Monday Bulletin: UWS Bakery Unionization Effort Gets Political; Venezuelan Ex-Pats Have Mixed Emotions On Maduro Capture; Snowboarding Pros Take Central Park

Today is Monday, January 12th, 2026

Today’s forecast calls for a breezy, sunny day, with a high of 41°F

Expect more of the same tomorrow, with clouds moving in as the week wears on. Temperatures are expected to rise through midweek, approaching 50 on Wednesday, before dropping again. Friday is forecast to be the coldest day of the week, with a high of 33°F; there’s a possibility of snow on Saturday.

On this date in 1969, New York Jets fans were celebrating what is still considered one of the greatest upsets in sports (not just football) history: Their team — which had gone into Super Bowl III as 18-point underdogs — beat the Baltimore Colts 16-7. Side note: Though the game was the third time an end-of-season championship had been played between the National and American football leagues, the first two were called the “AFL–NFL World Championship Game,” meaning that “Super Bowl III” technically was the first Super Bowl — at least as far as the trademarked name was concerned. It also was the last time an end-of-season championship was played between the two leagues; before the next season, the AFL and NFL merged under the NFL umbrella, and two subdivisions of equal size were created within it — the American and National football conferences — forming the NFL as we know today.

Notices

Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.

Tonight at 6:30 p.m., Community Board 7’s Parks & Environment and Transportation committees will hold a joint public hearing about pedestrian safety while crossing Central Park drives. Sign up HERE to speak, either in person at CB7 offices at 250 West 87th Street or via Zoom; comments are limited to two minutes per person. Zoom link for the meeting is in the CB7 calendar — HERE.

City Councilmember Gale Brewer’s office is collecting clean children’s books for the annual Free Children’s Book Fair, which will be held Sunday, January 25th. Children’s titles in Spanish are especially needed. Books can be dropped off between now and Sunday, January 18th, at 563 Columbus Avenue; the following week, they can be taken to the JCC Manhattan at 334 Amsterdam Avenue, where the book fair will be held.

The Department of Sanitation will accept textiles and consumer electronics for recycling this Saturday, January 17th between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m at Church of the Holy Name of Jesus/St. Gregory the Great on Amsterdam Avenue between West 96th and 97th streets. More information, including a list of what items will be accepted — HERE.

Volunteers are needed for the city’s annual Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE, for short), which will be held this year on January 27th. On that night, volunteers will fan out through the city streets, subway stations, parks and other public spaces, to identify individuals without shelter. The survey is required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in order for the city to receive funding under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Sign up to volunteer — HERE.

News Roundup

Compiled by Laura Muha

Hundreds of people waited in line outside Breads Bakery in Lincoln Square on Friday, and they weren’t there just because of the signature sourdough or the chocolate babka (named “best of New York” by New York Magazine).

Rather, they were responding to a call-to-action by former Columbia University business professor Shai Davidai, who asked them to show up to demonstrate their support for a Jewish business.

“It’s just nonviolent, peaceful activism,” Davidai told The Times of Israel. “Everyone here basically came and said, ‘Here I am. There’s a problem, I got the call, and here I am to help solve it,’” added Davidai, whose outspoken pro-Israel stance brought him into conflict with Columbia faculty, students, and administrators and ultimately led to his resignation in July.

What Davidai referred to as a “problem” stemmed from a press release issued earlier this month by employees of the bakery, which has five locations in Manhattan and a kiosk in Brooklyn Bridge Park. In the release, the employees announced they were forming a union after what they called “years of abuse from Breads management.” Many of the demands they listed in their statement were typical of unionization announcements: higher wages, safer working conditions, and “basic respect” from management.

However, tucked at the bottom of the press release was the following: “The workers refuse to participate in Zionist projects such as fundraisers that support the ‘Israeli’ occupation of Palestine, baking cookies with the ‘Israeli’ flag, and catering events such as the Great Nosh, which are connected to organizations that donate millions each year to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces].”

In a January 1st post, the @breakingbreadsunion account on Instagram emphasized this, demanding “an end to this company’s support of the genocide happening in Palestine. We cannot and will not ignore the implicit and explicit support this bakery has for Israel.”

The bakery’s management has denied employees’ accusations, telling the New York Post that “Breads Bakery is built on love and genuine care for our team. We make babka; we don’t engage in politics.” The Post noted that in the past, Breads has baked for Jewish events, among them a fundraiser that sent money from the sales of heart-shaped challah to support emergency services in Israel after the October 7th terror attack.

Davidai called the union’s demands a “dangerous precedent,” and called for the Jewish community to turn out in solidarity with the bakery.  “We came as a community, not just to support them [the bakery] financially, but to show them that the Jewish and the Zionist community is here,” he told the Times, speaking about Friday’s gathering.

The union is being formed under the auspices of United Auto Workers Local 2179, and employees said they plan to petition the National Labor Relations Board for recognition if the bakery does not voluntarily grant it. If approved, it will represent approximately 275 workers including bakers, kitchen staff, cashiers, baristas, porters, caterers, and drivers. The bakery is an offshoot of a bakery in Tel Aviv. Its Upper West Side location is at 1890 Broadway.

Read the Times of Israel story — HERE and the New York Post story — HERE.

As Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were being arraigned in Lower Manhattan last week, Venezuelan immigrants gathered at an UWS church for an event which had been organized as a community food and aid giveaway. But not surprisingly, the center of their conversation was the turn of events in their home country.

In interviews with reporters from The New York Times and Gothamist, they expressed a mix of emotions, from elation at Maduro’s deposure, to fear for their families still living in Venezuela.

“It’s for our betterment. It’s for a better future,” asylum seeker Elizabeth Rodriguez told Gothamist. “It’s for Venezuela to recover and return to being the Venezuela that we had more than 30 years ago.”

But another asylum-seeker, who spoke to the Times on the condition that only her first name — Melisa — be used, said she was worried about her mother and siblings in Venezuela.  “I don’t even know what to think,” she said in Spanish, with tears in her eyes. “It’s hard. I don’t know if tomorrow the military will turn on its people.”

According to census data, an estimated 20,000 Venezuelan immigrants were living in the city in 2024, many of them in shelters. Last week’s gathering, sponsored by the non-profit Venezuelan and Immigrants Aid and held at St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church, was, technically, an aid event, but as news of Maduro’s capture spread, organizers also used the gathering to offer updates.

“There were rumors of every kind,” Héctor Arguinzones, a Venezuelan asylum holder who runs the aid group with his wife, Niurka Meléndez, told the Times in Spanish. “It took the whole world by surprise.”

Read the Gothamist story — HERE and The New York Times story — HERE.

After a snowstorm, children (and adults) on sleds are a familiar sight in Central Park. But for years, UWSer Dave Lee, a former professional snowboarder, looked at the snow-covered park and saw other possibilities. Those boulders of Manhattan schist? The stairs at Bethesda Fountain? He could imagine snowboarders jibbing — sliding, jumping or riding — over them. And as the founder of Signal Snowboards, as well as a driving force behind the quirky social media content the brand has become known for (in one video, Lee cooks breakfast on a snowboard with a heating element attached), he was in a unique position to make it happen.

So when the weather forecast for December 27th called for the most snow the city had seen in four years, Lee brought in a videographer and four snowboarders who ride for the company — two from California and two from Vermont — and turned them loose in the park to “play,” as he told the Rag in a phone interview.

It was “a genius move, of course, because Central Park has no shortage of jibs,” opined the website Inertia.com, which covers the outdoors and did a blog post on the snowboarders. “Rocks, trees, staircases, benches, and rails are everywhere in the park and even though there isn’t much incline to make it ideal, the crew made it work,” Inertia reported.

Photos and video taken that day show the snowboarders freestyling throughout the park: getting big air off boulders; sliding down paths, stairs, and rails; and jumping fences, while tourists (and maybe a few New Yorkers, as well) gawked and filmed with their mobile phones.

“They [snowboarders] were getting questions all day,” said a delighted Lee, who recently opened a Signal store in Soho. “They were riding in between the sledders … sledding kids [were] riding in between them. It was like a community day.”

See the YouTube video — HERE; read the Inertia article 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.)

Stepping Into the New Year on the Upper West Side (With a Little Divine Help)

Someone is Reportedly Dumping ‘Dangerous’ Orange Powder To Ward Off Dogs in UWS Park

West Side Canvas: Joseph, an UWS Family Pharmacy

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