New York

Nightclubs? They’d Rather Play Shuffleboard and Jenga.

Published

2 years ago

April 16, 2022

This story is a part of an occasional collection exploring nightlife in New York.

On any given Friday night time, you’ll in all probability discover Jonathan Schnapp racing amongst 10 shuffleboard courts in a thrift-shop jumpsuit, doling out guidelines and strategic knowledge to Brooklyn’s latest gamers.

Mr. Schnapp, 49, opened Royal Palms Shuffleboard Membership practically 10 years in the past in Gowanus, Brooklyn. And though the area features as a nightclub on weekends with blaring music, glitter-covered bartenders and cocktails named after shuffleboard greats, the sport is about way over consuming whereas banging pucks round.

“It’s like attempting to love be the anti-nightclub in a approach,” Mr. Schnapp mentioned final weekend, as a Pitbull track blasted over the membership’s audio system. “By no means so crowded, by no means so costly, by no means door stress, by no means cowl prices, by no means any of this stuff that make it so we don’t wish to exit anymore.”

His technique is working — on high of a devoted league that often performs on the courts on Mondays and Tuesdays, Royal Palms attracts a whole bunch of consumers every weekend who play till the membership closes at 2 a.m.

However shuffleboard isn’t the one recreation that New Yorkers can play into the night time. There are bocce courts at Brooklyn’s Union Corridor; desk video games at Cellar Canine in Greenwich Village; a number of Barcade areas, which regularly have pinball machines and video video games alongside drinks; and loads of pool halls (together with Amsterdam Billiards Membership in Manhattan and Break Bar in Queens) sprinkled across the metropolis.

There are additionally a handful of board recreation cafes. The Uncommons, in Greenwich Village, routinely has a bustling crowd and a look ahead to tables within the night.

Eden Buenaventura, 30, and Cristhal Fuertes had been celebrating Ms. Fuertes’s thirty first birthday on the cafe final Friday night time, enjoying rounds of Guess Who and Wavelength — a “telepathic board recreation” that neither of them had tried earlier than. They mentioned they picked the sport as a result of it had a colourful field, which complemented Ms. Fuertes’s puffy purple gown and every of their brightly painted nails.

“It’s so a lot better than simply going out and consuming,” Ms. Buenaventura mentioned. “That is enjoyable as a result of it’s an exercise, ? It’s extra participating.”

Ms. Buenaventura, who additionally participates in an archery league at Gotham Archery, mentioned that whereas she additionally loves going out dancing, these game-oriented areas have been an effective way for her to attach with buddies and meet new folks.

“You possibly can study your mates, like new belongings you didn’t know earlier than,” she mentioned. “It’s good to get the hell out of your condo.”

Greg Could, who owns The Uncommons, together with two Hex & Firm cafes on the Higher East and Higher West Sides, mentioned that these areas are an vital nightlife choice.

“We’re very non-drink pleasant,” Mr. Could, 40, mentioned. “We’re not a bar — we’re a bar different.”

(He mentioned that all the cafes promote espresso, tea, beer and wine, however the Higher East Aspect location additionally has a full cocktail menu.)

Brooklyn has a number of areas for players to congregate. The Brooklyn Strategist, in Carroll Gardens, affords varied video games and scheduled tournaments, whereas Park Slope’s Sip & Play affords bubble tea together with its assortment of video games and snacks.

“Me and my co-workers come right here each Friday night time,” mentioned Bella Faye, a bubbly 21-year-old faculty pupil who was there enjoying Magic: The Gathering. “It’s a bunch of nerds, and it’s simply enjoyable.”

“Particularly Magic — there’s so many people,” Ms. Faye mentioned. “It’s a really common recreation that’s been round because the ’90s, so it’s a very enjoyable dialog starter.”

Jonathan Li, the 24-year-old proprietor of Sip & Play, mentioned that recreation nights can be a pleasant solution to join with a special aspect of individuals.

“As an individual that additionally goes out each infrequently, typically it’s simply an excessive amount of,” Mr. Li mentioned. “Right here you possibly can nonetheless hang around with your mates in a extra healthful setting. Seize some bubble tea and occasional as a substitute of alcohol and simply sit back for a pleasant Friday.”

The place to Go

Manhattan

The Uncommons, 230 Thompson Avenue, uncommonsnyc.com
Cellar Canine, 75 Christopher Avenue, cellardog.internet;
Amsterdam Billiards Membership, 110 East eleventh Avenue, amsterdambilliards.com
House Billiards, 34 West thirty second Avenue, Ground 12, spacebilliard.com
Hex & Firm, a number of areas, hexnyc.com

Brooklyn

Royal Palms Shuffleboard Membership, 514 Union Avenue, royalpalmsbrooklyn.com
Sip & Play, 471 Fifth Avenue, instagram.com/sipnplaynyc
Union Corridor, 702 Union Avenue, unionhallny.com
The Brooklyn Strategist, 333 Court docket Avenue, thebrooklynstrategist.com
Barcade, a number of areas, barcadenewyork.com

Queens

New York

We Counted 22,252 Cars to See How Much Congestion Pricing Might Have Made This Morning

Published

3 hours ago

July 1, 2024

Press Room

We Counted 22,252 Cars to See How Much Congestion Pricing Might Have Made This Morning

By Ana Ley, Larry Buchanan and Francesca Paris

Ana Ley spent more than 12 hours at M.T.A. board meetings last week. Larry Buchanan, Francesca Paris and 25 of their colleagues spent the morning counting more than 22,000 cars.

July 1, 2024

Today would have been the first Monday of New York City’s congestion pricing plan. Before it was halted by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the plan was designed to rein in some of the nation’s worst traffic while raising a billion dollars for the subway every year, one toll at a time.

A year’s worth of tolls is hard to picture. But what about a day’s worth? What about an hour’s?

To understand how the plan could have worked, we went to the edges of the tolling zone during the first rush hour that the fees would have kicked in.

Here’s what we saw:

Video by Noah Throop/The New York Times; animation by Ruru Kuo/The New York Times

You probably wouldn’t have seen every one of those cars if the program had been allowed to proceed. That’s because officials said the fees would have discouraged some drivers from crossing into the tolled zone, leading to an estimated 17 percent reduction in traffic. (It’s also Monday on a holiday week.)

The above video was just at one crossing point, on Lexington Avenue. We sent 27 people to count vehicles manually at four bridges, four tunnels and nine streets where cars entered the business district. In total, we counted 22,252 cars, trucks, motorcycles and buses between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Monday.

We wanted to see how the dense flow of traffic into the central business district would have generated money in real time.

Though we can’t know that dollar amount precisely, we can hazard a guess. Congestion pricing was commonly referred to as a $15-per-car toll, but it wasn’t so simple. There were going to be smaller fees for taxi trips, credits for the tunnels, heftier charges for trucks and buses, and a number of exemptions.

To try to account for all that fee variance, we used estimates from the firm Replica, which models traffic data, on who enters the business district, as well as records from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and city agencies. We also made a few assumptions where data wasn’t available. We then came up with a ballpark figure for how much the city might have generated in an hour at those toll points.

The total? About $200,000 in tolls for that hour.

Note: The Trinity Place exit from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which would have been tolled, is closed at this hour.

It’s far from a perfect guess. Our vehicle total is definitely an undercount: We counted only the major entrances — bridges, tunnels and 60th Street — which means we missed all the cars that entered the zone by exiting the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive or the West Side Highway.

And our translation into a dollar number is rough. Among many other choices we had to make, we assumed all drivers had E-ZPass — saving them a big surcharge — and we couldn’t distinguish between transit buses and charter buses, so we gave all buses an exemption.

But it does give you a rough sense of scale: It’s a lot of cars, and a lot of money. Over the course of a typical day, hundreds of thousands of vehicles stream into the Manhattan central business district through various crossings.

Trips into tolling district, per Replica estimates

Queens-Midtown Tunnel	50,600
Lincoln Tunnel	49,200
Williamsburg Bridge	27,900
Manhattan Bridge	24,000
Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel	23,100
Queensboro Bridge	21,700
Brooklyn Bridge	17,100
Holland Tunnel	15,400
All other entrances	118,000
Total	347,000

Note: Data counts estimated entrances on a weekday in spring 2023. Source: Replica.

The tolling infrastructure that was installed for the program cost roughly half a billion dollars.

The M.T.A. had planned to use the congestion pricing revenue estimates to secure $15 billion in financing for subway upgrades. Many of those improvement plans have now been suspended.

Methodology

We stationed as many as five counters at some bridges and tunnels to ensure that we counted only cars that directly entered the tolling zone, not those that would have continued onto non-tolled routes.

Our count also excluded certain exempt vehicles like emergency vehicles.

We used estimates of the traffic into the district to make a best guess at how many of each kind of vehicle entered the zone. Most of our estimates came from the traffic data firm Replica, which uses a variety of data sources, including phone location, credit card and census data, to model transportation patterns. Replica estimated that around 58 percent of trips into the central business district on a weekday in spring 2023 were made by private vehicles, 35 percent by taxis or other for-hire vehicles (Uber and Lyft) and the remainder by commercial vehicles.

We also used data on trucks, buses, for-hire vehicles and motorcycles from the M.T.A., the Taxi and Limousine Commission and the Department of Transportation.

For simplicity, we assumed all vehicles would be equally likely to enter the zone from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. as they would be in any other hour. We could not account for the other trips that a for-hire vehicle might make once within the tolled zone, only the initial crossing. And we did not include the discount to drivers who make under $50,000, because it would kick in only after 10 trips in a calendar month.

New York

Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 30, 2024

Published

4 weeks ago

June 3, 2024

Press Room

Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 30, 2024

-
Jury Deliberation Re-charge
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK CRIMINAL TERM
-
-
PART: 59
Χ
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,
-against-
DONALD J. TRUMP,
DEFENDANT.
BEFORE:
Indict. No.
71543-2023
CHARGE
4909
FALSIFYING BUSINESS
RECORDS 1ST DEGREE
JURY TRIAL
100 Centre Street
New York, New York 10013
May 30, 2024
HONORABLE JUAN M. MERCHAN
JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT
APPEARANCES:
FOR THE PEOPLE:
ALVIN BRAGG, JR., ESQ.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY, NEW YORK COUNTY
One Hogan Place
New York, New York 10013
BY:
JOSHUA STEINGLASS, ESQ.
MATTHEW COLANGELO,
ESQ.
SUSAN HOFFINGER, ESQ.
CHRISTOPHER CONROY, ESQ.
BECKY MANGOLD, ESQ.
KATHERINE ELLIS, ESQ.
Assistant District Attorneys
BLANCHE LAW
BY:
TODD BLANCHE, ESQ.
EMIL BOVE, ESQ.
KENDRA WHARTON, ESQ.
NECHELES LAW, LLP
BY: SUSAN NECHELES, ESQ.
GEDALIA STERN, ESQ.
Attorneys for the Defendant
SUSAN PEARCE-BATES, RPR, CSR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter
LAURIE EISENBERG, RPR, CSR
LISA KRAMSKY
THERESA MAGNICCARI
Senior Court Reporters
Susan Pearce-Bates, RPR, CCR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter

New York

Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 29, 2024

Published

1 month ago

May 31, 2024

Press Room

Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 29, 2024

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK CRIMINAL TERM
-
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,
PART: 59
Indict. No.
71543-2023
CHARGE
-against-
DONALD J. TRUMP,
DEFENDANT.
BEFORE:
4815
FALSIFYING BUSINESS
RECORDS 1ST DEGREE
JURY TRIAL
X
100 Centre Street
New York, New York 10013
May 29, 2024
HONORABLE JUAN M. MERCHAN
JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT
APPEARANCES:
FOR THE
PEOPLE:
ALVIN BRAGG, JR.,
ESQ.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY, NEW YORK COUNTY
One Hogan Place
New York, New York 10013
BY:
JOSHUA STEINGLASS, ESQ.
MATTHEW COLANGELO,
ESQ.
SUSAN HOFFINGER, ESQ.
CHRISTOPHER CONROY, ESQ.
BECKY MANGOLD, ESQ.
KATHERINE ELLIS, ESQ.
Assistant District Attorneys
BLANCHE LAW
BY:
TODD BLANCHE, ESQ.
EMIL BOVE, ESQ.
KENDRA WHARTON, ESQ.
NECHELES LAW, LLP
BY: SUSAN NECHELES, ESQ.
Attorneys for the Defendant
SUSAN PEARCE-BATES, RPR, CSR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter
LAURIE EISENBERG, RPR, CSR
LISA KRAMSKY
THERESA MAGNICCARI
Senior Court Reporters
Susan Pearce-Bates,
RPR, CCR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter