New York
Mamdani’s First 100 Days as NYC Mayor: A Timeline
Jan. 1 Day 1
Mr. Mamdani took the oath of office at a midnight ceremony in the abandoned City Hall subway station, surrounded by family. On New Year’s Day, he was sworn in by Senator Bernie Sanders on the City Hall steps, in front of masses of rosy-cheeked New Yorkers bundled against the cold, cheering under a flurry of confetti.
Jan. 2 Day 2
On his second day in office, he created an Office of Mass Engagement, a reflection of the way an army of volunteers aided his mayoral campaign, with more than 100,000 people knocking on three million doors and making 4.5 million calls to talk to voters. He put the office in the hands of Tascha Van Auken, who served as Mr. Mamdani’s campaign field director and previously worked for former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign
Jan. 3 Day 3
Mr. Mamdani called President Trump to criticize the strikes in Venezuela, after New Yorkers awoke to the startling news that the U.S. military had seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
Jan. 4 Day 4
Mr. Mamdani, who had promised to help people with bad landlords, announced a series of “rental rip-off” hearings, where renters from every borough could come and meet with city officials to talk about their landlord headaches. Standing in a building on Sedgwick Avenue credited with being the birthplace of hip-hop, the mayor unveiled a series of moves aimed at supporting tenants — a key political class that makes up nearly 70 percent of New Yorkers, and a group that Mr. Mamdani strategically tapped into as he was running for mayor.
Jan. 5 Day 5
Mr. Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s relationship was still looking tenuous at the start of his term. But the two looked chummy when they came together to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the embattled congestion pricing program, which had come under attack from President Trump.
Jan. 5 Day 5
Mr. Mamdani announced that he would pause sweeps of homeless encampments, while he re-evaluated the way they were conducted under his predecessor, Eric Adams. Before taking office, he had been a critic of heavy-handed approaches to serving the city’s homeless population.
Jan. 6 Day 6
Mr. Mamdani tested out a favorite phrase — “no issue too small” — as he stood surrounded by workers in hard hats and paved over “the bump,” a notorious pit at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.
Jan. 7 Day 7
Mr. Mamdani hosted a “new media” briefing, touring influencers around City Hall. It was a friendly audience for the mayor, with one beauty influencer offering Mr. Mamdani a sentiment he’s unlikely to hear from the traditional press corps: “I have had so much fun making content for you.”
Jan. 8 Day 8
The mayor stood together with Ms. Hochul to announce a plan to expand child care options for nearly 100,000 young children. Affordable child care was a centerpiece of Mr. Mamdani’s campaign to ease the burden of heavy expenses that so many New Yorkers face.
Jan. 10 Day 10
Mr. Mamdani announced he would commit $4 million to install at least two dozen modular toilets across the five boroughs. When the mayor talked about “sewer socialism” during his run for office, few knew that he would take the term literally.
Jan. 12 Day 12
On a cold Monday morning, the mayor moved on up from Astoria, Queens, to the Upper East Side, home to Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence. Reflecting on his home in Astoria, Mr. Mamdani said he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, would miss the Adeni chai and smell of shawarma on his old block.
Jan. 13 Day 13
Mr. Mamdani made his first return to Albany since taking office. The trip in a motorcade, surrounded by aides, was a capsule of the transformation he had undergone in one head-spinning year. When he’d driven up to Albany as a state assemblyman, he used to ride shotgun with a colleague and sing show tunes.
Jan. 16 Day 16
One of the mayor’s first acts to help renters was to have the city intervene in the bankruptcy case of a large landlord, Pinnacle, which was facing thousands of complaints from tenants across the city. But a federal judge ruled that Pinnacle’s sale of 5,000 apartments to Summit Realty, another landlord facing complaints, could proceed over the city’s objections, an early challenge to the mayor’s efforts to help renters.
Jan. 25 Day 25
As snow fell, Mr. Mamdani blitzed local news, sent out plows to clear streets and disappointed children by announcing there would be virtual school, though he told everyone they could pelt him with snowballs. For every mayor of New York City, snowstorms serve as a major test. The 1969 blizzard became known as the “Lindsay snowstorm” because it paralyzed the city, and voters blamed the mayor, John Lindsay. So Mr. Mamdani knew that his response to the oncoming storm would be closely watched.
Jan. 27 Day 27
A bitter cold snap that followed the snowstorm proved a greater challenge. The death count from the freezing weather rose to at least 10 people by Jan. 27. The Mamdani administration sent outreach workers scouring the streets for people exposed to the elements, scrambling to bring vulnerable people indoors.
Feb. 5 Day 36
In a disappointment to some members of his progressive base, Mr. Mamdani endorsed Ms. Hochul for re-election on Feb. 5, strengthening their alliance but potentially losing leverage in his efforts to persuade her to raise income taxes on the rich.
Feb. 12 Day 43
For all Mr. Mamdani’s sweeping promises while running for office, his administration was quickly marked by a clear willingness to make some compromises. He backtracked on CityFHEPS, one of the largest rental assistance programs in the nation. Mr. Mamdani said he no longer intended to back the growth of the more than $1 billion initiative, because of the competing need to address the city’s budget deficit.
Feb. 12 Day 43
Mr. Mamdani, maestro of the stunt, surprised the city’s romantics by showing up at City Hall to wed couples there, two days before Valentine’s Day.
Feb. 15 Day 46
Mr. Mamdani announced that he was forming a new business improvement district in Coney Island, with a first-year budget of up to $1 million.
Feb. 17 Day 48
Mr. Mamdani presented his preliminary budget, addressing the $5.4 billion hole he has to fill by the time the spending plan takes effect July 1 — a shadow hanging over his ambitious affordability agenda. He warned that property tax rates in New York City might be raised by nearly 10 percent if he could not persuade Ms. Hochul to raise income taxes on high earners.
Feb. 18 Day 49
Emerging from weeks when criticism over his handling of homelessness escalated during the city’s cold snap, Mr. Mamdani announced that he would begin sweeping homeless encampments again. But the sweeps would look different than they did under Mr. Adams, and would be led by the Department of Homeless Services rather than the Police Department.
Feb. 20 Day 51
Mr. Mamdani announced that the city would crack down on employers that might be violating worker protection laws. This enforcement push came days before a new law took effect expanding time off protections for more than five million New Yorkers. Mr. Mamdani and his administration started the enforcement push, sending warning letters to 56,000 companies.
Feb. 23 Day 54
As another snowstorm began, the Sanitation Department went into a full force mobilization: Plows went block to block, 2,600 emergency workers headed out for 12-hour shifts and pay was raised for emergency snow shovelers. A total of 19.7 inches of snow fell in Central Park, placing it in the city’s top 10 storms dating back to 1869 — more than enough to persuade the mayor to declare a full snow day for school children.
Feb. 23 Day 54
A snowball fight was held in Washington Square Park on the afternoon of the blizzard. The event turned chaotic when police officers arrived and were hit with snowballs, which Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called “disgraceful” and “criminal.” The mayor was less perturbed, suggesting that throwing a snowball should not result in criminal charges. The police later arrested a man in connection with the snowball fight; prosecutors declined to bring assault charges.
Feb. 25 Day 56
Hundreds of protesters, led by groups including the Democratic Socialists of America, gathered in Albany for a rally calling for raising taxes on the rich. Mr. Mamdani skipped the event. He has done a delicate dance since taking office, trying to ensure that the progressive organizers who put him in office feel that their voices are heard, while also working to maintain relationships with power brokers like Ms. Hochul.
Feb. 26 Day 57
In his second meeting with President Trump at the White House, Mr. Mamdani brought a mock cover of The Daily News, a play on the infamous “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” with the new headline: “Trump to City: Let’s Build.” There are few relationships in America as eyebrow-raising, perplexing, amusing and ripe for analysis as the buddy-comedy-ready duo of Mr. Mamdani and President Trump. One is a democratic socialist, the other the Make America Great Again kingpin. Both are also sons of New York City who have mastered the attention age.
March 3 Day 62
Mr. Mamdani announced that he had chosen four areas in New York City in which to begin his child care expansion, with 2,000 seats in the 2-K program set to open up this fall.
March 5 Day 64
The Mamdani administration announced it would close the homeless shelter in the former Bellevue psychiatric hospital, which was well known among many New Yorkers seeking a place to sleep but had also fallen into disrepair.
March 6 Day 65
Mr. Mamdani was questioned about a handful of instances in which his wife, Ms. Duwaji, had liked posts appearing to celebrate Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel, right after Oct. 7, 2023. He declined to criticize the posts or address his wife’s actions, saying that she is “a private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall.”
March 7 Day 66
Chaos arrived on Mr. Mamdani’s doorstep. A far-right provocateur, Jake Lang, was gathering his followers outside Gracie Mansion for a protest called “Stop the Islamic Takeover.” Two men who had expressed support for the Islamic State were arrested after one was seen hurling a homemade bomb into the protest. The device did not detonate, and no one was injured.
March 9 Day 68
Mr. Mamdani appeared sober-faced outside his residence on Monday morning, two days after the bomb incident. He stood alongside Ms. Tisch and denounced the attempt at violence while also condemning the “display of bigotry” at the protest. Ms. Tisch said the throwing of the devices was being investigated as an act of “ISIS-inspired terrorism.”
March 11 Day 70
Mr. Mamdani showed up in person at a “rental rip-off” hearing in the Bronx, even meeting with three tenants who had complaints about roaches, broken elevators and safety. He also faced protests from some New Yorkers who live in public housing and reminded the mayor that he is actually New York’s largest landlord.
March 17 Day 76
Mr. Mamdani sought a judge’s approval to stop representing the former mayor, Mr. Adams, in a sexual assault lawsuit that had been filed in 2024. The mayor has tried, throughout his first 100 days in office, to distance himself from his predecessor.
March 17 Day 76
Mr. Mamdani not only marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan, but also gave a speech drawing a parallel between Irish history and the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.
March 19 Day 78
Mr. Mamdani signed an executive order creating an Office of Community Safety, which will begin with just two staff members and a far narrower scope than he had pledged.
March 20 Day 79
Mr. Mamdani infused the holy month of Ramadan with spirit, breaking his fast with different groups every day. He shared iftar meals with firefighters, incarcerated people at Rikers and delivery drivers, as well as stopping at some of his favorite restaurants. For New York’s more than half a million observant Muslims, this year marked a poignant shift, the first time a person who shared their faith was running the city and observing Ramadan at City Hall.
March 24 Day 83
Mr. Mamdani announced settlements with two companies that would provide nearly $2 million to more than 800 fast food and retail workers, including at Dunkin’ and Taco Bell, who had been the victims of “Fair Workweek” violations. A livestream of the announcement also included him eating a Crunchwrap Supreme.
March 25 Day 84
As the Mamdani administration grapples with the looming budget deficit, the mayor gave a quick snapshot of some of the ways the city planned to cut $1.7 billion in spending, including by cutting contracts with consultants and auditing the health care eligibility of dependents. Behind the scenes, the administration quietly identified another $1.3 billion in potential savings from scaling back programs Mr. Mamdani had endorsed on the campaign trail.
March 30 Day 89
Mr. Mamdani attended a Passover Seder at City Winery in Lower Manhattan, seeming unbothered by hecklers as he addressed a crowd that included George Floyd’s brother, Al Franken and Don Lemon, who read the Four Questions.
April 7 Day 97
The Mamdani administration announced the opening of a rest stop for delivery workers, which had been in the works for years but was sped to completion in the first 100 days of the administration.
April 7 Day 97
Mr. Mamdani selected Rebecca Jones Gaston, who as head of child welfare under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. oversaw the expansion of abuse-prevention services for families, to lead the city’s Administration for Children’s Services.
Ms. Jones Gaston previously oversaw child welfare in Maryland and then in Oregon, where she released a “vision for transformation” that stated that “white supremacy and systemic racism are deeply embedded in the history, fabric and institutions of our country, including child welfare systems.”
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Ryan Compton knows a thing or two about gigs. To make it in New York, he has worked as a retail associate inside the Museum of Modern Art’s gift store, a cashier for a downtown taqueria and a paint mixer for Takashi Murakami. He has experienced the paradox of a city both known for its artists and for pricing artists out.
Financial constraints forced Mr. Compton, who is from South Jersey, to move away from New York twice over the course of two decades. He has lived in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia, but remains convinced the resources and people inside New York are unparalleled.
“You never know who you’re going to run into,” he said. “Everyone’s curious about each other.”
Since moving back in 2022, he has whittled down his source of income to a single gig as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he made $51,000 before taxes last year. It’s his second time at the museum. He first worked there part-time in 2011 before leaving in 2015 to earn his master’s degree in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
“I know I couldn’t afford graduate school and the cost of living in New York at the same time,” he said.
A third try at New York life has forced Mr. Compton, now 46, to confront the sustainability behind a career as both an interdisciplinary artist and a security guard — even inside one of the most famous museums in the world.
Love at First Sight (With New York)
As an undergraduate student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Mr. Compton looked forward to spending weekends at his friend’s apartment gallery in the East Village in Manhattan.
A combination of showing face and knowing the right person led to his side project at the time — fashioning 3-d printed stuffed animals with skull faces — which were featured in an issue of Vogue Japan. He even sold a few inside a handmade craft store in Tokyo’s Ginza district for about $1,000.
“I was interested in the contrast between fuzzy-shaped animals and skulls,” he said, later adding, “You know, stuff when you’re a 20-something-year-old being kind of edgy.”
The early moment of success propelled Mr. Compton to chase after opportunities to showcase his work. While supporting himself financially through retail and service jobs, he helped write the artist Roman Ondak’s interactive performance piece at MoMA, “Measuring the Universe;” and worked as a collaborator for “No Souls for Sale,” an experimental project temporarily at Dia Chelsea and later, the Tate Modern in London. Both went unpaid.
“The chance to work in modern art before I was 30 is unheard of,” Mr. Compton said. “It only happens in New York.”
A Slower Pace
Tens of thousands of people flock to the Metropolitan on weekends, and it’s Mr. Compton’s job — one he has found increasingly difficult — to make sure the art is untouched. He believes social media has altered the way visitors engage with the museum. Think more selfies and poses leaned against Hellenistic marble.
The one hour work commute from Parkchester in the East Bronx gives him time to prepare for a long day ahead. He splits a two-bedroom with a co-worker for $1,000 a month and pays $50 in utilities. Heat and water are included in his rent, and his roommate covers the cost of Wi-Fi. He pays $90 each month for his phone bill.
The slower pace of the residential neighborhood matches the stage of life he’s in now. In the last few years, Mr. Compton has slowed down as he has come to terms with the expenses behind his art.
He no longer has free access to fabrication laboratories pegged to his university, and he has opted for the more cost-friendly hobbies of zine-making and book binding. He is, however, eyeing a $1,000 3-d printer. For now, he has settled on $20 a month Photoshop subscription.
The largest constraint tempering Mr. Compton’s spending is his $100,000 student loan debt from graduate school. The window for his deferment period closed, and even with some money he inherited after his mother passed, he says he needs a miracle to finish paying off his loans. “I’m not sure what to do anymore,” he said.
Splurging on Plants and Experimental Harsh Noise Records
Mr. Compton may not have any children, but he is a proud “plant dad.”
His apartment houses $1,000 worth of plants sourced through Facebook groups, pop-ups and by following Brooklyn Horticulture online. He typically pays $30-$50 for medium to large sized plants, but he is constantly on the lookout for deals.
When he isn’t at home with his plants, Mr. Compton treks into Manhattan to do his weekly grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. He prefers the prices there to local spots in the Bronx and estimates he spends $70 each week.
A cash guzzler of Mr. Compton’s food budget is the $20 a day — an additional $80 a week — he spends at the Metropolitan’s staff cafeteria for breakfast and lunch. When working 12 hour shifts, “I’m not gonna go home and make something to bring the next day,” he said.
On his days off, he seeks out affordable food deals. He frequents Vanessa’s Dumplings in Chinatown for their $8 dumpling special.
When in the mood to treat himself, Mr. Compton rides the train a few more stops out to Ridgewood, Queens and Bushwick, Brooklyn, to visit his favorite record stores like Fringe Records and Nexus Records. An experimental harsh noise aficionado, he spends no less than $100 each visit.
His biggest and most recent splurge was a 10-day trip to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka in Japan in February. He was able to cut his $900 round trip ticket to $700 with credit card points. Add in the cost of hotels, meals and souvenirs, he spent close to $5,000 total.
“I wanted to go because my artwork had been to Japan, but I haven’t been to Japan,” he said.
Looking Ahead
Mr. Compton wants to strike a balance between saving and enjoying the life he dreamed of in New York. To help pay off his loans, he considered applying to be an art handler for the Metropolitan, a job with a slight pay bump. But without his present benefit of overtime pay, he’s afraid he would be making less than he does currently.
Over the years, Mr. Compton has found community among other security guards at the Metropolitan, who, like him, are artists. He has also built inroads with notable names at the museum, one being Sheena Wagstaff, the former chairman of modern and contemporary art, who he said took the time to know Mr. Compton not only as a co-worker, but also as an individual, too.
Because of his connections, he feels like he has nowhere else to go. He considered a quieter lifestyle upstate in Westchester or the Catskills, but believes he will make less money outside of the city. And, of course, he would have to leave the place he’s called home for the majority of his adult years.
“I did four other cities, and they weren’t as good or great as I like New York,” he said. “I always end up here.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
You made it time. If you want to look a little longer, just scroll back up and press “Continue.”
Look up.
Before you commute home to suburbs like Tarrytown and Larchmont, or race toward the next stop on your tourist map, take a minute.
Look up to see the stars.
One hundred and twenty-five feet above you are 2,500 stars and six signs of the zodiac along the ecliptic, a line that represents the path of the sun across the sky:
The signs are joined by a few others: Orion, Pegasus, Triangulum and, in the center of it all, Musca Borealis (the Northern fly, or sometimes called Apis, the bee). The Milky Way streaks across the ceiling in the opposite direction. The whole thing is ringed by intricate plaster moldings along the clerestory windows. Fifty-nine of the stars twinkle.
Who says there isn’t magic in Midtown?
The original early 1900s plan for the ceiling was to build a massive skylight so commuters could look up at the actual stars:
But time and money were short, so the architects asked the artist Paul Helleu to design a version of the sky on the ceiling instead. Helleu took inspiration from star atlases from the 1600s. His main resource was the Uranometria from 1603, a lushly illustrated volume that was the first detailed cataloging of individual stars, their positions and brightness. See how similar the figures are. This is Aries:
Here’s Taurus, the bull:
A heart balloon — one of several — had floated up the day we took this photograph, nestling between Orion’s club and Taurus’s horn (maybe an earthly sign that this heavenly hunt might finally resolve).
Converting the flat drawings of a spherical sky re-projected onto a semi-cylindrical vaulted ceiling would have been no easy task. The design work was done by a famous scenic designer and muralist, James Monroe Hewlett, and was overseen by the Columbia astronomy professor Harold Jacoby, who in 1910 assured a panicked public that Halley’s comet would not hit Earth.
Dozens of painters got to work. The terminal opened at midnight on Feb. 2, 1913. The New York Central Railroad boasted “that many school children will go to the Grand Central Terminal to study this representation of the heavens.”
Two weeks later, a commuter from New Rochelle (and a hobby astronomer) looked up at the ceiling and realized that west was east and east was west and the sky was not, actually, in a proper arrangement. Only Orion was shown in the “correct” orientation. He wrote a “wrathful” letter to the station. As The New York Times reported in 1913, officials at Grand Central “did not deny the charge that things were a bit mixed, but held that it was a pretty good ceiling for all that.”
How this happened is still a matter of debate, given Professor Jacoby’s astronomical blessing.
Michael Allison, a former NASA planetary scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (and a former adjunct in the Columbia astronomy and astrophysics department), met me last month at the great clock under the ceiling to explain his theory.
“I’ve stared at the ceiling I don’t know how many hours,” he said. “I keep hoping I can discover one more thing.”
The liberties taken, Mr. Allison said, like re-sizing the constellations to fit the space and flipping Orion (in relation to the rest), were carefully done. Ultimately, a good marriage of art and science. He thinks Jacoby was a victim of big project bureaucracy, that it was all a mixup.
Jacoby probably expected the design he approved to be projected overhead, where the result would match the plans if you held them above you. The painters put them on the floor instead. Hence, the flip.
But this “heavenly view” — the stars as if they could be seen from above, looking down — may not be a bad view at all.
“There are just so many bad things happening in the world now that I think the sky offers a perspective that can lift us above that,” Mr. Allison said.
For Deirdre Newman, the great-granddaughter of the muralist Hewlett, who painted the ceiling, the imperfection “is what art is.”
Ms. Newman, it turns out, is also a painter of murals and ceilings. But these days, if she has to flip an image, she just hits a button on the projector.
“Anytime I make a mistake painting, I’m like, this proves that it’s art,” she said. “It is not perfection, and it shouldn’t be — it would be a sad thing if it was.”
The stories that we’ve given to the stars over millenniums, some of the most retold tales in history, are hardly orderly — stories of fate, violence, betrayal, revenge, sex and punishment. Cancer helps Hera in pinching a rival’s foot. Orion, son of Poseidon, is placed in the stars by Zeus, locked in an eternal hunt. The two fish of Pisces (Aphrodite and Eros) are linked together to escape the monster-of-all-monsters, Typhon.
Or the stories are totally different if you were Babylonian or Egyptian, Greek or Roman. Today, the stars mean something else again to a devoted user of the horoscope app Co-Star, seeking reassurance after a breakup. And to a commuter standing in Grand Central, looking up while waiting for the train, the stars might just be a momentary diversion, a decorative way to pass the time. Or more.
Take what you want. Take what you need.
***
By the 1940s, the ceiling had fallen into disrepair, so they painted a whole new one on four-foot-by-eight-foot asbestos sheets over the old one. This is the version that exists today. Eventually that second ceiling, too, grew dark with grime and had to be cleaned from 1996 to 1998. The difference was stark. As you were zooming in, you may have noticed a little dark square by Cancer. They deliberately left one bit of the uncleaned ceiling here:
The best time to take all of it in — the ceiling, and the majesty of the station — might just be coming this weekend. The setting sun will line up with Manhattan’s street grid and should (pending clouds) bathe the terminal in a beautiful golden glow Saturday at 8:19 p.m. and Sunday at 8:20 p.m. I plan to be on the east balcony looking west on Sunday for that moment.
See you there.
How we took the photograph
To generate a high-resolution panorama of the ceiling, The Times captured 232 close-up images. We then used software to stitch these photos into an equirectangular projection, to approximate the curve of the ceiling. We also developed custom computer vision software to ensure consistent color blending across varying lighting conditions. To optimize for display efficiency and clarity during navigation, the image was then re-projected into the shape of a cube. We think it’s still a pretty good picture for all that.
This is an installment in our series of experiments on art and attention. If you liked this one, you may like these past exercises: a finished, unfinished portrait; a sudden rain over a bridge; a unicorn tapestry; some buckets from Home Depot; and a Whistler painting.
Sign up to be notified when new installments are published here. And let us know how this exercise made you feel in the comments.
Welcome to Day 2 of the Metropolitan Diary challenge, part of our celebration of the column’s 50th anniversary. On Day 1, we gave you tips for identifying your New York City story. Today, we’ll help you write it. (Missed Day 1? It’s not too late to start.)
What makes for a good Diary? It’s simply a good story that happens to be set in, and capture, the essential New York-ness of the city. While this isn’t a full writing course, we do have guidance on the kinds of elements that the submissions we publish include. They typically have: a beginning, middle and end; sharp details; catchy dialogue; a bit of surprise; some humor, warmth or emotion. But there is no formula, so flouting these loose rules can be worthwhile.
Don’t worry if you don’t think of yourself as a “writer.” Focus on being a “storyteller.” Pretend you are telling your story to the person who’d most appreciate it, using whatever conversational language or pacing that would hold their attention. Do it out loud if you want, maybe give that person a call and tell them your story (or tell it to them again). Then write it down.
That’s the big picture. For more tips, read on.
Here is an example of a published Diary that we (and readers) really liked, and a few thoughts on why that may help crystallize yours.
Unacceptable
Dear Diary:
I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights1 with my son.
When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.2
The man behind the counter looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”3
— Richie Powers
One of this item’s best qualities is that it is short and snappy. Only 53 words! Although we will use stories of up to 300 words, many don’t need to be that long and the column doesn’t work if we don’t have a mix of long, medium and short, so we are always looking for stuff like this. Here’s another one!
At Attention
Dear Diary:
It was December 1967. I had just finished basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey and was traveling to Boston in uniform. For reasons I no longer recall, I stopped in New York City on the way.1
Walking on the Upper East Side2 in a snowstorm, I spied another man in a uniform. He was older, and his cap bore the familiar gold band that identified him as an officer.
I rendered a snappy salute. It was not returned. 3The uniform was unfamiliar, so I guessed he was a foreign officer. Military courtesy still required me to salute.
A little farther down the street, I encountered another officer and offered another salute that went unacknowledged.4 His uniform was strange to me as well.
The third time it happened, the man I saluted ignored me while holding the door for a couple 5on their way into a large apartment building.
I realized I had been saluting doormen.6
— Stephen Salisbury
To get your storytelling muscles going, think through or jot down the answers to some of these questions.
Let’s start with setting the scene.
- When and where in the city did this happen? Is this place well-known?
- Was there anything particular about that point in your life that’s relevant?
- What did you see, hear, smell? Was there something notable about the weather?
Now, let’s move to the middle, the meat of the story.
- Did you have an exchange with someone?
- What details are important to how events unfolded, especially in setting up the ending?
And now, the end.
- What’s the resolution? Is there a punchline?
- Does the story end with a sense of shared humanity or some other warm feeling that lingers? You don’t need to name it. A good description will often allow readers to feel it too.
- Why has this experience stayed with you?
- Lines like “and that’s why I love New York” are almost always unnecessary.
That’s it. Keep your story simple and use the kind of plain language you use in conversation. You are sketching a moment in time. The details are important. Let them move the story along. Have fun and good luck.
Once you’re done, read through what you’ve got. What details are less important and can be left out? (Remember, there is a strict 300-word limit.)
Write your Metropolitan Diary however you like, on paper, on your phone or wherever! When you’re happy with what you’ve written, put your diary entry into the box below, fill out your information and submit it. You might just hear from me about including it in a future column.
This is the official submission form, so make sure to double-check your work before hitting submit.
That’s it! Submit your Metropolitan Diary.
By transmitting your submission, you grant The New York Times Company a perpetual, royalty-free license to use the submission in any medium. They may be edited, and may be republished and adapted in all media. You may reprint your story elsewhere after it appears in The Times.
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