Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll find out about the new look on a familiar block in Brooklyn. We’ll also get details on the City Council’s override of 17 bills that Eric Adams vetoed before he left office at the end of 2025.
It’s time for a look at some department store windows. If you’re thinking that’s so last month, Ryan Edwards said it’s not. The department-store window installation in question has no Santas, sleighs or reindeer. And strictly speaking, it’s not in a department store. It’s in the former Macy’s in Downtown Brooklyn, which closed last year. Edwards is a Boston-based sound and installation artist whose team was commissioned by the local business improvement district to design a project for what might seem like a dead block. Regina Myer, the president of the district, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, said she wanted to “create some buzz” for nearby restaurants and bars during cold weather. Months ago, when it was warm, she got a $90,000 city grant, added $5,000 in partnership funds and put Edwards to work. He was “transfixed by the poetry of where the hustle of the street meets the building,” said Edwards, who devised kaleidoscopic light panels with patterns that change according to a computer program built from the soundtrack of Fulton Street, using audio of everyday sounds that he recorded there. He said the geometric patterns are driven by the pulse of Fulton Street. Making a visual melodyYou won’t hear it — there are no speakers — but the sounds trigger light patterns that play on glass panels set up as windows-within-windows. The panels reside comfortably behind the glass that Macy’s used to fill with mannequins and merchandise. Edwards recorded fire trucks rumbling by and cars with hip-hop going full blast. “There’s devotional music from across the street,” he said, along with chatter from passers-by that his microphone picked up. There is even the click-click-click of walk-don’t walk signals flashing. Edwards, whose training as a drummer sharpened his sense of rhythm, realized that the signs throb at 60 beats a minute. “It’s the metronome of the street,” he said. The city grant came from the city’s Department of Small Business Services. Dynishal Gross, the commissioner, said it was one of 13 such grants totaling just over $1 million for projects around the city intended to make neighborhoods “feel economically active, safer and more attractive to passers-by.” “Whenever New Yorkers hear about a business closing,” as in the case of the Macy’s store, “it creates anxiety,” Gross said. “People worry about the loss of jobs, but also the impact on the streetscape perception: How will the block feel? How will it be attended to? If you’re out walking your dog or you’re a shift worker coming home, a lit-up storefront makes a difference.” A new chapterThe installation is the latest chapter for a building which was once as much a part of Brooklyn’s identity as the Brooklyn Dodgers and The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, as the writer John Freeman Gill observed. It was also a part of Brooklyn’s history. The Macy’s store was originally the flagship of Abraham & Straus, which eventually became known as A & S, but disappeared in the 1990s when its corporate parent acquired Macy’s and dropped the A & S name. The Fulton Street store carried on as a Macy’s until last year, when Macy’s shut down dozens of underperforming locations as part of a turnaround plan. WEATHER It’s going to be another sunny and very cold day, with temperatures around 18 and a blustery wind. Tonight will be partly cloudy and bitterly cold, with a low around 9. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING Suspended for snow removal. QUOTE OF THE DAY “The First Amendment right to peacefully protest is sacrosanct. What’s not sacrosanct is inciting violence, intimidation and harassment.” — Julie Menin, the City Council speaker, who proposed a 100-foot buffer at houses of worship, four times the size called for by Gov. Kathy Hochul. The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. A flood of veto overrides in the City Council
On New Year’s Eve, when the world was counting down the time left in 2025, Eric Adams was counting down the time left to do things mayors can do. Before the ball fell and everyone sang “Auld Lang Syne,” he vetoed some bills that the City Council had passed. A lot of bills. Nineteen in all. His last-ditch attempt to leave his mark on policy did not last long. On Thursday, the Council, with 11 new members who took office on Jan. 1 as well as a new speaker, overrode 16 of those vetoes. Those weren’t the only overrides: The Council also overrode another Adams veto from earlier in December. In all, the Council overrode more vetoes in one day than it had overridden in the last 10 years. My colleagues Maya King and Dana Rubinstein write that the overrides were a sweeping rebuke of Adams’s leadership. The Council’s action was also a sign that it is now more aligned with Adams’s successor, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and his affordability agenda. Three of the overrides put measures on the books that would:
METROPOLITAN DIARY Penn Station
Dear Diary: They never get Penn Station right, though they try. Patches of old and shabby still clash with new and renovated; bright and spacious leads to dark and narrow. But the people are beautiful! Stoic in rush hour; in summer, sporting good-luck jerseys for the Mets, while lawyers in navy suits step aboard the Acela to D.C. Two commuters miss the same train. They vent to each other, trade travel horror stories, begin to relax. He offers to buy her lunch. They miss another train. And in an impatient city, at an imperfect station, love makes an unscheduled stop. — Jimmy Roberts Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B. |
