Mamdani thinks he has integrity. Wrong again.
Zohran Mamdani’s alleged zinger in last night’s debate was a claim that he had “integrity” and Andrew Cuomo did not. Actually, his endless flip-flops exemplify opportunism in the extreme, a direct contradiction to integrity.
Start with the New York City police department. In June 2020, Mamdani tweeted: “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.”
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He tweeted, “There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.” And in 2022, State Assemblyman Mamdani voted to cut 1,300 officers from a “racist” NYPD.
Now that he needs the votes of regular New Yorkers, he’s executed a perfect somersault on that most unpopular stance. He said, “I’m not here to defund the police — we’re just working to make the city safer and innovate.”
Aw shucks.
That is not a minor adjustment. And those radical views did not date from a high school term paper. They were aired three and five years ago.
Mamdani is on record questioning the need for jails, having called them one of white supremacy’s “many faces.” On the city prison now housing the most dangerous criminals, he said, “Rikers Island’s decades-long history of abuse, neglect and suffering has no place in New York City.” Last month, his campaign announced, “As Mayor, Zohran Mamdani will work to adhere to the 2027 closure of Rikers as required by law, . . “
Fine, but last month he also said that closing Rikers by 2027 is now “functionally impossible.”
What has caused that loss of fervor? Perhaps it is the anger among Chinatown residents that one of the new community jails to be replacing Rikers is slated for their community.
Mamdani is promising free buses and free childcare — all good things — but he refused in this week’s debate to say how he’d pay for them. Painting visions of wonderful new programs and not hinting where the money would come from is an old politician’s card-trick. It is no mark of integrity.
Mamdani has called for loosening criminal penalties for prostitution — a move he insists is not the same as legalizing it. His party, the Democratic Socialists of America, has not been that indirect, calling for the elimination of all misdemeanors tied to prostitution.
Note that Mamdani’s sister-in-arms, Alessandria Ocasio-Cortez, rallied in defense of prostitutes congregating in working-class Corona, Queens. This largely Hispanic neighborhood had been up in arms over open sex trafficking, with prostitutes propositioning their kids on their way to school.
Much has been written about Mamdani’s refusal to denounce “Globalize the Intifada” talk in a city with a large Jewish electorate. The candidate says he distinguishes between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the first being OK and the latter not OK.
But just last week, he told Jews in Brooklyn that Zionists would be part of his administration.
He’s also supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement designed to punish Israel. Or who know? He may have reversed himself by now.
Look. Mamdani is entitled to change his positions but total flipping of very recent opinions are manipulative and dishonest.
They are nobody’s idea of integrity.
Mamdani understands neither economics nor New York
Why do the world’s poor make a beeline for New York City? It is now home to over 3 million immigrants, the largest influx coming from the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Mexico, Guyana, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Haiti and India. How can these overwhelmingly poor new arrivals stay if no one can afford to live there?
Answer: They crowd into small apartments and work their tails off.
They’re largely there because there’s money to be made. Like it or not, rich people have the money and spend it in the city. That’s why the creative class also gravitates to New York. The rich can afford to patronize the theater and the arts.
Which brings us to mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and his family. His father was a professor in Uganda and his mother a filmmaker. Both of Indian descent, they moved to New York, where his father became director of Columbia University’s Institute of African Studies. Columbia became a rich elite institution thanks to the wealthy New Yorkers who since the Gilded Age have bestowed the university with large gifts.
Zohran Mamdani lied on his college application to Columbia about being “Black or African American.” He thus took a spot intended for the Black descendants of slavery and Jim Crow. Perhaps the public City College of New York wasn’t good enough for him.
The Mamdanis were never your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. And Zohran was hardly the only privileged kid to accessorize with Socialist ideology. But modern Democratic Socialists in Europe would regard his views as naive. They are certainly foreign to the churn of the New York economy.
Take Mamdani’s idea of city-run grocery stores. They would compete with the bodegas now largely operated by Dominicans, Yemenis and other Middle Eastern immigrants. These little stores are the economic ladder on which generations of New Yorkers have climbed out of poverty and into the middle class. Their proprietors put in brutal hours, working harder than most any public employee would.
Mamdani, meanwhile, has never run a lemonade stand.
New York’s Social Democrats revere Sweden for its wide social safety net. “I don’t think we should have billionaires,” Mamdani said, perhaps unaware that Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the United States does. The rich in Sweden make the social welfare system possible. You can’t have one without the other.
Mamdani has plans to raise taxes on city residents making more than $1 million. Wealthy New Yorkers already pay some of the highest combined income taxes in the country.
The richest 1% of residents pay nearly 48% of all New York City personal income tax. That’s up from 40% in 2019. This doesn’t account for the property taxes on their co-ops, condos and brownstones. Nor the high sales tax on their luxury purchases and dining at the restaurants that employ immigrants, command of English not required.
Mamdani’s vow to raise taxes on “richer, whiter neighborhoods” is hardly a recruiting tool for willing taxpayers. None of the inhabitants needs a passport to lower their taxes by moving elsewhere.
Housing is very expensive, but Mamdani’s plan for extending rent control over a fraction of New York’s rentals, his among them, would discourage the building of new units. This is a problem of supply and demand. There are ways to ease the housing burden, but New York will always be an expensive address.
Without a doubt, the city is home to some stark contrasts between the rich and poor, but it also offers a conveyor belt between the two groups. Many who take the ride out of poverty leave the city for the suburbs.
That’s the way it’s always been. Mamdani understands neither economics nor New York City.
We Can Buy the Trump-Epstein Story
Face it. We might question some stories about Donald Trump’s predatory behavior. There are so many, and they come from all directions. Bu we do not doubt the accuracy behind reports of a bawdy birthday card that Trump sent to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
We believe it for the following five reasons:
- It appeared in The Wall Street Journal, a highly trustworthy news source that strains its back to be nice to Trump.
- It is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns The New York Post and Fox News. Both Murdoch and his news empire have been largely pro-Trump in the past.
- Trump is known to threaten purveyors of damaging news with monstrous lawsuits. True to form, he’s announced a $16 billion suit against Murdoch. Murdoch is too powerful to be intimidated by Trump. He surely expected something like this and wouldn’t have published the birthday card story if he didn’t have the goods.
- It’s been reported in The Independent that a few days ago that Murdoch recently met with J.D. Vance for a private chat.
- On what? One can hope that this is part of a plan to somehow replace Trump with the vice president. To close the circle, Trump is also in the crosshairs of Elon Musk. Musk is too rich to be intimidated by Trump. Not only does he have money, he owns X, the premiere political social media site. And he is said to remain buddies with Vance as have other tech billionaires. He’s Musk’s guy.
Just thinking.
What can we do on the East Side of Manhattan, other than watch the spectacle? (It’s been a while since the news camera’s staked out sidewalk space in front of Michael Cohen’s Park Avenue pad.) And there’s been little recent activity at Trump tower, an indication of lowered interest by both the MAGA folks and New York resisters.
Jeffrey Epstein’s townhouse at 9 East 71st Street was sold in 2021 for about $51 million, well below its $88 million asking price. The buyer was Michael Daffey, a former Goldman Sachs executive. He reportedly planned a “complete makeover — physically and spiritually.” We thank him for both.
The house is the original Herbert N. Straus Mansion.
Meanwhile, all’s quiet at Trump Tower.
Things Going on at Aston Martin
We couldn’t help but notice the group of green-shirted men hanging out in front of the Aston Martin showroom at Park and 57th. It was about 8:45 am. Clearly something was about to happen there well before the normal 10 a.m. opening time.
We inquired. It turns out Aston Martin had invited a number of automotive journalists to come by to test drive their new model, the Aston Martin Vanquish S. (It was parked outside.)
Aston Martins are elegant, British and cool.
The showroom at 450 Park Avenue opened about two years ago. Craig McLaughlin and I would often walk by the window and admire. Craig once fell into conversation with another goggler, an English fellow. They had a long conversation about James Bond’s Aston Martins, something they both knew all abou. The first was the Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger (1964). It was outfitted with an ejector seat, machine guns behind the headlines, tire slashes, smoke screen, road grease and, of course, revolving license plates.
We have long been taken by the 12-cylinder convertible now in the window. It’s a luscious “sage green,” we were told. That one would sell for $500,000 or thereabouts.
We shortened the conversation with the smart woman managing the event. She had lots to do.
For us, it was back into the air-conditioning.
Is Mamdani targeting us?
Zohran Mamdani said a dumbfounding thing over the weekend. He told a gathering in Harlem that he would raise taxes on “richer and whiter neighborhoods.” That, he explained, would bring relief to “overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs.”
Could Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who won the Democratic mayoral primary, be referring to us? No need to answer. The East Side is generally prosperous. No one will argue with that. But with the exception of the most expensive corners, the East Side is not more expensive than other expensive neighborhoods, some in the outer boroughs.
The left-fringe’s obsession with Manhattan, especially the UES, reflects the myth that it is an exclusive white enclave. It’s true that the East Side tends to be whiter and older and its people still dress nicely. Those are not crimes. Nor was preferring Andrew Cuomo in the primary, as did most voters in both the Upper East Side and Upper West Side.
As you can see from the above chart, though the city’s five richest zip codes are in Manhattan, none of them is on the Upper East Side or in Midtown East. A longer list of the most prosperous neighborhoods ranks at least two zip codes in Brooklyn — those covering Park Slope and Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill — higher than any of ours.
Set aside the astounding idea of linking tax rates to race. The reality is that all New York neighborhoods are racially mixed to some extent, many to a large extent. As for Manhattan, whites comprise only half of the borough’s population, and that includes Hispanic whites, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
State-assemblyman Mamdani lives in rapidly gentrifying Astoria. That Queens enclave, right over the East River from us, is 43% white.
An underreported aspect of the primary election is that June 24 marked the hottest day in Central Park since 1888. Triple-digit heat and high humidity made parts of the city feel like 126 degrees. No doubt many Cuomo supporters, comforted by polls showing their candidate with a commanding lead, thought they could take the day off from voting.
And much else. Mika over at the Vartali hair salon on East 57th Street tells us that many customers, especially older ones, canceled their appointments that day. We imagine there were a lot of cancellations at hair salons, doctor offices and restaurants.
We will be writing a lot more about the mayoral race. I discuss why I believe that Mamdani will not prevail in November in my latest syndicated column: Mamdani Probably Won’t be Mayor.
The East Side is Already Abundant
The book “Abundance” berates big city “liberals” for all those building rules, regulations and pesky zoning ordinances that raise the cost of housing. These make it harder for the non-rich to obtain affluence, authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson say. More annoyingly, Klein and Thompson imply that true opportunity knocks in only that only a handful of “superstar” cities. They would be San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and, of course, New York City.
This shrunken worldview by a pair New Yorkers fails to take into account such relevant factors as geography, history and reality. Recent waves of impoverished immigrants have somehow managed to set roots in New York City, and we don’t lack for police, teachers and piano tuners. Perhaps they can’t afford three-bedroom duplexes on Sutton Place. Who can?
The comparisons of these high-cost cities with lower-cost ones are remarkably off-base if not off-the-wall. Example: Houston “is not facing the crises of homelessness and housing affordability seen in the superstar cities of many blue states.” In Houston almost anyone can build almost anywhere. Thus, in 2023, Houston issued almost 70,000 new housing permit, while the Boston metro area issued only 10,500.
“The Austin metro area led the nation in housing permits in 2022,” we are told, “permitting 18 new homes for every thousand residents. Los Angeles’s and San Francisco’s metro areas permitted only 2.5 units per thousand residents.”
Where do we start? The population density of San Francisco is five times that of Austin. Even sprawling Los Angeles has nearly three times as many people per square mile as Austin does.
Boston has nearly 4 times the number of people per square mile as Houston.
Furthermore, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York are all bounded by water. The only borough In New York City that’s not on an island is the Bronx. The Atlantic Ocean would be an impediment to growth, don’t you think? Houston and Austin can expand into big country.
By the way, Austin’s heralded building boom, fueled by the pandemic, is currently over. Austin now suffers from overbuilding. Its vacancy rates are sky-high both for office space and apartments. One reason, offered by The Wall Street Journal, is that tech talent is leaving Austin for, of all places, New York and San Francisco.
Here on the East Side we fight wars over zoning, not to preserve two-acre single-family plats, but to preserve such basics as light. We can defend quality of life without guilt. To which we’ll add, quality of life is the big reason these superstar cities are rich in the first place.
This East Side will have lots more to say about these matters.
The Four Seasons hotel is a proud Canadian
From stuck up to sticks up.
We have long wondered why the super-deluxe Four Seasons Hotel on East 57th Street between Madison and Park Avenues always flew the Canadian flag next to the American one. That this display of camaraderie continues as Donald Trump villainizes our dear neighbor to the north — and the hotel is only two city blocks from Trump Tower — made us inquire further.
It turns out that Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts is a Canadian company, founded in Toronto in 1960. It is co-owned by Bill Gates and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, and still headquartered in Toronto. The property on 57th Street is owned by Ty Warner, the Beanie Baby mogul (remember him?).
As Crain’s New York reported last Nov. 14 , “the eight rooms still available for Friday night ranged from a $2,300 room for two to an $80,000 suite.” The latter would be the 4,300-square-foot Ty Warner Penthouse — one of the world’s most expensive hotel rooms.
The place closed during COVID. Because Warner got into a dispute with the Four Seasons corporate management, it remained closed until last November.
More evidence that the East Side is a fine place to roost
As Flaco the owl is being memorialized at the New York State Historical Society, another bird visitor of note is making the rounds on the East Side. Unlike Flaco, whom some miscreant human helped escape from the Central Park Zoo, Astoria the turkey seems to have come to East Side out of her own volition. Her normal digs are Roosevelt Island. (She was named after Astoria, the neighborhood at the Queens end of the Queensboro Bridge.)
Needless to say, the image above is not of Astoria, but you’ll find video and stills in The New York Times.. The Times is on the case.
This is at least Astoria’s second visit to Manhattan. She was seen here last year, fashionably posing above the entrance of Saks Fifth Avenue. How she gets over the East River is not entirely known. Does she fly? Does she walk across the bridge? Does she take the Roosevelt Island Tramway, figuring she’d save some mileage on her wings ?
Anyhow, earlier this week she was seen on a balcony around 58th Street, between First Avenue and Sutton Place,
Astoria is not the first being to look across the river at the bright lights of Manhattan and think, “Looks more fun over there.”
Flaco had a good run. May Astoria’s last longer.
COVID on the Upper East Side
Covid may seem far in our past, but it was just five years ago that our lives were rearranged and the future of the city became a big question mark. The East Side, however, persevered.
Here are some memories:
Dining al fresco at the Palace Restaurant coffee shop, East 57th Street.
Inspiration from Tiffany.
Gems gone from the window — and the mobs who gasped at them.
Park Avenue on a work day.
Maggie’s Place, on East 47th Street, showing true grit.
Scary signs everywhere we looked.
A nearly empty Acela car headed to New York from Boston.
Grand Central Terminal at 4:45 on a weekday afternoon.
Can you believe?
Central Park was a quiet wilderness on a perfect summer afternoon.
We still had to eat. The restaurant was always open at the Central Park Zoo.
She left me with her kids at Morton Williams
Coffee area at Morton Williams
Iris Apfel forever
Iris Apfel returning to her Park Avenue apartment in 2019.
It’s hard to think that it’s been almost a year since Iris Apfel left us at age 102. She didn’t seem a candidate for death.
Starting Jan. 28, there will be an online auction of some of Iris’ clothes and objets at Chistie’s: Unapologetically Iris: The Collection of Iris Apfel.
They called Iris a “fashion icon” but her resemblance toTruman Capote’s tasteful swans was minimal except for an obsession with dress. No beige or greige outfits in her life.
Iris piled on a riot of textiles and jewelry and hats and belts and scarves and bags. The Metropolitan Museum of Art put on a fabulous show about her in 2005, and she became subject of an Albert Maysles documentary, Iris, in 2014. And from there a woman of fascination here and in Europe.
She says to Maysles’ camera: “There’s so much sameness. Everything is homogenized. I hate it.” After a pause she adds, “Whatever.” And off she goes covered in five(?) strands of big bead necklaces, bangles almost up to her elbows and in a tunic from a tribe, that she notes, comprised a Chinese minority. The tunic came with a hood that she didn’t like so she had it made into a collar.
Outside her condo in Palm Beach, you see Iris and her husband Carl waiting for a driver.
They were debating whose yogurt was sitting in the fridge, just like the loving old Jewish couple they were.
But a spacious and eccentric Park Avenue apartment was their natural habitat. The documentary has scenes of Iris walking through the grand-hotel lobby steadied by her cane.
At left is a picture of Iris coming in from the night in her finery. It was taken by one of the doormen who shared it with me. By the way, her skirt is part of the auction.