The New Yorker
In New York, the Mayor and N.Y.P.D. have repeatedly vowed to build a “bond” between cops and communities of color. The problem, according to high-level officials, is that they chose the wrong people for the right job.
The New Yorker
In New York, the Mayor and N.Y.P.D. have repeatedly vowed to build a “bond” between cops and communities of color. The problem, according to high-level officials, is that they chose the wrong people for the right job.
The New York Times
Connie Hawkins was destined for basketball stardom until his career was unjustly derailed. A new effort to honor him is complicated by one fact. He’s not the only legend in the neighborhood.
The New York Times Magazine
Edwin Raymond thought he could change the department from the inside. He wound up the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by 12 minority officers.
Gimlet Media
A seven-part investigative podcast from Gimlet Media about a crusading private eye with a dark past who fight police corruption in the Bronx.
The New York Times Magazine
A private investigator with a dark past is on a mission to free young men who’ve been locked up in the Bronx.
The New Yorker
At a summit in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a leader of a local branch of the gang, which has nurtured a peace, grilled candidates on how they plan to reduce violence.
The New York Times
Frankie Light is one of the new breed of “YouTube polyglots.” He taught himself Mandarin, but can he earn a living making small talk with strangers?
The New York Times
Indigenous rodeo riders and Wild West actors all gathered at an unassuming townhouse in Boerum Hill. Listening to the grown-ups under the kitchen table, a future experimental theater director.
Curbed
In the Vanderveer projects, Michael K. Williams was another kind of star.
Vulture
She had all of the gifts that the most renowned singers share (and a few that they don’t): an arresting voice, hard and raspy; a genius for making an old phrase sound new; a smile that sparkled like her sequined dollar-store hats. But her greatest gift came from somewhere deep within. As both a singer and a friend, she had a preternatural ability to make people’s burdens a little easier to bear.
Curbed
Not long ago, a man named Owl asked if I wanted to accompany him to a sacred site. He picked me up at an NJ Transit train station about 40 miles from Manhattan and drove me down a wooded road near the border of Bergen County, New Jersey, and Rockland County, New York.
The New York Times
By day, their life resembled that of any young couple in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. By night, the couple retreated to a world suspended in time, a house in which virtually nothing had changed in the hundred or so years since a construction crew had arrived at the door bearing a supply of the miraculous invention known as electrical wiring.
The New York Times
Anything that lasts for 33 years in this fast-moving, quickly changing city probably deserves a plaque; what’s remarkable about Monday night basketball, as the game is called by its devotees, is that it has retained many players for nearly its entire history. The two founding members, Sandy Miller and Nick Macdonald, are still playing at 63; another longtime player, Harry Atkins, is 74.
The New York Times
George Kramer has worked at Kramer’s Hardware, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, for 58 years. He has a developmental disability, which is obvious to people who meet him, but he also has a rare and less apparent ability: He can instantly identify the name and make and catalogue number of every nut and bolt and screw in the store.
The Believer
In the early 1960s, America began devouring Arabic rock-and-roll records made by Middle Eastern guys living in Brooklyn.
The Atlantic
Eric Garner helped shape a local celebration of life, which has grown into a symbol of a larger effort to reduce violence.
Vulture
A month ago, the Rising Sun All Stars released a song inspired by what Nieves witnessed that day, joining the ranks of better-known artists from around the country who have been using hip-hop to express their angerand grief over the mistreatment of black people at the hands of police.
The Huffington Post
Randy Vargas is a 19-year-old high school senior who dances for money after school on the trains beneath Manhattan.
The Atlantic
A Brooklyn-based group is arguing that the displacement of longtime residents meets a definition conceived by the United Nations in the aftermath of World War II.
The Huffington Post
Melissa was always on the move, wandering in and out of people's rooms, going from pool to basketball court and back to pool, climbing up the big trees by the parking lot. Even before she came to the hotel her life was a blur of movement -- six houses in four years and never more than a year at the same school. But soon the moving around would be over. That's what her parents said anyway. Her mom was expecting a check from the government and when it came they'd finally have the funds to move into a real house where Melissa would have her own room.