it for the M79, winner of the inaugural Mazel award for the city bus route with the most-improved service!
The virtual trophy (a bus with wings), went to the busy UWS line because the average speed along its route, which runs along 79th Street from Riverside Drive to East End Avenue, increased from 6.63 mph in May of last year to 7.25 mph in May of this year. The corridor was redesigned in 2017, adding a dedicated bus lane and SBS service.
The Mazel awards were bestowed by the Straphangers Campaign of the New York Public Interest Research Group and the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. For years, the groups have given out dubious-recognition awards they call the Pokey and the Schleppie (more on those in a minute, though the names probably speak for themselves) to the worst-performing city bus routes. But this year there was some good news as well.
“While some routes continue to crawl, others have shown meaningful improvements over the past year,” organizers wrote. “The inaugural ‘Mazel Award’ is awarded to both the standard and express bus routes that have improved their average speeds the most between May 2024 and May 2025.” The express bus award went to the SIM32, which averaged 17.14 mph on its Staten-Island-to-Manhattan route, up from 15.1 mph last year.
The Pokey is awarded to the slowest route, and this year it went to the M42, for “clocking in at an excruciating 5.25” mph, organizers said. (One day last week, a New York Post reporter walking at 2 mph beat beat it from its first stop on 12th Avenue to its sixth stop on Seventh Avenue.) Other buses on the list of the 15 slowest included several that serve parts of the UWS: the M104 (5.68 mph), the M7 (5.73 mph), the M4 (5.94 mph), and the M66 (5.98 mph).
Meanwhile, the Schleppie, which measures how long riders actually wait for a bus as compared to how long they’re supposed to have to wait, went to the Q8, which runs between Jamaica and Gateway Center Mall; its riders waited on average 3.62 minutes longer than they would have had to if the bus arrived on time. No UWS buses were contenders for that award.
Only high-ridership routes — defined as serving at least 5,000 passengers per day — qualified for any of the awards. The M79 carries 14,500 riders daily, according to nyc.gov.
Read the full story — HERE or HERE, and see the full Pokey/Schleppie report, including methodology — HERE.
Tariffs are driving up the price of the imported spices and basmati rice used in Indian cooking — and along with them, prices in the city’s Indian restaurants, according to a recent article in News India Times, a publication that covers the Indian and South Asian community in the United States.
Among the restaurateurs interviewed was Salil Mehta, founder of the Fungi Hospitality Group, which includes Kebab aur Sharab on West 72nd Street. He told the publication that the wholesale price of a 40-pound bag of basmati rice, which was $30 before the implementation of tariffs in July, is now $45, and a 500-gram pack of chili powder, which had been $7, is now $10.50.
Like the other restaurant operators interviewed, Mehta said he has had to put every dollar he spends under a microscope since the tariffs went into effect, and he’s been forced to raise the prices of some of his menu items to address the increased costs. He said his entrees have gone up by roughly $5, and appetizers are “a couple of dollars more here and there.” But, he added, “it still doesn’t cover us, it means the [restaurant’s] margins are even lower than they were.”
Other restaurateurs told the publication that money they once would have used for things like advertising or delivery is now going to cover the tariffs; to help make ends meet, they’ve also delayed hiring new employees and are working longer hours.
One reason the tariffs’ impact on Indian restaurants is a big issue, Mehta said, is that Indian food is perceived as a “cheap cuisine,” so raising prices to the level needed to cover the increased costs could drive customers away. “People don’t mind paying $35 for a cacio e pepe, for five ounces of pasta. But there’s a different perception that [Indian] food should be cheap already,” he said.
Read the full story — HERE.
It was another busy week of back-and-forth between proponents and opponents of the proposed carriage-horse ban:
The union representing owners and drivers sued one of the organizations leading the charge against them.
A law that would have banned carriage horses stalled when a City Council committee voted against sending it to the full council.
And outgoing Mayor Eric Adams — who reversed his longstanding position and came out in favor of a ban in September — chastised councilmembers for, he said, supporting the union by voting down the measure. “The vast majority of New Yorkers — regardless of party or belief — agree that it’s time we ban horse carriages …” the mayor wrote on X. “It’s a shame that the City Council has once again refused to follow the will of our citizens.”
Proponents of the ban had been hopeful that the law — called Ryder’s Law after a carriage horse that collapsed and died in 2022 — would pass, initiating a phase-out of the carriages next year. Instead, after a contentious meeting on Friday, the council’s Health Committee declined to send the measure to the full council by a 1-4 vote, with two abstentions.
Meanwhile, the Transport Workers Union filed a suit in state Supreme Court against the nonprofit New Yorkers for Clean Livable and Safe Streets (NYCLASS for short), an organization that is a leading proponent of the carriage-horse ban. The suit claims NYCLASS “has used unlawful means, including, but not limited to, misrepresentation to the public and third parties, and/or acted with the purpose of harming the carriage drivers and their business, under the pretense of animal rights.” The union represents about 200 owners and drivers who operate horse-drawn carriages in Central Park.
NYCLASS vowed to keep fighting. “Our resolve is unbreakable. NYCLASS will continue fighting — relentlessly and unapologetically — until the cruelty ends, and New York City finally joins the many cities worldwide that have already moved beyond horse-drawn carriages,” the organization said on social media. “We are not going anywhere, and neither is this movement.”
Ryder’s Law could be resurrected in the City Council’s next term, but will need a new sponsor, since its original sponsor, Councilmember Robert Holden of Queens, is leaving office because of term limits.
Read the full story — HERE and HERE.
During campaign stops, Zohran Mamdani often talked fondly about the UWS, his teenage stomping ground. He posted a photo taken outside Koronet Pizza on X (“Best slice in NYC?” he wrote), talked about attending middle school at Bank Street 112th, and reminisced about playing soccer in Riverside Park. “These are all the memories for me of what introduced me into life as a New Yorker, what it meant to be a New Yorker,” Mamdani told a crowd at Riverside Church last month.
Now that he’s mayor-elect, The Columbia Spectator decided to do a deeper dive into Mamdani’s connections to our neck of the woods, sending a reporter to talk to business owners and students from the institutions about which Mamdani waxed poetic.
Read what they had to say — HERE.
ICYMI
Former UWS School Building Set to Become Homeless Shelter Sells Again for $26M
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Zohran Mamdani may be the mayor but he is not a New Yorker. P.S. Native New Yorkers voted against Mamdani 52% to 34%
He’s going to be your mayor, and these absolutely ludicrous percentages pulled out of thin air don’t make you look particularly credible.
Nonsense like this only dilutes and distracts from the legitimate arguments and opposition against Mamdani’s “policies.”
The Board of Elections does not track native vs non native results.
No, Mamdani is the mayor-elect.
AND a New Yorker. (That’s how he gets to vote in New York elections. Or perhaps you’re alleging voting fraud?)
De Blasio and Bloomberg are both from Boston.
First sentence uses “New Yorker” and second uses “native New Yorker”. Are you saying that unless one is born in New York City, one is not a “New Yorker”? Absurdly provincial of you. And how about providing a link to those stats.
What exactly makes you a native New Yorker?
Are you saying that he didn’t grow up in MANHATTAN ? And thus is not a true New Yorker or that he grew up on LONG ISLAND or WESTCHESTER?
Why isn’t he a New Yorker exactly?
Silly. He moved here when he was 10, that is 24 years. Probably longer than the majority of “New Yorkers”
“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.”
— E. B. White (not to be confused with Gregory Bovino)
I don’t know how they timed the 104 Bus it is non existent Our busiest thoroughfare deserves a select bus
Don’t forget the 11, with some of the longest wait times anywhere
Don’t forget the 7 too. In the game of craps, both 7 and 11 are lucky but on Columbus Ave, with those two numbers you crap out every time!
If India were to stop buying Russian oil and natural gas, and thereby funding Putin’s brutal war against Ukraine, the tariffs would go away. Seems like a reasonable request.
Brilliant idea. Let Indian farmers go broke because the world elites decided so.
There’s nothing even remotely reasonable about this request. Poor people paying for toch people’s wars is not reasonable.
If the Republican party obeyed the Constitution, the tariffs would go away.
Great to see the stats on dedicated bus lanes. Would love to see these on the Amsterdam & Columbus routes.
I would like to strongly protest any action taken to remove the horse drawn carriages from Central Park. Perhaps if removing all assisted bicycles, mopeds, assisted scooters etc. was on the table I would then think about the horse drawn carriages. Crossing the streets is so dangerous in the park for those of us over 70 and now many of the traffic lights have been disables, ah, a fine way to eliminate the issue of non-compliance by bikes etc. just disable the traffic lights. I have never almost been mowed down by a carriage and I wish I could say the same about motorized and assisted vehicles, that’s what they are, vehicles. And when I observe the carriage horses, I see no ribs sticking out and I understand they are closely regulated as to time and temperature for working. And, one last item, if these horses are not working they stand a very strong chance of being on a dinner plate, Visions of them frolicking in a meadow are just that, visions not reality. Meanwhile the rest of us are busy trying to keep from getting hit by bicycles etc. why not put a little more effort in that problem?
No improvements anywhere, to any part of the city, until every last e-bike is removed?
The practice is inhumane and unnecessary. The faster the horses are gone, the better. No need for another generation of horses to be subject to the cruelty of navigating Manhattan streets.
Why is it that UWS boomers lack compassion for anything other than themselves?
If it makes you feel any better, I definitely mind paying $35 for a cacio e pepe. I’d rather have lamb vindaloo.
The improvement on the M79 bus line is due to two main factors. First, the traffic is mostly (though not always) moving more quickly on West 79th b/w Columbus and CPW. This was one of the streets that caused significant delays. It still needs “work” (the traffic light situation at CPW is the big hold-up, but there may be nothing that can be done about it), and the City needs to see if anything more can be done to move traffic along this street.
The second – and more important – factor is that most of the construction being done on East 79th b/w 5th and Park is finished. This was the MOST problematic part of the ride, and could take half the entire time of getting from 5th to 1st Avenues.
As someone who takes that bus fairly regularly, I have noticed the improvement and am thrilled at the difference.
I nominate the M72 as THE Schleppiest bus. I have waited 40 minutes for that bus. Entirely awful. Always.
Mr. Mamdani has described his disappointment with taking the M57 bus! .. The slowest for those of us who foolishly moved into one of the many newer buildings on West End Ave. from W.57th street up to W.72nd street. .. Does the MTA imagine that we should all walk up a steep hill to get to the nearest subway station on Columbus Circle in order to access a train? ..The 15 minute plus wait time for a bus is especially horrendous.. few benches… For older people or those with young children.. not easy. Cheers… Lets hope they can fix this..
Wow, tariffs are raising prices — who could possibly have foreseen it!
Koronet is hardly even the best slice on that block, let alone the neighborhood, let alone the city. Yes, all politicians pander but this time he’s gone too far!