New York
Ike on a Bike: The Devoted Cyclist Playing Eisenhower Onstage
Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll meet the actor John Rubinstein, who is a bicyclist and who is playing former President Dwight Eisenhower in an Off Broadway show. It’s impossible to resist the phrase “Ike on a bike.” We’ll also meet a man who didn’t know the house he rented was a couple of blocks from one of the nation’s first Superfund sites.
This is John Rubinstein’s take on bicycling on the streets of New York City: “Everybody out there wants to kill you. The buses want to crush you, the cabs want to knock you down and the cars are completely oblivious.” And then there are the pedestrians.
Still, he is a committed cyclist. He will climb on a bicycle today and pedal 40-some blocks to a theater on West 46th Street for the first of eight previews of the show he is in, “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground.” It cannot go on without him: It is a one-man show, and there is no understudy.
So he hopes the commute is smoother than a ride one evening in the 1980s, when he was in David Rabe’s dark comedy “Hurlyburly.”
“I was late, and I was rushing” as he pedaled down Broadway, he said. The light at West 56th Street was green. “Without really looking if there was a madman trying to kill me, which is what you’re supposed to do, I went through the intersection, and a car ran the red light.”
It hit him.
“I went flying, but not very far,” he said. “I went about four feet, hit the cement on my left side, was shaken up and bruised, nothing broken. I didn’t have time to yell at the guy. He yelled at me, of course — he yelled at me as though I was some kind of mass murderer that he had stopped. I picked myself up and rode on because I had to make a curtain.”
Because his bicycle is being shipped from Los Angeles but has not arrived yet, Rubinstein will ride a Citi Bike today, a way of pedaling around the city that did not exist in the ’80s. The city’s transportation commissioner, Ydanis Rodriguez, says that Citi Bikes have “turbocharged the growth of cycling” in their 10 years in New York. City officials also point to the expanded cycling infrastructure, which now includes protected bike lanes on most avenues in Manhattan, although cycling enthusiasts say more bike lanes are needed.
Rubinstein’s own bicycle? He bought it in New York in 2017 after another not-so-good commute.
“I was going to work, to the theater, and I needed a quick something, like toothpaste,” he said. “I always lock my bike — two locks. I’ve had two or three bikes stolen in the city over the years, and I take my big saddlebags off and carry them with me into whatever store and restaurant I’m going into. And I take off all the lights.”
He saw a drugstore. He stopped. He took off the saddlebags and the lights. He went in and bought the toothpaste.
When he came out — after “two minutes, maybe two and a half” — the bike was gone. He had forgotten to lock it. “Somebody saw me, got on it and rode away,” he said. “That was the end of that bike.”
As for the man he is playing in “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground,” Rubinstein met Eisenhower at the White House in the mid-1950s — his father was the pianist Artur Rubinstein, and the family went on something of a behind-the-scenes tour with Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s chief of staff (who later resigned in a scandal about taking a vicuña coat and conferring with other officials about the donor’s problems with the federal government).
The encounter with the president was brief: “He shook my hand and shook my sister’s hand,” Rubinstein said. “I didn’t tell him I was going to be playing him in 70 years or so.”
Weather
Enjoy a mostly sunny day near 80. At night it’s partly cloudy, with temps reaching the low 60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Monday (Juneteenth).
The latest New York news
Love Canal, one of the nation’s worst toxic waste catastrophes, was front-page news in the summer of 1978, 11 years before Mitchell Montgomery was born.
The Environmental Protection Agency listed Love Canal in the first group of Superfund sites in 1983, six years before he was born.
Not until after he rented a house there last year, when he was 33, did he hear about the neighborhood’s infamous history.
My colleague Jesse McKinley says that Montgomery was one of a new, and sometimes unsuspecting, generation of homesteaders in a neighborhood where some blocks have been declared safe but others have not. His block, east of the old canal, is still considered restricted, according to state guidance dating to when the area was cleaned up.
Property records show that at least four houses in that eastern section have been sold in the past several years, even though the E.P.A. says those blocks are to “remain limited to commercial and/or industrial use only.” That stipulation “must be passed on with the land whenever the land is sold to a new owner,” the E.P.A. says.
Mitchell’s landlord, Heather Moudy, said she had purchased the house last year from a woman who had been living there. Moudy said she was well aware of the history of Love Canal because she had lived in Niagara Falls, but did not remember whether the closeness of the house to the site had been mentioned before she went ahead with the deal.
“I don’t know if anybody raised a red flag to me,” she said.
Montgomery, a car salesman who grew up about 20 miles away in Buffalo, learned about Love Canal only recently, when he met a New York Times photographer. Suddenly some things about the house and the neighborhood made sense and sparked concern.
He had wondered why there were overgrown lots and empty streets nearby — and why the rent was lower in other neighborhoods he had looked at. He had wondered about a peculiar smell from the drain when he brushed his teeth.
It seemed as if his 8-year-old son’s asthma was flaring up more often. His pregnant girlfriend began having headaches and nosebleeds from time to time.
And, when he went to replace a sump pump in the basement a couple of months ago, he found that it was covered in a black tar-like substance.
Love Canal was removed from the Superfund list in 2004, several years after cleanup work was completed. State and federal officials insist that Love Canal is safe: A clay cap was placed over some 40 acres, which is dotted with testing wells. Contaminated soil was hauled away and sewers were scrubbed. But tons of toxic chemicals remain buried beneath the site. All told, nearly 1,000 families were evacuated in the late 1970s and hundreds of homes were demolished in the 10-block area adjacent to the Love Canal, according to the E.P.A.
Montgomery has spent considerable time seeking out information about Love Canal and watching YouTube videos. He said his son’s doctor had raised the possibility that the grass around the house had triggered the asthma attacks. His girlfriend, who is due in August, has not seen a doctor about her headaches and nosebleeds.
Montgomery said he likes the “peace and quiet” of the neighborhood but is looking to move to Charlotte, N.Y.
“I kind of had to weigh out all the factors,” he said, “but you know, everybody out here, they seem to be doing fine.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Absurdity
Dear Diary:
My wife and I were walking back to our West Village apartment on a cold, rainy winter evening after an early dinner of Indian food in the East Village.
As we approached Broadway and West 12th Street, it started raining harder. I glanced up at the sign above the entrance to the Strand bookstore.
“Let’s go in until the rain passes,” I suggested.
“That could be a while,” my wife said.
“That’s OK,” I said.
We walked inside, shaking the rain off like wet dogs.
“There’s a collection of stories I want to find,” I said. “I think it’s called ‘Russia’s Lost Literature of the Absurd’ or something like that.”
I heard a voice coming from behind a nearby stack of books. I couldn’t tell if it belonged to an employee or someone else.
“It’s not lost,” the voice said. “It’s right there, in the ‘Absurd’ section.”
“Oh, thank you,” I stammered. “Where’s that?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
— Doug Sylver
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
New York
Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced
Dozens of families were looking for shelter after a large fire broke out at an apartment building in the Bronx early Friday, injuring at least seven people, the Fire Department said. There were no fatalities or life-threatening injuries, according to officials.
About 250 firefighters and emergency medical responders rushed to a six-story residential building on Wallace Avenue near Arnow Avenue after a fire was reported there just before 2 a.m., the Fire Department said. The blaze on the top floor was elevated to a five-alarm fire about an hour later, it said.
Several dozen firefighters were still gathered outside the building at around 10 a.m. Many windows on the top floor were blown out and some had shards of glass hanging in place that resembled jagged teeth. Smoke continued to climb from the building as a firefighter on a ladder hosed the roof.
The fire was brought under control shortly before 2 p.m., according to fire officials.
The seven people who were injured included five firefighters, the department said in an email. One person was treated at the scene but declined to be taken to a hospital.
A spokeswoman for the Police Department said earlier that some people had suffered smoke inhalation injuries.
Robert S. Tucker, the fire commissioner, said during a news conference that it was a miracle that there had been no serious injuries or fatalities. Officials said that all of the apartments on the building’s top floor were destroyed.
Firefighters blasted water at the smoke and flames pouring out of the upper floors and roof, according to videos posted online by the Fire Department and television news outlets. Heavy winds had fueled the blaze, the department said.
The cause of the fire was under investigation, officials said.
The Red Cross was at the scene helping residents that were displaced by the fire, and a temporary shelter had been set up at the Bennington School on Adee Avenue nearby. Doreen Thomann-Howe, the chief executive of the American Red Cross Greater New York Region, said during the news conference that 66 families had already registered to receive assistance, including lodging. She said she expected that number to increase.
Juan Cabrera and his family were among those seeking help at the Bennington School. Mr. Cabrera said that he and his family had not heard a fire alarm but had instead heard glass breaking as residents climbed out of windows. He said he had also heard people race across the hall one flight above him while others screamed “Get out!”
Mr. Cabrera, 47, said he had smelled smoke and woke up his daughter, Rose, 13. He and his wife, Aurora Tavera, grabbed their IDs, passports and cellphones, and the family left the building.
“I felt desperate,” Ms. Taverna, 32, said.
“Thank God we are still alive,” said Mr. Cabrera, who works as a school aide and custodian and has lived in the building for five years. “The material stuff you can get back, but we have our family,” he said.
Louis Montalvo, 55, was also among those seeking help. He said firefighters banged on his door at around 3 a.m. and that he had smelled smoke.
“I am grateful to be around,” Mr. Montalvo said, as he stood outside of the temporary shelter. He was still wearing his felt pajama pants, which had snowmen printed on them.
Vanessa L. Gibson, the Bronx borough president, said she was “so grateful” there had been no fatalities from the fire.
The last major apartment fire in the Bronx occurred in 2022, and resulted in 17 deaths, which experts said were entirely preventable. Self-closing doors in the building did not work properly, allowing smoke to escape the apartment where the fire started and rapidly fill the structure’s 19 stories.
New York
New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.
The Chinese government’s paranoia about overseas dissidents can seem strange, considering the enormous differences in power between exiled protesters who organize marches in America and their mighty homeland, a geopolitical and economic superpower whose citizens they have almost no ability to mobilize. But to those familiar with the Chinese Communist Party, the government’s obsession with dissidents, no matter where in the world they are, is unsurprising. “Regardless of how the overseas dissident community is dismissed outside of China, its very existence represents a symbol of hope for many within China,” Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests who spent years in prison before being exiled to the United States in 1998, told me. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the hope for change among the people is itself a threat. Therefore, they spare no effort in suppressing and discrediting the overseas dissident community — to extinguish this hope in the hearts of people at home.”
To understand the party’s fears about the risks posed by dissidents abroad, it helps to know the history of revolutions in China. “Historically, the groups that have overthrown the incumbent government or regime in China have often spent a lot of time overseas and organized there,” says Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University. The leader Sun Yat-sen, who played an important role in the 1911 revolution that dethroned the Qing dynasty and led eventually to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, spent several periods of his life abroad, during which he engaged in effective fund-raising and political coordination. The Communist Party’s own rise to power in 1949 was partly advanced by contributions from leaders who were living overseas. “They are very sensitive to that potential,” Weiss says.
“What the Chinese government and the circle of elites that are running China right now fear the most is not the United States, with all of its military power, but elements of unrest within their own society that could potentially topple the Chinese Communist Party,” says Adam Kozy, a cybersecurity consultant who worked on Chinese cyberespionage cases when he was at the F.B.I. Specifically, Chinese authorities worry about a list of threats — collectively referred to as the “five poisons” — that pose a risk to the stability of Communist rule: the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, followers of the Falun Gong movement, supporters of Taiwanese independence and those who advocate for democracy in China. As a result, the Chinese government invests great effort in combating these threats, which involves collecting intelligence about overseas dissident groups and dampening their influence both within China and on the international stage.
Controlling dissidents, regardless of where they are, is essential to China’s goal of projecting power to its own citizens and to the world, according to Charles Kable, who served as an assistant director in the F.B.I.’s national security branch before retiring from the bureau at the end of 2022. “If you have a dissident out there who is looking back at China and pointing out problems that make the entire Chinese political apparatus look bad, it will not stand,” Kable says.
The leadership’s worries about such individuals were evident to the F.B.I. right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kable told me, describing how the Chinese worked to ensure that the running of the Olympic flame through San Francisco would not be disrupted by protesters. “And so, you had the M.S.S. and its collaborators deployed in San Francisco just to make sure that the five poisons didn’t get in there and disrupt the optic of what was to be the best Olympics in history,” Kable says. During the run, whose route was changed at the last minute to avoid protesters, Chinese authorities “had their proxies in the community line the streets and also stand back from the streets, looking around to see who might be looking to cause trouble.”
New York
Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Thursday proposed several measures that would restrict hedge funds and private-equity firms from buying up large numbers of single-family homes, the latest in a string of populist proposals she intends to include in her State of the State address next week.
The governor wants to prevent institutional investors from bidding on properties in the first 75 days that they are on the market. Her plan would also remove certain tax benefits, such as interest deductions, when the homes are purchased.
The proposals reflect a nationwide effort by mostly Democratic lawmakers to discourage large firms from crowding out individuals or families from the housing market by paying far above market rate and in cash, and then leasing the homes or turning them into short-term rentals.
Activists and some politicians have argued that this trend has played a role in soaring prices and low vacancy rates — though low housing production is widely viewed as the main driver of those problems.
If Ms. Hochul was inviting a fight with the real estate interests who have backed her in the past, she did not seem concerned. She even borrowed a line from Jimmy McMillan, who ran long-shot candidacies for governor and mayor as the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.
“The cost of living is just too damn high — especially when it comes to the sky-high rents and mortgages New Yorkers pay every month,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement.
James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said his team would review the proposal, but characterized it as “another example of policy that will stifle investment in housing in New York.”
The plan — the specifics of which will be negotiated with the Legislature — is one of several recent proposals the governor has made with the goal of addressing the state’s affordability crisis. Voters have expressed frustration about the high costs of housing and basic goods in the state. This discontent has led to political challenges for Ms. Hochul, who is likely to face rivals in the 2026 Democratic primary and in the general election.
In 2022, five of the largest investors in the United States owned 2 percent of the country’s single-family rental homes, most of them in Sun Belt and Southern states, according to a recent report from the federal Government Accountability Office. The report stated that it was “unclear how these investors affected homeownership opportunities or tenants because many related factors affect homeownership — e.g., market conditions, demographic factors and lending conditions.”
Researchers at Harvard University found that “a growing share of rental properties are owned by business entities and medium- and large-scale rental operators.”
State officials were not able to offer a complete picture of how widespread the practice was in New York. They said local officials in several upstate cities had told them about investors buying up dozens of homes at a time and turning them into rentals.
The New York Times reported in 2023 that investment firms were buying smaller buildings in places like Brooklyn and Queens from families and smaller landlords.
Ms. Hochul’s concern is that these purchases make it harder for first-time home buyers to gain a foothold in the market and can lead to more rental price gouging.
“Shadowy private-equity giants are buying up the housing supply in communities across New York, leaving everyday homeowners with nowhere to turn,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “I’m proposing new laws and policy changes to put the American dream of owning a home within reach for more New Yorkers than ever before.”
Cracking down on corporate landlords became a prominent talking point in last year’s presidential election. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called on Congress to pass previously introduced legislation eliminating tax benefits for large investors that purchase large numbers of homes.
“It can make it impossible then for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home,” Ms. Harris said last summer.
In August, Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging by private-equity firms in the housing market. He cited a study that estimated that private-equity firms “are expected to control 40 percent of the U.S. single-family rental market by 2030.”
Statehouses across the country have recently looked at ways to tackle corporate homeownership. One effort in Nevada, which passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, proposed capping the number of units a corporation could buy in a calendar year. It was opposed by local chambers of commerce and the state’s homebuilders association.
A bill was introduced in the Minnesota State Legislature that would ban the conversion of homes owned by corporations into rentals. It has yet to come up for a vote.
At the federal level, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, introduced joint legislation that would force hedge funds to sell all the single-family homes they own over 10 years.
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