Today is Monday, November 24th, 2025
Expect sunny and breezy weather today, with a high of 52. The forecast for the rest of the week is variable: early showers tomorrow and Wednesday, but warmer, hitting 60 on Wednesday; Thursday and Friday should be sunny, but temperatures will drop back into the mid-40s.
On this day in 1859, Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” laying the foundation for the field now known as evolutionary biology — and setting off an uproar that continues, at least in some corners, to the present day.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Goddard Riverside is serving its annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner from noon to 3 p.m. on Thursday at its Older Adult Community Center, 593 Columbus Avenue. Everyone is welcome; one meal per person. More information — HERE.
City Councilmember Gale Brewer is offering 150 free countertop compost bins to constituents on a first-come-first-served basis. The giveaway is being held to mark a milestone in the Department of Sanitation’s mandatory composting program, which hit a new record earlier this month, collecting 6,025,480 pounds of compostable food and yard waste. (The previous record was 5.9 million pounds.) The compost bins are available at Brewer’s district office at 563 Columbus Avenue. Because quantities are limited, you might want to call before heading over there, to make sure they haven’t all been given away. The number is 212-873-0282.
Brewer’s office is also collecting suggestions for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani via a Google form available — HERE. Her office plans to forward the suggestions to his transition team.
Community Board 7’s Business & Consumer Issues Committee is seeking community input on neighborhood priorities, to help guide future committee discussions on issues that affect residents, businesses, and Business Improvement Districts. The survey is available — HERE, with a deadline of next Wednesday, December 3rd.
News Roundup
Compiled by Laura Muha
Protestors disrupted a performance of “Carmen” at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, with at least one of them climbing onto the stage and denouncing David H. Koch, the late billionaire industrialist who poured money into right-wing causes and discrediting climate change, eyewitnesses told The New York Times.
The audience initially responded to the disturbance with confusion, with some attendees apparently wondering whether it was part of the performance and then, when it became clear that it wasn’t, with anger and shouts of “loser!” and “put them in jail!” the Times reported.
Police arrested three people, and the performance resumed about 15 minutes later.
Though eyewitnesses told the paper that the protestors shouted Koch’s name during their demonstration, Jen Luzzo, the press director for the Met, told the paper that “We don’t have all the information about what the protesters were protesting yet. It’s still a little hazy.”
This is not the first time a performance at the Met has been interrupted by protestors, according to Operawire.com. In 2023, climate protesters interrupted the opening night of “Tannhauser”; in 2015, an anti-Putin demonstration broke out during the curtain call of “Iolanta”. And in 2014, protestors interrupted the premiere of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” claiming the opera glorified terrorism and was anti-Semitic.
Read the full story — HERE and see video of the incident, posted on X by an audience member — HERE.
Since we’re on the subject of Lincoln Center, here’s a happier story: Forbes magazine recently caught up with Nutcracker soloist Olivia MacKinnon, an Alabama native now living on the UWS, for a Q&A about the things she loves most about her adopted hometown.
MacKinnon, who joined the New York City Ballet in 2012 as an apprentice and was promoted to soloist in 2023, told Forbes she’s an “uptown girl at heart,” and that, while she also loves the Upper East Side, she finds the UWS to be “artistic, grounding, and where I call home.”
Among her favorite places: the 79th Street Greenmarket (“a wonderful way to support local farmers while stocking up on delicious, healthy ingredients and food for the week”); Two Boots Pizza (“My vote for the best pizza on the Upper West Side”); and Café Fiorello (“Fun fact: The restaurant posted a plaque with my name on it due to being such a devoted customer …!”)
MacKinnon, who has been dancing since she was 3, is a lead dancer in this year’s Nutcracker, which premiers Friday at Lincoln Center.
Read the full interview — HERE.
6sqft.com recently did a deep-dive into the unexpectedly fascinating history of pastrami (it originally was made with goose — who knew?), followed by what it calls “the seven absolute best pastrami spots in NYC.”
It should be no surprise that the UWS’s own Pastrami Queen made that list; after all, on the day it opened in 2020, a Rag reporter counted more than 70 people waiting in a line that stretched from the shop’s entrance — mid-block on West 72nd Street — almost to Amsterdam Avenue.
The article also gives a bit of history for the shop and its Upper-East-Side counterpart; originally named Pastrami King when it was founded in Brooklyn in 1956, it served what the late chef Anthony Bourdain once described as “the real deal pastrami sandwich.” (He was referring to the sandwich made at the shop’s Upper East Side location, but, hey, at the time, Pastrami Queen hadn’t yet opened its UWS location!)
Originally known as “pastirma” or “pastrama” in Romania and other Eastern European countries, pastrami is believed to have made its way to New York with the estimated 75,000 Jews who emigrated from Romania to the Lower East Side between the 1880s and early 1900s. When they got here, they discovered goose was hard to come by, but beef brisket was not, reports 6ftsq, which is published by City Realty and focuses on real estate, lifestyle, and design. So the immigrants swapped meats and began dry-curing the brisket in salt and spices, then smoking and steaming it — and a New York classic was born.
Read the full story — HERE.
To wrap up this week’s Monday Bulletin, here’s a good-news story for those of us who weren’t at the American Museum of Natural History’s first sleepover since the pandemic, but wish we could have been.
The New York Times sent a reporter and photographer/videographer to capture the excitement of the children, who traveled last month from as far as Miami and as close by as Harlem to sleep — or not sleep, as the case may be — on cots set up beneath the famed blue whale in the museum’s Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life.
“After a brief safety lecture, in which a staffer congratulated the children on answering the call to adventure, guests were loosed among the museum’s halls, nearly all of which were open,” wrote Alexis Soloski, who covers culture for the paper. “Children ran, some of them in stocking feet, through the displays, with abandon. (Running had been discouraged in the safety lecture, but this did not dissuade a young boy who shouted ‘I have to look for the animals that will hunt us in the night’ as he sped on.)”
Read the full story and see the photos and videos — HERE.
ICYMI
Here are a few stories we think are worth a look if you missed them last week — or a second look if you saw them. (Note that our comments stay open for six days after publication, so you may not be able to comment on all of them.)
From 16 Pies to 10,000 Cookies: UWS Tradition Powers a Community Thanksgiving Feast
Why Residents of an UWS Building Are on a Rent Strike: ‘Only Negotiation Power We Had’
UWS Columbus Circle Train Station Escalators Reopen After More Than a Year
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I am not president of the Koch fan club – I don’t like their politics. That being said, they are saints compared to Trump and his MAGA gang (who the Koch’s despise). Their politics are far from perfect, but they are a lot more tolerant than MAGA is. And unlike Trump, they do a ton of good philanthropically – Lincoln Center, AMNH, building at Cornell Hospital, etc.
So I would be channeling my childish protesting energy elsewhere than ruining people’s theater experience. These people are just making others angry at them, not enhancing their causes.
Trump stems directly from the T-Party, and Charles Koch was a major funder of the T-Party.
The Kochs were THE force behind Citizens United. Save it
David Koch is also dead. The metropolitan Opera House is not even the theater that is named after him– that would be the ballet theater. I can’t think of anything more stupid and pointless than protesting a dead guy at the wrong theater
The newly Trumpified Kennedy Center might make a better venue for protests against evil.
Well, how about the renamed [Empire] State Theatre at Lincoln Center?
The irony is that Fred Koch (eldest son of Fred the Koch Industry founder and Stalin + Nazi oil refinery builder) was a long time board member of the MetOpera. Fred, the younger, did NOT support his brothers’ wingnut politics, even if yes, he inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from dad.
Evil?
Yes, of course.
Yeah touch dramatic
And far more than a touch true.
Inconveniencing opera-goers is hardly worth the rage and ridicule directed at those among us who take risks and stand up for something. Incredible, given the behaviors of the ruling class, that this 15-minute disruption of entertainment would create such disdain.
Wake up!
I am all for protesting–I have participated every single No Kings protest. But interrupting a performance of Carmen that people paid a lot of money to attend because of the name of the theater is really stupid. I’d have thrown a shoe at them.
I go to plenty of protests and wouldn’t rule out protesting at a theatrical performance. My problem with this action is 1: the audience didn’t take away a clear message and 2: it’s dangerous to jump on a stage, particularly during a crowd scene. The actors have marks to hit. They have practiced a series of movements that don’t include you. Now you’re an obsctacle for them to bump into or trip over. It’s irresponsible and specifically disrespectful of the cast.
Also: David Koch is dead, and it would make more sense to protest someone who’s still alive, and that’s not even the theater that’s named after David Koch. It’s dumb. Really, really dumb.
Attending the opera is sometimes more than just “entertainment”. When the singing, acting, orchestral music, staging, all come together it can be, for some, a spiritual experience. Clearly the disruption would have destroyed the experience for those who might have been immersed in this performance. Protesting the views of a dead man whose foundation didn’t even underwrite this production sounds silly to me. The time and energy of these protestors could have been better used to protest the name of the David H. Koch Theatre next door, which I continue to call by its original name “State Theatre” because of my contempt for its current name. Misdirected protest from the left can hurt important causes and turn away independents, whose votes and support are needed if we are to survive Trump.
Original name: Empire State Theatre.
Empire was erased.
That is interesting. Thank you for the correction.
I learnt it by watching Lumet’s “Serpico”.
Because the “New York” was dropped when talking about City Ballet and City Opera, I just assumed that State Theatre was short for New York State Theatre. “Empire State Theatre” via “Serpico” is a fun-fact. Thanks.
And what did it accomplish?
People who were on the fence regarding these issues now distance themselves from the crazy kids.
Nothing
Disrupting an artistic performance is not the way to get the message across. Grow up!
How is disrupting a performance standing up for something? I am fine with civil disobedience but this is pointless. And I’m not even sure what they are protesting.
This virtue-signaling, wanna-be 60s protest garbage is why Trump gets elected. Because it makes New Yorkers and others in blue states look like out of touch idiots.
Because they are out of touch idiots living in a bubble.
It truly does. The latest round of “no kings” featured some retirees appearing to do jazzercise outside an ICE building. I could care less what those people think of me and my red politics
My wife and I love to see as many of the new productions as we can. Some hit, others miss. In this case I say let the punishment fit the crime … bring the protesters back and make them sit through all of this production of “Carmen”.
I saw photos of this production and oh boy, that’s some punishment! Make it so on the night where there is an hour-long Q&A session right after the performance. LMAO
The NYT report suggested that they were in the wrong venue, and meant to protest at the David H. Koch Theater (home of the New York City Ballet) next to the Met.
That’s funny 🙂
We should be more angered by the “protesters” mobbing an UES synagogue, and mayor-elect Mandami’s “whataboutism” equivocation in defending the mob’s actions.
That event was promoting illegal land sales in the Occupied West Bank (moderator I am trying to get a very basic fact across for the SECOND time)
The protesters at the UES synagogue were protesting a specific event, one that encouraged Jews to immigrate to Israel. Stop getting your facts from the NYPost.
What is wrong with Jews moving wherever they want to? Serious question.
MSNBC is so much better
Or MS NOW, as it’s known these days.
Here is a solid write up of the event: https://www.thefp.com/p/zohran-mamdani-sides-with-the-anti?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
No, that’s not a solid write up of the event.
The Free Press is run by a pro-Israel zealot and regularly mainstreams racist and anti-LGBTQ individuals/groups.
The NYT, which is by no means anti-Israel, pointed out that the nonprofit proselytizing for aliyat at the synagogue also moves people TO THE WEST BANK. In ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS.
Those settlements are in violation of International Law a million times over. THAT is why there have been protests in front of synagogues,.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/nyregion/mamdani-synagogue-protest.html
Why are you angry about Jews emigrating to Israel?
I fear these protest will be frequent and become more violet over the next 8 years.
Why?
The museum sleepover sounds like an amazing event for kids! Yet another reason raising kids on the UWS is the absolute best
Bravo to the protesters. The influence of the Kochs on NYC’s cultural sphere is noxious, as is that of the Tisches. Give em hell
And what exactly do these protesters accomplish?
I get it. You love the drama and theater of protests. You just aren’t a big fan of achieving anything real.
Precisely what have the Koch Brothers achieved other than oligarchy and authoritarianism?
OK. So I guess you will stand on your moral high ground and refuse life saving treatments at medical facilities funded by these families or discovered by researchers they are supporting?
No one is all good or all bad. I am not a fan of the Koch’s politics, but I can appreciate the wonderful things they do philanthropically. Unfortunately, others are too simplistic to do so.
Their commitment to a cause ends where they are personally inconvenienced.
Note to Dems: you do in fact have to share the country with Republicans, and last count we totaled about half the voter base.
Points for creativity awarded to this protester at least. The opera! Thats a new one. Not very effective if no one is sure what was being protested, however
Among registered voters as of three months ago, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by “about” 17.9%.* Perhaps your data is more recent?
_____
* https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-affiliation/
Apparently a lot of registered Democrats vote Republican!
Names? (I’d settle for well-sourced numbers.)
There are a number of factors I’d like to believe you’re not neglecting; e.g., the Electoral College, the fact that there are more than two political parties, ranked-choice voting, independent voters, good ol’ voting shenanigans (gerrymandering, etc.)….
If only the Republicans were really willing to share!
What are now Pastrami King and Queen actually started in Kew Gardens across Queens Blvd from the old Queens County criminal court. It was Jimmy Breslin’s hangout when he lived in Forest Hills and he made it famous.
But the bread and butter clientele were the lawyers doing business in the courthouse and when it closed the restaurant moved to the UES.
I thought they were protesting the production. THAT I can understand.
There will always be someone on the left or right who is very angry about something and is willing to disrupt a live performance to make his point. Too bad