New York
Vote For the Best Metropolitan Diary Entry of 2024
Every week since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has published stories by, and for, New Yorkers of all ages and eras (no matter where they live now): anecdotes and memories, quirky encounters and overheard snippets that reveal the city’s spirit and heart.
For the past three years, we’ve asked for your help picking the best Diary entry of the year. Now we’re asking again.
We’ve narrowed the field to the five finalists here. Read them and vote for your favorite. The author of the item that gets the most votes will receive a print of the illustration that accompanied it, signed by the artist, Agnes Lee.
The voting closes at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 22. You can change your vote as many times as you’d like until then, but you may only pick one. Choose wisely.
Click “VOTE” to choose your favorite Metropolitan Diary entry of 2024, and come back on Sunday, Dec. 29 to see which one our readers picked as their favorite.
Click “VOTE” to choose your favorite Metropolitan Diary entry of 2024, and come back on Sunday, Dec. 29 to see which one our readers picked as their favorite.
Benched
Dear Diary:
I was in the habit of taking walks in Carl Schurz Park on early summer mornings, when the sun cast a lovely orange glow over the quiet East River esplanade.
My walk was identical every day. What also became routine was seeing the same older man sitting on the same bench each morning. He held a flat tweed cap in his hands, always gazing wistfully out onto the water.
One morning, I decided to talk to him.
“Hello,” I said, approaching the bench where he was sitting.
He looked up.
“How do you do?” he said.
“I don’t mean to bother you, but I see you here every day,” I said.
“Is that right?” he said.
“And if you don’t mind me asking, I was curious why you sat on this same bench?”
He turned away with a deep sigh.
“My wife and I used to sit on this bench together for 51 years,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, feeling badly. “I’m sorry.”
“And for some bizarre reason she likes to sit over there now,” he said, gesturing toward a woman 20 feet to the left of us.
Sausage and Peppers
Dear Diary:
On a summer Sunday when I was living on 56th Street behind Carnegie Hall, I ran the loop in Central Park and then returned home on Sixth Avenue.
A typical summer street fair was being set up on the avenue, and an Italian sausage truck was positioned at 58th Street.
“Great,” I thought. I love Italian sausage sandwiches.
I returned to the truck at about 1 p.m., bought one, took it back to my apartment and thoroughly enjoyed it.
At about 4 p.m., I decided to treat myself to another. When I got to the truck, there was a man ahead of me who had just ordered and was waiting for his sandwich.
I ordered one, and while I waited, the counterman brought the man in front of me his and he began eating.
When my sandwich arrived, it was huge, with easily twice the amount of sausage, peppers and onions as before.
As I started eating, I noticed the other man looking at my sandwich, then at his sandwich, then at mine again. Finally, he looked at the counterman.
“What gives?” he said. “Why’s mine so small?”
“Oh,” the counterman answered without hesitating, “he’s a regular.”
Slightly Worn
Dear Diary:
Some years ago, I worked in the management office at a clothing store on Madison Avenue. Our policy was that men’s suits could be returned within a specified time limit provided they hadn’t been altered or showed signs of wear like pulled threads or frayed material.
One summer day, a man walked in with a garment bag slung over his arm. He said he wanted to return a suit that had been bought 10 days earlier. He gave the receipt to the cashier, who unzipped the garment bag and called for me to come downstairs.
When I got to the counter, I took the gray pinstriped suit out of the bag and hung it on a hook for inspection. It didn’t appear worn, but it did seem a bit grimy and dirty, almost as though whoever had worn it had been rolling around in a flower bed.
“Did you purchase this suit for yourself?” I asked the man.
“No,” he replied. “A manager in my company purchased the suit. I am the courier.”
“What company do you work for?”
He gave me a business card for a funeral home in the Bronx.
My eyes widened as I conjured up all the possible purposes for which this grimy-looking suit could have been purchased. Realizing we would have to thoroughly clean it before trying to resell it, I told the man that we couldn’t give him a refund but would offer a store credit.
“But it’s only been worn once,” he said.
That Was Quick
Dear Diary:
In May 1978, I and several other Cornell students traveled to Manhattan for interviews with prospective employers. After the interviews, we needed to get back to Port Authority to catch a bus back upstate.
I decided to show off my worldliness by confidently hailing a cab. We piled in, and I directed the driver to take us to Port Authority.
“Port Authority?” he asked.
“Please,” I replied.
He stared at me for a moment, drove the cab about 20 yards and pulled over.
“Here you go!” he announced.
I was thoroughly embarrassed.
“What’s the charge?” I asked meekly.
“Nothing” he said. “It was worth it for the entertainment.”
East 37th Street
Dear Diary:
Janet became my best friend in fall 1968. We met in fifth grade at the St. Vincent Ferrer school on East 65th Street. She was a transfer student from a school in Murray Hill that was closing because of low enrollment.
We were both only children. My mother worked outside the home. Janet’s mother did not. So we would take the bus to her home on East 37th Street after school.
It was a magical place for me: a first-floor garden apartment where we could play outside and in Janet’s beautiful bedroom. It felt like a real home.
As we grew up, Janet was on track to become an actress. I vividly recall the day her father took us to a shoot for “The Godfather,” in which Janet had a part.
Janet died of leukemia a few months later, and over the years her friends, including me, made a point of walking by East 37th Street whenever we were in the area.
Fast forward to 2022. I had lived in different parts of New York City over the years and most recently at my mother’s home in Connecticut. I sold the house after my mother died and was able to rent in the city once again.
I looked at many apartments, until one day a certain East 37th Street address came up on my computer. I was shown an amazing, newly renovated, light-filled apartment on the fourth floor in the front of the building.
I had to interview with the apartment’s owner. He listened quietly as I explained my connection to the building. I expected to leave and hear his decision at a later date. That is not what happened.
“Welcome home,” he said immediately.
Illustrations by Agnes Lee.
new video loaded: Historic Brooklyn Church Destroyed in Fire
By Meg Felling
June 22, 2026
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?
Maruf Abubakari Sadick left Ghana for New York in April 2023, confident he was prepared for chilly weather.
When he arrived that morning, the temperatures were in the 50s. He might as well have arrived during a snowstorm.
“‘It’s really cold,’” he told his brother, who laughed and reminded him it wasn’t even winter. His brother brought him a warm jacket, sparking a love affair with outerwear, as well as clothes and colognes.
Three years later, these are the little luxuries on which Mr. Sadick splurges when he is not working two jobs as a security officer in the city.
“I really like to look good, and I like to smell good,” Mr. Sadick, 37, said. “I just tell myself ‘I work too hard. It’s self care.’”
Together, his security jobs bring in close to $46,000 a year, which pays for rent, remittances to his family in Ghana, Wi-Fi, his phone bill and groceries. At the end of the month, he squirrels away what he can so he can one day pay for nursing school.
His rent is $700 a month, which affords him a room in a four-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in the East Bronx that he shares with two other men and one woman.
“Funny enough, we don’t have a schedule for the bathroom,” Mr. Sadick said. “It’s not easy.”
He buys a 30-pound bag of rice for $30 from the nearby bodega that lasts him about three months and a 40-pack of Poland Spring water for $20 so he can bring a bottle to work.
The housemates often share food, usually fish stews and okra soups that Mr. Sadick pours into a thermos, along with the rice, which he then takes to work. It helps him avoid paying for takeout which can cost more than $20.
Mr. Sadick said he learned quickly that to survive in New York, you need to share.
Two Jobs, Little Sleep
Mr. Sadick makes $17 an hour at both jobs, earning the current minimum wage in the city. By next year, he could be making at least $22.20 an hour, with two weeks of paid vacation and paid holidays.
The bump in pay is part of the Aland Etienne Safety and Security Act, a city law that Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed shortly after he took office that set a minimum wage for security guards. The law, which also requires employers to contribute to paid time off and health benefits, was named after the security officer who was fatally shot in July 2025 at 345 Park Avenue by a gunman who killed three others before killing himself.
Mr. Sadick did not know Mr. Etienne, but he said his death terrified him and other security officers, who realized how vulnerable they were at work.
The job “seems easy,” he said. “It seems quiet. Then, one moment, it’s all chaos.”
From Tuesday to Friday he works a four to eight-hour shift when he guards a sprawling office complex in Long Island City, Queens.
On weekends, he guards a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in East Harlem from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. When his shift ends, he takes the subway for a 40-minute commute back to the office complex in Queens, where he works 12-hour overnight shifts on Saturday and Sunday.
Three days a week he takes GED classes in the morning, which are free to state residents. Mondays are his one day off, which he uses “to make up for the two days that I don’t sleep,” Mr. Sadick said.
During the summers, when school is not in session, he tries to make some money selling bus tours to tourists around Times Square. On a good day, he will make $250 to $500 in commissions. On bad days, he will spend five hours in the heat with nothing to show for it.
He said he was exhausted, but driven to pursue a career in medicine.
“I like to take care of people,” he said.
Sending Help Home
A big part of Mr. Sadick’s salary goes to his family in Ghana. On average, he will send $500 a month to help pay for his parents’ food, his grandmother’s health aide and his sister’s schooling.
Last month, he sent a $1,200 so that his parents could buy two sheep. He sent the money through Taptap Send, an app that lets people send money to countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.
The sheep should provide enough meat to last them a couple of months, he said. His brother sent over $2,000 around the same time so that their extended family could buy a bull.
Sending money home is “expected,” Mr. Sadick said, adding that he feels “very good” about being able to help.
“We are brought up in a system where it’s all about family,” he said. “You are brought up to provide.”
Self-Care Is Worth the Splurge
When Mr. Sadick has extra money in his pocket, he will pop into Zara or Macy’s, where he shops for shoes, jackets and button-down shirts.
He has six bottles of cologne. His favorites are Al Rehab Lord Eau De Parfum and Mountain Woody Forest from Zara. The Al Rehab cologne, which sells for $10.95 an ounce on Amazon, is for daytime. He saves the Mountain Woody Forest — $74.99 on Amazon — for special occasions.
He owns 18 pairs of shoes, including red and white Air Jordans that he bought for $200 and a pair of brown, suede boots from Zara that cost $100.
“These are my favorites,” he said, stroking the soft Zara boots. “I look a bit professional in them.”
He is still trying to figure out what he will do when his salary goes up.
Most likely, he said he would keep working both jobs so that he could save more money. But he daydreams about quitting one of them.
It would be nice, Mr. Sadick said, to get more sleep, have time to play soccer and visit art museums.
What he would really like is more time to take long walks.
One of his favorite places to walk is Dumbo, where he worked briefly guarding a construction site and fell in love with the sweeping views of Manhattan and the cool breeze that comes off the water.
A place in Dumbo, he said, would be the ultimate indulgence.
“That would be a dream come true,” Mr. Sadick said. “It’s so nice there.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
new video loaded: Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
transcript
transcript
Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
New York Knicks fans showed up in droves to a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan in their best orange and blue outfits to honor the N.B.A champions.
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“Patrick Ewing. He didn’t get a ring. But I wear your sneakers, bro. When I was in high school, back in the ’90s, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, they were the team that I rooted for in the ’90s. They didn’t make it. So as a tribute to him because this is where I started at being a fan, Patrick Ewing. Knicks hat in denim — I’m a denim fanatic. So I love denim — Knicks hat. And yeah, that’s it.” “This is my style. I usually dress like this every day. But I did a special Knicks edition. It’s all really fun. I start with my makeup. I did really cute flames on my eyes because the Knicks are fire. I don’t really know what I’m going to do before I put it on. I just figure it out along the way. Like, this is a piece of fabric and I just layer in stuff.” “This is from my online boutique and the hat I just bought on the way to the parade because I wanted to match the jumpsuit, and that’s how I came up with the outfit.” “She was ready to go, man.” “Can you show your fingernail?” “She’s been sleeping in her Jalen Brunson jersey for the last 10 weeks. We’ve been watching all the games. You want to tell them who’s your favorite player?” “Jalen Brunson.” “I’m pretty sure this jersey was actually made for a human baby. But they’re selling them around the block. And we threw it on Chester and everyone started clapping. So — he wears it well.” “Blue and orange.” “So I did blue and orange.” “It had to be orange and blue. “Orange and blue. Orange and blue.”
By Meg Felling, Jeremy Raff, Ang Li and David Cheung
June 18, 2026
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