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.

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.

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 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.