Things to do This Weekend in NYC & Boros

Janes Walk, 5 Boro Bike Ride, Derby Party & Long Play, Greek & Emruz Fests in BK; Casino Protest & VFW Day of Service Qns; Pinkster Fest, Community & Gjergj Kastrioti Skenderbeu Fairs in the Bronx & Bronx Weeks begin, Antiquarian Book Fair, Cannabis Parade & Cinco de Mayo in Manhattan, as well as Other Things to do This Weekend & Next Week in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx & Staten Island Events

May 1, 2026 / NYC Neighborhoods / NYC Things To Do Events / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.

The photo above or at right was taken some years back at the 5 Boro Bike Ride as it made its way through Queens. The bike ride returns this weekend. See below for details.

Sunrise 5.54 am. Sunset 7.52 pm. We're getting 13 hours & 59 minutes of sunlight, or four hours and 46 minutes more of sunlight than we were getting the week of the Winter Solstice, on December 21, 2025 when the sun rose at 7.18 am and the sun set at 4.31 pm. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of this year, providing 9 hours and 13 minutes of sunlight in NYC.

NYC Weather - NYC Can Differ Slightly / Significantly vs TriState TV News Forecasts. The temperature highs will be around 60 on all three days of the weekend. The temperature lows will be in the high 40's on all three weekend days. There's a 40% chance of a bit of rain around 3 - 4 am Saturday, but otherwise a rain-free weekend. The humidity will range from 40% to 70% on Friday, and between 40% and 90% on Saturday, and from 30% to 70% on Sunday. Winds are expected to range from 5 to 10 mph Friday, average about 5 mph Saturday and kick up to 5 to 15 mph on Sunday.

Saturday, May 2, 2026 at 5.45 am - Done, including attendant pages. We will also socially post links sometime Saturday via BSky.app, Facebook and X.com. Please Like or be-Friend us, to stay abreast of events, and obtain news related to your borough. This week we continue to strive toward providing a mix of weekly news posts.

Things To Do This Weekend & Next Week in NYC

Friday, Saturday & Sunday, May 1, 2 & 3, 2026 at various locations & times but generally from 10 am to 5 pm - Janes Walk Weekend - at 200 locations in all five boroughs. Various art, culture, history, advocacy and architectural tours throughout all five boros of NYC. Free. They describe the event as follows, " ... MAS staff organize a fleet of volunteer walk leaders, to create 200+ FREE, in-person, virtual, and on-demand walks with over 10,000 participants ... During Jane’s Walk NYC weekend, the simple act of exploring the city is enhanced with personal observations, local history, and civic engagement."... Organized by the Municipal Art Society. Not a street fair so much as a streets tour. For details including a map of locations, copy & paste - https://www.mas.org/janes-walk-nyc-2026/

Sunday, May 3, 2026 waves begin at 7.30, 8.30, 9.15, 9.50 and 10.30 am & officially over between 4 and 6 pm - 5 Boro Bike Ride. Assembly begins along Broaday, south of Canal Street down to Battery Park in Manhattan, depending on the cyclist wave folks are in. The course is 40 miles long, and most of the 32,000 cyclists finish in under 5 hours. It ends at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, where there's a finishing party that runs from 10 am to 5.30 pm. Not a street fair per se, but rather a major cycling event. For details, copy & paste - https://www.bike.nyc

Thursday & Friday, May 7 & 8, 2026 - CUNY Jazz Festival - Free. See full details in Manhattan section below.

Saturday, June 13, 2026 is the last day you'll be able to Register to Vote in the NYC Primary on June 23, 2026. Applications must be received by the NY Board of Elections to be eligible to vote in this election.

• CLICK here to read the rest of our report, as well as other Weekend Things To Do in NYC This Month 2026 _ NYC events.

Special Election Underway in NYC City Council District 3

April 18 & 19, 2026 / Manhattan Politics & Government / Manhattan News NYC / Manhattan Buzz NYC / News Analysis & Opinion.

On Saturday morning, April 18, 2026, I headed over to Chelsea to attend an electioneering event hosted by one of the special election NYC council candidates for District 3.  Her name is Layla Law-Gisiko.

In the photo above or at right, Layla Law-Gisiko, candidate for NYC Council District 3, is shown speaking at a get-out-the-vote rally in Chelsea.  Early voting has already started and ends Sunday, and the special election day is Tuesday, April 28, 2026. If you found this informative, please share. If you live in NYC council District 3 - here's a link to find your poll place / obtain NYC voting information.

How I Met and Got to Know Layla Law-Gisiko

I had electronically met [meaning via emails and zoom conferences] Layla about three years ago, while covering Eric Adams' and the real estate development corporations' City of Yes legislation. We got to know each other a bit while the City of Yes made its way through the legislative process, rolling back decades of New Yorkers' urban activism, which had placed guide rails on developers and developments in NYC.

Layla and I exchanged information, and Manhattan Buzz posted some of her research and perspectives on things to help keep people informed. Manhattan Buzz also filed its own reports about some of Layla's informative conferences related to the City of Yes, as well as posting our own / additional reports about what was in the 1,000 plus page developer crafted legislation.

• CLICK here to read the rest of our report on the candidates running for the District 3 NYC Council Special Election. 

Here's Lookin' at You, Kid

Mamdani Talks about the First 100 Days & the Next 1360 to Come

April 13, 2026 / NYC Neighborhoods / NYC Things To Do Events / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.

Late Sunday afternoon I headed over to the Knockdown Center, located off Flushing Avenue in Maspeth. Maspeth is a neighborhood located on the Brooklyn / Queens border, and a bit of an outpost in a transportation desert, where some of NYC's manufacturing, warehouses and distribution centers are located.

I was on my way to Mayor Mamdani's Press Conference / public speech, where he planned to talk about his first 100 days in office as the Mayor of NYC.

In the photo at right, stand NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and surprise honorary guest, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, at the press event held by the Mayor's Office on Sunday, April 12, 2026 in Maspeth, NYC.

Truly Great Leaders are Humble, Respectful, Determined & Learn-ed

Mamdani is a Muslim American and Sanders is a Jewish American. And one of the things that I find most interesting, is that these two - instead of fighting each other - they have teamed up, in an effort to try to solve some of the real significant problems facing New York City and America. This is the approach America has taken in the past, and hopefully will return to taking in the future.

Happily, but also sadly, both men are exceptions - to the kind of weak, weak-minded, and apparently corrupt leadership, that we currently have in the federal government, and that up until a bit more than three months ago, we also had in NYC City Hall.

Thankfully, Mamdani and Sanders are not exceptions to the kind of high quality leadership America has had in the past. We've been fortunate to have had intelligent, selfless leadership, but that didn't happen on its own. In the past American voters were diligent and wise enough to choose good leaders, because they invested the time in making the right choices, and also made the right choices in selecting the information sources they relied upon to obtain their voting information. The making of intelligent decisions by the American electorate, gradually slipped away over the past 60 years, as TV increasingly became the dominant source of Americans' news, and thus also their voting information. It's been a long slippery slope, with nasty fiscal and other consquences, that has brought us to the state of the City and Union today.

Prior to the arrival of TV News, American voters read the newspapers, run by lots of different people, espousing many different points of view, which the electorate discussed amongst themselves, prior to voting. Thus Americans, back in the day, elected and were led by, wise and caring leaders, representing an an increasingly diverse population, which is what had made America a great nation. Perhaps we're on the cusp of a resurgence of that sort of informed electorate decision making, as voters migrate their news consumption from billionaire TV news to the numerous, varied information sources on the web. Currently just five to six billionaires control the corporations broadcasting TV news.

Later this week I'm going to take you into the Mayor's 100 Day Press Conference, and give you a closer look at things, beyond the shallow billionaire TV News reports and / or the dishonest headlines you may have already seen, if you read billionaire R. Murdoch's NY Post. The NY Post is easily one of the most dishonest newspapers in both NYC & the USA, as Rupert Murdoch uses it to manipulate voters' perceptions, so that they vote for his favored candidates [like Trump], who will give Murdoch and other billionaires huge tax breaks, funded by debt dumped on your children, grandchildren, and future generations, while simultaneously cutting government services, like education and healthcare, to boot. This is not just thoroughly un-American, it's morally and ethically wrong.

Stay tuned, and in the meantime have a nice week.

Trump's Long-winded Speech

Ignores the State of a Faltering Union

The Checks & Balances are Failing: John Thune's Senate is Failing, Mike Johnson's House of Representatives is Failing, the Courts have Faltered, but not yet Failed & Billionaire TV News is Failing the Public

February 26, 2026 / Government Media & Politics / U.S. Politics National News NYC / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz.

I don't have the time to do Trump's State of the Union true justice. But I can't sit by and say nothing, as TV News has already done a good job of saying a lot of nothing, that's worthy of note.

Trump, spent two hours, delivering his same, old, tired, manipulative, bigoted trash, peppered with so many falsehoods, deceits and outright lies, that even PBS had trouble keeping up with them. And the failed billionaire controlled TV News networks didn't even try.

State of the Union 2026

Trump's Address was Riddled with Key Omissions

What Trump Didn't Talk about, is at Least as Important as What he Did Talk About

There wasn't anything new, worth noting in Trump's State of the Union [aka SOTU] speech except the new people and faces he used to try to direct attention away from, that:

1) Donald J. Trump's name reportedly appears hundreds of thousands of times, in the unredacted Epstein pedo-files,

2) little progress made on the economy - unless you believe his Fox News style distortions,

3) little achieved on healthcare as the erection of a website selling prescription drugs, reportedly doesn't make much difference to Americans who buy rx drugs [stock prices of drug companies went up after Donald J. Trump told them how he was 'cracking down' on them],

4) DOGE failed to reduce spending and that prior to Trump becoming president again, there wasn't the 'corruption, waste and abuse' Trump claimed, but by the time Trump leaves office, he will be primarily responsible for about a third to a half of America's $40+ trillion of debt which has been dumped [in multiple acts of cowardice by Republican Presidents and the Republican Party] on America's children and unborns in order to further enrich some of the richest people on the planet,

5) a couple of Hispanic Americans from Texas, working for ICE, put ten bullets [looked like murder] in a white citizen and resident of Minnesota in his own neighborhood as he was helping a woman protester the ICE agents had pushed to the ground, nor about the shooting [looked like murder] of Renee Macklin Goode, also a naturalized white American citizen from Minneapolis, nor numerous other deaths, as well as beatings and pepper spraying of other American citizens and immigrants - both legal and illegal - who have suffered at the hands of Kristi Noem's ICE agency,

6) the bombings by Pete Hegseth's Department of War of fishing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific in what also looked like the murder of innocents and a war crime,

7) the incredible turbulence in the stock market, the volatility of which Trump and members of his Administration appeared to trade on, with Inside information, due to Trump's erratic decisions regarding tariffs on / off / up / down statements,

8) Trump and Republicans included a statute prohibiting states from exercising their rights on limiting the encroachment of AI into everything,

9) little done vis-a-vis China,

10) Trump and Little Marco Rubio have been betraying Ukraine and Europe vis-a-vis the Russians [Bill Gates admitted to some Russian co-mingling and yet Donald J. Trump denies he did anything - not unlike how he denied raping E. Jean Carroll, the Democratic Hoax Epstein pedo-files, money laundering at his casinos, cheating his workers and contractors out of their pay, inciting the January 6th Insurrection, and so forth,

11) Trump has turned back the clock on slowing or preventing the impending crisis soon coming from Climate Change with the last few years being the warmest and driest on human record,

12) the real intent of his Voter ID legislation which is to disenfranchise women [because of marriage name changes] and the poor [no car = no driver's license] nor that voting fraud by illegals is essentially ZERO even according the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation,

13) he lied a blue streak about how 'great' things are in the American economy since he took office,

14) his Administration is [possible to very likely?] becoming the most corrupt in American history, which includes insider trading, personal use of government property by numerous cabinet members, accepting bribes for U.S. taxpayer funded military technology secrets or equipment, real estate deals done with the possibly bribing nations, crypto corruption, suing the IRS for $10 billion,

15) he's been pardoning numerous criminals, not unlike himself and

16) why he seems to be planning to start a war with Iran.

• CLICK here to read the rest of our report about all of the important issues Donald J. Trump's State of the Union Speech 2026 didn't address.

CBS Self Censors & Trump Manipulations of Biblical Proportions

Alex Pretti Shooting by ICE & Trump's Psychological Violent Tendencies

  ICE Shoots & Kills a Second U.S. Citizen in Minneapolis Is Trump's ICE, Recruiting Deviants who Commit Violent Crimes Against the American Public, in Order to Mak.... Trump's Violent Tendencies and the ICE Shootings and what appears to be the Murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis

Happy MLK Weekend

See Things to do Below

January 17, 2026 / Things To Do NYC / Gotham Buzz.

We're working diligently to finish up our year end cleaing and new year planning & preparations. We had hoped to complete this effort by now, but it's taken a bit longer because we want to do it right. And we're incorporating old and new capabilities which we either haven't used in a long while, or haven't used at all. So stay tuned, as we hope to make it worth your while.

So we're going to punt on putting together much for this weekend, other than provide what we'd done previously, as below. We hope to / expect to resume our normal publishing next weekend. Thanks for your understanding and have a nice weekend.

Emergency Action, Pack The Court!

Stop the Out of State Billionaire Oligarchs NYC Public Land Grab

MidtownSouthCC.org sent us the following:

We need to show the judge the overwhelming support for the tenants’ and that public housing needs to be protected! Join us Wednesday, January 14, 2026 — 9AM at 71 Thomas Street. The city, @ebottcher, @essence.development & @relatedcos plan to plan to raze 24 public housing buildings and displace more than 3,000 tenants at Chelsea Addition & Fulton 11. Chelsea Addition is made entirely of senior tenants. This is a greedy land grab designed to benefit wealthy developers. They are lying to residents, trying to force them to accept their eviction from their homes. The city & big developers plan on adding 2450 luxury apartments where Chelsea NYCHA buildings would be demolished. Allowing this to happen would set a dangerous precedent for ALL NYCHA housing in New York City and increase the cost of living for ALL New Yorkers.

Following this meeting there's a Press Conference on the same day, Wednesday, January 14, 2025 — 2PM at Hudson Guild – 441 West 26th Street, Between 9th and 10th.

See a section we started and are still working on - Bloomberg and the Adams Administrations enabled Huge Public Land Grabs at Discount Prices to NYC Real Estate Oligarchs, as well as our Audience commentary in our OpEd section [use link from top tool bar under Politics & Government].

ICE Kills Woman in Minneapolis Minnesota

  Was ICE Justifiably Enforcing the Law when it Committed a Very Public Killing? See and Judge for Yourself, Whether Trump is Using ICE to Desensitize the American Publ.... Trump Administration Violence & Lying - Did ICE Shoots & Kill an American Woman without due cause & then Lie About it?

CBS Censors 60 Minutes Show on Immigration but Leaked by Contributor

  CENSORED but Leaked: CBS 60 Minutes Show on Immigration And While the Video Shows how Cruel the Trump Administration is Treating other Humans; the Background Story Su.... CBS Fails its Viewers by Censoring 60 Minutes Show on Trump Administration Handling of Immigration

Epstein File Vote: TV News Misses the Point .. Again

Billionaire TV News Reports What They are Told (for ratings) with Scant Comprehension

November 18, 2025 / NYC Neighborhoods / NYC Things To Do Events / News Analysis & Opinion.

Billionaire TV News Reports the Headlines but Misses the Meaning

Billionaire TV News is waiting at the Capitol to cover the House vote to open the Epstein files.

Like it actually matters.

If you have absolutely nothing else going on in your life, then stay glued to the TV News screen to find out how the House and Senate will vote on the issue.

But it doesn't matter and it won't make a difference, as Donald Trump is doing what he does best. Making fools on the American people and the rule of law, by deceiving them and finding loopholes in the law to exploit. Both skills that Donald J. Trump has been practicing all of his life.

• CLICK here to read the rest of our report on TV News Misses the Point Again: Epstein File Vote.

Live Interview with Key Representatives / Activists about FEC Chelsea NYCHA

9.10.25 _ Queens News / News Analysis & Opinion _ Click here to learn a bit more through an interview by Erroll Louis on Spectrum TV on August 28, 2025, who interviewed an author / community activist and the President of the FEC Tenants Against Demolition about what's going on there - NYC Oligarchy - Stephen Ross, Related Companies, Essence, Eric Adams transferring huge amount of public wealth & NYC billionaire TV doesn't much report it. Also on the front page scroll down to the Landlord Tenant Harassment button to become familiar with the bigger picture.  And click into the drop down OpEd section from the front page tool bar to learn more about the FEC Chelsea NYCHA land grab by Stephen Ross and Related Companies.  Ross and Related Companies have been the beneficiaries of the transfer of acres upon acres of prime public NYC land all over NYC for what seem like fire sale / corruption prices.

In the meantime, see front page, government and politics, neighborhoods and things to do sections.

Billionaires are Rapidly Changing TV News & Not in a Good Way

Billionaires are Amassing a Huge Concentration of Mass Media Assets, in What Appears to be the Privately Owned Propaganda Press

September 18, 2025 / New York City News / NYC Billionaire Press Billionaire TV News & Free Speech in America / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz.

All six TV Networks are controlled by billionaires [or folks whose wealth rounds up to billionaires or are members of billionaire families]. Increasingly they appear to be turning the TV networks into privately controlled propaganda machines. Too often they appear to resemble Rupert Murdoch's mistreatment of the truth in the news. This means they seem to omit key facts and even entire stories from view, while amplifying falsehoods and outright lies spoken by politicians and their teleprompter readers alike, which go uncorrected, leaving those who still trust Network TV News, ignorant and in the dark as to what's really going on in this country.

Network TV News Corps Appear to be Trading Journalistic Integrity for Media Market Share so they can Price More Aggressively. America Beware, as they will have Even More Influence over what you / we Americans see, hear & think.

Colbert was cancelled by CBS and numerous seasoned journalists departed for journalistic integrity reasons. CBS appeared to be compromising their integrity, as Colbert is the top rated show in the time period. But Trump doesn't like Colbert, and CBS had a merger deal that needed to be approved by the Trump Justice Department and FCC, so poof, Colbert cancelled. CBS denies this reasoning, saying they have other [unannounced] plans.

Disney / ABC paid off Trump in a lawsuit many attorneys were sure they could have easily won. And this week Disney / ABC took the Jimmy Kimmel Show off the air for making an opinionated comment of which Trump didn't approve, on the Kirk assassination shooter. Kimmel had joked that the shooter was a MAGA Republican which he does not appear to be, although reportedly the rest of his family is.

The alleged shooter was reportedly in a relationship with someone working through gender identity issues, which is just one of the many important issues of our day, that billionaire TV News repeatedly fails to fully inform upon. This link will take you to the Metropolitan Museum website, of a past photo exhibit, wherein in the mid 1800's a French photographer documented a hermaphrodite, which is someone with both male and female genitalia. That's a fact, that I have NEVER seen raised nor discussed by the flunkies on TV News, who don't seem to be knowledgeable about the world around them, and definitely far too often, just simply do not do their basic homework on important issues.

And the sad thing is that this translates to an increasingly ignorant American public, as up until this year TV was the dominant news source. This year news on the web FINALLY passed TV News, and I am hoping that that trend will accelerate as more Americans start paying attention to how badly TV News fails them, daily.

If you decide to click this link you'll encounter what is likely a shocker to most folks [was to me the first time I saw it at the Metropolitan Museum exhibit in the late 1990's]. But the idea isn't to shock, but rather to instruct - Metropolitan Museum photo exhibit by Nadar of hermaphrodite.

• CLICK to view the rest of this report about how the NYC billionaire press is taking over free speech in America. GB.

Local & National [Primarily Web] News Sources we Currently Trust

7.7.25 Update / Opinion / Work in Progress

We've entered The Disinformation Age. Much of the mass media is controlled by billionaires, especially TV assets. They changed the FCC laws so they are no longer required to behave ethically, accurately and so the billionaire press does what it does best, pursues profits regardless of community collateral damage. They're only sharing information that they want you to know. They omit key facts they don't want you to know or even entirely ignore important stories that may embarass their billionaire friends. They try to manipulate viewers' perceptions in order to get them to vote for candidates representing the billionaires' interests, and provide open mics to the candidates their choice - not fact checked - even when these pols are making numerous false or misleading statements.

Trusted Web News Sources - Gotham Buzz

Updated 8.20.25 v. 6.20.25 _ Currently Recommended News Sources to Help You Wean Yourself from Servile Dependence on Billioniare TV News.

For local NYC / NYS news we currently find ourselves using The City, Politico, Axios, Vox, Wikipedia, the Gotham Gazette, Gothamist and City & State. Also NPR and PBS. Note that we will continue to revisit this section and continue developing this list of local, state and national news sources sometime in the not-too-distant future.

For national news we find ourselves using many of the above sources, as well as Mother Jones, Wired, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the browser Firefox curates a fair news offering, finance.yahoo.com is good for business news, and moderated social media outlets like BSky.app has an intelligent, highly skilled audience that does a fair job of identifying key news reports. The search engines are also useful for fact checking and doing further research into issues, people and other things. Collectively these news sources should enable you to effectively do your civic duty to inform yourself about people and issues before voting.

The NON-Billionaire TV News that we currently find reliable, includes left-leaning Democracy Now [on FNX & CUNY TV], PBS News Hour, and PBS Documentaries are also very informative. The Washington Post and New York Times are still fairly reliable, but sadly, not as implicitly as I found them to be in the past. Both the NYT and Wapo have undergone ownership / top management changes within the past six years. And the new management teams' values appear to differ from their predecessors, so pay attention to editorial changes / impacts.

I no longer find any of the Network TV News outlets to be even remotely close to being sufficiently informative. And far, far too often I find them to be misleading and parlayers of false information. I doubt they ever were really up to the job, but back in the day, they used the newspaper reporting to help keep them informed. Here again, newspaper journalism may not be dead, but it's very financially challenged and isn't remotely close to what it once was due to constained financials. But that said, you can still pick up a few leads from TV News, which you can then use to more fully inform yourself, by doing further research on the internet.

• CLICK here to view our list of trusted news sources on the web for local politics and news in NYC and for national politics and news in the USA.

Click for our report series on Landlord / Tenant Harassment in NYC

Please be advised that this series will be evolving slowly starting sometime in Q4 2025 and continuing thereafter. Thus far we've posted some of our historical coverage, but by far and away, the best is yet to come.

Click this link for holiday parties, party venues, party halls and catering halls in Jackson Heights Queens NYC.

Get it While it's Hot - 'Affordable Housing' Lottery in LIC

150 'Affordable Housing' Units Available for Folks w/ Incomes of 'Only' $99K to $250K

October 23, 2024 / NYC Neighborhoods / NYC Real Estate & Business / Gotham Buzz NYC.

'Better hurry' to participate in this 'affordable housing' lottery for apartments in the Jasper at 49-20 5th Street in Long Island City, Queens. Studios are renting for the 'low, low price' of $2,900 per month and two bedroom apartments are a 'steal' at only $4,400 per month.

To qualify you 'only' need to be earning between $99,000 and $250,000 per year. These annual incomes, which are an eligibility requirement, are only 'slightly' higher [+50% to +291%] than the median NYC salary of $64,000 per year.

But don't worrry, if you miss this 'great' opportunity for 'affordable housing', because the real estate developers, real estate investors, billionaires, property owners and Mayor Adams, are pushing hard to get through the City of Yes Zoning Law changes, which will provide huge tax breaks to investors, billioinaires and real estate developers to make even more of this kind of 'affordable housing' available all over NYC.

Isn't that 'exciting'? It looks like more 'affordable housing' is finally on its way ...

See related stories below and in our City of Yes Special Report section on Gotham Buzz.

And you still have time to be heard by the NY City Council regarding your opinion of the City of Yes. Written Testimony is accepted for 72 hours after the hearing that was held Tuesday 10.22.24. Use this email address to send them your opinions - landusetestimony@council.nyc.gov. I believe the comment period expires at the close of business on Friday 10.25.24.

The LIC Summit 2024

Photos and Clean Up to Follow

October 8, 2024 / LIC Neighborhood / Queens Real Estate & Business / Queens Buzz.

A. Prelude to Attending the LIC Summit 2024

It was a beautiful, sunny, dry day as I walked over to the Museum of the Moving Image in LIC / Astoria.  I arrived around 11 am to attend part of the second half of the LIC Summit, which is a real estate and business conference which examines in depth, an LIC centric world, but also mindful of the surrounding environment.

After I made my way through a flawless check-in, I found my way into the theater and sat down to listen in on the panel providing a Long Island City real estate update.  These panels are structured such that the moderator serves up a number of questions to the panelists for comment, which is then followed by audience questions, which sometimes are the best, because they are asked by people like you and me, who have lived and worked in the area for a long while and witnessed and have adjusted to the huge changes that have occurred in Long Island City over the past couple of decades.

I.  First Panel - LIC Residential Real Estate Update

This panel included Patricia Dunphy of SVP of Rockrose Development, Eric Benaim CEO / Founder of Modern Space, Dan Mogolesko SVP of the Durst Organization, Peter Papamichael Principal of the VOREA Group and Crystal Xu Director of Business Development United Construction & Development Group.

As I came in at the end of the panel presentation, I only caught the Q&A portion of the program, which follows.

A performance theater / school owner pondered aloud whether the developers were still interested in involving and supporting the arts and culture scene in Long Island City.  At the turn of the century LIC was well known as a thriving artists community, as it offered very competitive rents and good access to mass transit.  In the near quarter century since then many - if not most - of the artists have moved out of the area as they can no longer afford the rents, which have skyrocketed from under $1,000 / month to over $4,000 per month.

One of the panelists said they are interested in supporting the arts and he mentioned Culture Lab LIC as one of the arts institutions that has survived the changes.  But that was pretty much the full extent of the conversation surrounding the arts community.  So I reckon the short answer would be no.

• CLICK here to read the rest of our report on the LIC Summit 2024 - Real Estate Development in LIC Queens NYC.

Click here for things to do this weekend Brooklyn NYC or click here for things to do this weekend in Manhattan NYC.

Triumph of The [Rupert's] Will: How Murdoch Manipulates Voter's Perceptions & Public Policy

Australian born Billionaire Appears to use his Media Outlets to Shape Voter's Views, Loading them with Misconceptions, So They'll Elect Compromised Fox Nation Pols, Who Upon Assuming Office, Seem to Reward Murdoch's Media Support, by Crafting Public Policy to Conform to Murdoch's Will, Favoring his Business Interests

September 4, 2020 / NYC Neighborhoods / U.S. Politics / News Analysis & Opinion / Gotham Buzz NYC.

As mentioned previously, I've been doing a fairly deep dive into learning as much about the Third Reich and Nazi Germany as time permits, in order to more fully understand what's happening in present day events.

Media Manipulation for Fun & Profit

I began noticing similarities between Australian born billionaire Rupert Murdoch's manipulative use of his large share of Amerian media in 2016, to what Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda for the Nazis, did beginning in the 1920's until his end in 1945. On May 1, 1945 Goebbels poisoned his children, his wife and himself as the Allied forces neared his home. Hitler and his companions had committed suicide the day before, as Allied forces invaded Berlin. None of them had the courage to stand trial for their crimes against humanity ... although like Mussolini, they may not have made it to court.

1. Did Fox 'News' Attempt to Protect the Reputation of a Propaganda Asset via Omission?

So today, we're going to look at just a few of Murdoch's media manipulations made in just the past couple of months - and I'm nearly certain that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, I don't have the resource to fact check what is the largest misleading news content producing organization in the nation, and possibly the free world.

Let's start with the first two photos on this page. This story broke in the Guardian on July 7, 2020.

The first photo shows Fox News 'reporting the news' regarding the sexcapades of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell. In the first photo, Fox News conveniently cropped out Donald Trump. In the second photo [at right] we have the 'full picture' aka the truth.

The man who calls everyone else a 'sleezeball' is seen with Melania 'being best', and two of the people alleged to be among some of the sleeziest on the planet [Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell]. Do birds of a feather flock together?

So we must ask why Rupert Murdoch would crop Donald Trump out of the photo? Is it to avoid portraying the Donald in a negative light in order to keep him - a Murdoch asset - in office?

Trump appears to have been a boon to billionaire Murdoch through massive billionaire tax cuts funded by debt to be paid for by America's children and unborn? Or is because Trump's actions in the Middle East vis a visIsrael seemed to serve to legitimize Murdoch's investment in Genie Energy in the illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights? Or was it because Trump loosened up the FCC ownership limits for mega media companies like Murdoch's thus allowing the few to control our media, which givens them the power to influence the national democratic conversation - and in Murdoch's case - it seems the power to corrupt it in order to profit from it. Or was it because Trump famously fired all U.S. Attorneys, including Preet Bharara - who was investigating Murdoch's companies for sexual harrassment and phone hacking - less than 24 hours after Sean Hannity on Fox News told him to do just that? Perhaps most importantly, Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr, greenlighted the merger of Disney / ABC, which was an inverted takeover resulting in Rupert Murdoch becoming Disney / ABC's largest shareholder.

• CLICK here to read our report on NYPBA police union endorsement of Trump seems out of step with the union rank and file, as well as the NYPD and NYC - but Murdoch's NY Post provides propaganda cover.