New York's lost and found - and an election night live chat

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Join me for a live chat starting at 6pm ET on Tuesday, Nov 4 so join me and subscribers as I talk to people in Astoria, Queens and share exit polling and more news (also memes) about getting a desi in Gracie.

This isn’t an endorsement as much as an explanation of what I’ve been mulling over this campaign season.

There are days when the city will chew you up, spit you out, and isolate you in ways you didn’t think possible living on an island full of millions of people. NYC certainly has had its joyless moments, particularly during the early days of the pandemic.

Between Mayor Eric Adams’ many corruptions and general apathy toward mayoring, the astronomical heights to which rent and groceries have climbed (shout-out to the very cheap sabziwalla on my corner — I’m grateful for you, my friend), and the general, sterile enshittification that comes with tech giants taking over a space, New York City has lost a lot of its spark.

It feels like Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is trying to bring some of it back.

I keep hearing it from native New Yorkers and people like me — those who grew up here, left, came back, or just never escaped: It’s not the same as it used to be. Something’s missing. The charm’s gone.

💫Something is missing

What’s gone, I think, isn’t just affordability - it’s joy.

Old New York — grimy, unpredictable, gloriously absurd — had it in spades. The excitement of newly arrived immigrants at JFK and its hilariously horrendous introduction to America at Terminal 4; the mash-up of accents and attitudes you met at every corner; the sense that you were standing in the middle of something reinventing itself every day in art, music, culture, business, whatever. It was chaotic and singular in the country and world.

It was a city where you could raise a family on very little money and, if you worked hard, buy a place to settle down with others from your community, alongside everyone else. A city where broke artists and other creatives could carve out a decent living among their peers — all without a trust fund or generational wealth. It was hard, but it could happen.

We haven’t had that feeling in a long time.

Some of that change is good! Crime is down significantly. The city is far cleaner than it used to be. New York has become an important player for startups and technology like never before. Trains are reaching neighborhoods they didn’t before, and LaGuardia Airport is no longer a gauntlet of safety violations and depression travelers need to traverse.

There are new areas of art, media, and cultural investment throughout the country in Austin, Tulsa, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Nostalgia about the way the city used to be has become what I assume is a relatively profitable cottage industry.

While Cleveland is a home in many ways,it’s New York that made my life possible. If it hadn’t been the mythic place of skyscrapers and possibilities, my parents wouldn’t have started a new chapter here with me in tow and my brother to follow. It’s where my humor sharpened and my grit solidified. NYC is part of my origin story, hero and villain editions both.

In the post-9/11 haze and so-called patriotism of the time, NYC became a symbol of being American while also still retaining its gritty uniqueness from the rest of the country. But in recent years, it’s become less a place where anything is possible to a city where crushing debt and a move to the suburbs are the only guarantees.

New York can still be cruel and overpriced and exhausting, but it can also be uniquely kind, open-minded, and generous to those who fight for it.

That’s what’s missing at City Hall right now: the sense that someone actually loves this place. Adams doesn’t seem to and every city deserves a leader who does — even this one.

❤️ Being himself

I think the magic formula to Mamdani’s campaign winning over the hearts of millions, and the votes thus far too, is a simple one: he’s real and loves the city.

He’s embraced his past without shame and navigated attacks on him and his identity with grace. He’s brought back some sense of community and belonging and delight to this town that desperately needed it.

He has also acknowledged the South Asian community and its roots here in a way no one else in city politics ever has. My dear friend PORT OF ENTRY’s Jennifer Chowdhury wrote about the aunties, the natural organizers, who have propelled Mamdani’s campaign. It’s a must read.

⚡ Echoes of AOC

It reminds me of how Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied all kinds of people to join her campaign.

I was one of the first reporters to write about AOC in the early Spring of 2018, when the campaign’s office was a few rooms full of dusty documents in the back of a taxi stand in Parkchester. My editors in London didn’t get it — didn’t get her — until the story blew up.

Her campaign was similar to Mamdani’s in that it was a slow burn and then all of a sudden became an unstoppable fire. The world adored AOC and longtime Congressman Joe Crowley became a “Who?”

They share socialist leanings and boldness and what established politicos have called “audacity.” That term is abhorrent and we have learned nothing in Big Media over the years. Why is it ‘audacious’ for two young brown candidates to believe in the people around them, in their ethnic communities, and what they could do to help, but it’s ‘courage’ and ‘confidence’ for white candidates?

🔥 Joy as a Political Act

In any case, that same spark, that same improbable momentum, is here again. Only this time, the opponent isn’t an obscure incumbent. It’s Cuomo — “America’s Governor,” professional comeback artist, still hungry for power, and strangely allergic to accountability. Mamdani is also up against racist and Islamophobic attacks, old comments surfacing and leading to him being called antisemitic (Bess Kalb atThe Grudge Report has a great read on this), and has an entire city to convince instead of a district.

He seems to be doing so happily. He’s done tai chi and danced salsa at a senior center in the Lower East Side, wore a suit and danced (thankfully) with rhythm at the gay clubs on Halloween and other dj sets in Brooklyn, dined with the Satmar Hasidic Jewish community, gone around town meeting cab drivers and bodega workers, and posted videos in Hindi, Bangla, and Spanish.

It’s been the happiest campaign I’ve ever seen or written about and it still addresses the rampant inflation, deep-seated problems with transit, housing, education inequity, and poverty in the city.

What has made so many people here and outside the city believe in him — even fall in love with him — isn’t the team’s perfect social media game, though that helps. It’s that he’s using joy and not fear or anger as his weapon in the fight for the five boroughs.

🕊️ What This City Deserves

I’ve been pleasantly surprised he hasn’t fallen in the trap of the Depressing Pessimists Club, where everything is doomed and anyone not in perfect alignment with you is a waste of time. It’s hard to break through the disappointment in the wake of the OG feelings-mongerers, the 2008 campaign team of Barack Obama, and his subsequent two terms in office. It’s not easy convincing people to care after Trump’s second win.

However, Mamdani has. There’s an earnestness I want our Mayor to have, absent of innocence but not of clarity - and he seems to possess that.

Whatever happens Tuesday night, this campaign gave New York a mirror. It reminded us what the city can look like when someone actually gives a damn.

👻 Who You Gonna Call?

Since it was Halloween season, I watched the original Ghostbusters late last night. It’s a silly film that couldn’t be set anywhere except New York City in the ’80s.

In it, Mayor Lenny’s aide sends our beloved quartet to jail instead of believing them that ghosts exist. It’s the mayor who comes to their rescue and makes it possible for them to bring New Yorkers together for a common cause.

It may be a stupid comparison, but maybe we just need a mayor who wants to help with our problems.

The city only survives when someone believes in it — slime, ghosts, and all.

Join me for a live chat starting at 6pm ET on Tuesday, Nov 4 so join me and subscribers as I talk to people in Astoria, Queens and share exit polling and more news (also memes) about getting a desi in Gracie.