Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at what the Knicks accomplished, what celebrations are planned — and what else is on the calendar this week. We’ll also get details on the first day of early voting in New York’s primary.
It’s going to be a memorable week. However it turns out, New York will remember it, just as New York will remember the weekend — the euphoria of late Saturday and the mayhem of early Sunday in streets not far from Madison Square Garden. Or did you somehow miss that the Knicks won their first N.B.A. championship in 53 years? First there was the joy that my colleague Matt Flegenheimer described as the “giggling, weeping, spinning, convulsing, mosh-pitting, truck-honking, law-skirting, trumpet-playing, cowbell-ringing, off-key-singing, cigar-lighting, all-night-ing.” Confetti rained down at Radio City Music Hall. Revelers filled Times Square. They clambered up scaffolding in the East Village. They danced through the streets, serenaded by motorists who inched along with them. A Knicks championship? It was something longtime Knicks fans thought they might not live long enough to see. But it was more than that. It was something that made everyone a Knicks fan — even those who, as my colleague Michael Wilson noted, could not name a single Knicks player. The Knicks were “truly the quintessential New York story,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said — at another quintessential event, the Puerto Rican Day parade in Manhattan — that the Knicks had been “unstoppable, unrelenting, unbeatable.” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he went to sleep at 3:45 a.m. on Sunday and “woke up asking myself, Did that really happen?” By midmorning he still sounded as if he could not quite believe that it had. “We’re just pinching ourselves and asking, Is it real?” he said on MS NOW. Almost as soon as the buzzer sounded on Saturday night, he announced that there would be a ticker-tape parade on Thursday. It is expected to begin at 10 a.m. in Battery Park in Manhattan and move north along Broadway through the Canyon of Heroes. At City Hall, Mamdani is expected to give the Knicks keys to the city. And then there’s the World CupBut this is New York, where things change quickly. Will the elation fade by tomorrow, when France is scheduled to play Senegal in New Jersey? Can Pennsylvania Station endure the rush of soccer-obsessed ticket holders and the usual commuter chaos? Will there be problems at a transfer point nine miles away, where fans are supposed to switch trains or buses to get to the stadium? Even on an ordinary day, Penn Station is already one of the busiest rail stations in the country. Will the giddiness of Saturday be forgotten as the day-to-day hassles and headaches of an expensive city settle in again? Consumer prices in the New York area rose 5.1 percent annually last month, outrunning the Consumer Price Index, which rose to 4.2 percent. Energy costs drove the bulk of the increase — and they’ve been spilling into categories like airline fares. And what about the jubilation that turned dangerous? In the blocks not far from Madison Square Garden, people climbed onto cars and trucks and got into fights. Gunshots rang out on West 43rd Street and Broadway at 2 a.m. A 17-year-old boy was shot in the foot. He told the police that he had been riding a Citi Bike when he was struck. Three people were taken into custody in the shooting. Another 60 were taken into custody in unrelated incidents overnight. The police said in a statement that “the crowds became increasingly destructive, and there were many incidents of incredibly reckless and dangerous behavior.” Will that affect tourism, an important element of the city’s economy? Will people who saw video of a school bus burning think twice about spending vacation time in New York? James Parrott, a senior fellow at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, said that “people shouldn’t blow it out of proportion and think it’s an indication that New York City is a hellhole.” “It doesn’t reflect well on New York City, that’s for sure,” he added. “But I don’t know the longer-term effect except in communities that want to pile on New York City whenever there’s an opportunity — I’m thinking of Fox News.” WEATHER Today will be bright and sunny with a high near 79. Clear skies are expected tonight as temperatures fall to around 62. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Friday (Juneteenth). QUOTE OF THE DAY “This is New York hustle.” — Mervin Brown, selling Knicks shirts for $20 from a cart in the open-air bazaar of bootleg merchandise that blossomed around Madison Square Garden during the N.B.A. finals. The latest New York news
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Believe it or not, watching basketball and soccer weren’t the only things you could do over the weekend. Early voting began in several New York primaries, and in New York City, the Board of Elections said that 31,419 people went to polling places. That two-day total from Saturday and Sunday was close to the number recorded on the first day of polling last year, when 30,553 first-day early voters were recorded. This is not 2025: Last year the primary determined who would be the Democratic nominee for mayor. This year the focus is on congressional races, with influential Democrats in two tight contests and a Kennedy heir hoping to win in a district that reaches across Manhattan. On Saturday, the first day of early voting, 16,502 people went to the polls. In 2024, the last primary with congressional races, only 6,101 checked in at polling places on the first day of early voting, according to the Board of Elections in New York City. On Saturday, Manhattan had the largest early-vote total, with 7,581. Some 4,111 voters in Brooklyn went to the polls, as did 2,949 in Queens, 1,448 in the Bronx and 413 on Staten Island. Last year, Brooklyn led the list on Day 1 of early voting, edging out Manhattan by 241 votes. Queens was third, and Staten Island was fourth. Early voting continues through Sunday, two days before in-person voting on Primary Day. Here is what to know if you want to vote early, including the hours of polling places, which vary through the week. It’s also worth noting that where you can vote early may be different from your polling place on Election Day. You can put your address here to find where and when you can cast your ballot. METROPOLITAN DIARY Rail bird
Dear Diary: I was new to birding after starting a daily routine of waking up early. I was able to attend bird walks in the morning, and other birders taught me how to keep track of birds and receive rare-bird alerts. As I left work on a Monday afternoon, I got an alert about a rare bird at Grace Plaza in Midtown. It was a sora, a small, chickenlike rail bird that is common elsewhere in North America but rarely seen in Manhattan. Rails are my favorite types of birds, so I knew I had to get there. I didn’t have my binoculars, but I hopped on a bus in hopes of catching a glimpse and checking the sora off my list. Once I arrived, I saw some birders with cameras and other gear gathered around a raised bush surrounded by benches. Grace Plaza is less a park than an elevated sitting area for tired tourists and passers-by, so the sight of such a large group there did attract attention. An hour passed, and no bird movements were detected. A few birders began to leave. I had to leave soon, too, so I decided to peer over a bench into a small clearing near the bush, and there it was: a sora. I pulled out my phone and got a very blurry video. The remaining birders gathered around me to get a glimpse of the sora themselves. When I left, I had a feeling of utter happiness brought on by thinking about how such a small creature can bring joy to an unlikely corner of the city. — Shelly Xiong 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 tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
