Small spaces, big city: New Yorkers at work in tight quarters

Plus: Planting milkweed to save the monarchs [View this email in a browser.]( Gothamist relies on your support to make local news available to all. Not yet a member? [Consider donating and join today.]( [Small spaces, big city: New Yorkers at work in tight quarters]( [first image]( [Today's newsletter is curated by James Ramsay]( Weather: ☀️ Sunny, highs around 60. It's Friday in New York City, where some people spend eight hours a day (or more!) in extremely small spaces. Photographer Aïda Amer set out to ask [MTA station agents, halal cart cooks, theater box office workers]( and others about their experience. Here's what else is happening: - Students at City College have set up an encampment on their West Harlem campus, joining students at NYU, Columbia and universities around the country to [protest the Israel-Hamas war](. - New York City recorded [60 traffic deaths during the first three months of 2024]( marking the deadliest start to a calendar year under the city’s decade-old Vision Zero street safety program. - A new nonprofit program in the Bronx is helping to link homeless New Yorkers who have rental assistance vouchers with [small property owners eager to rent out their units](. - A new City Council bill [introduced in response to a partial building collapse in the Bronx]( last year would require more stringent building safety inspections, impose tighter deadlines for landlords to correct violations and inflict escalating penalties for failing to meet those deadlines. - The Queens district attorney has [indicted a school crossing guard]( who allegedly tried to convince an undercover police officer posing as a minor to engage in sex acts. - The Columbia University senate is planning to vote on a resolution chiding — [but not officially censuring]( — President Nemat Shafik for calling in the NYPD to arrest student protesters. - An appeals court has ruled that former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer can move ahead with his [defamation lawsuit against the woman who accused him of sexual assault]( during his 2021 mayoral run. - The cash-strapped MTA is planning a pilot program for selling audio advertisements [that'll air in subway stations](. - Newsmax yesterday interviewed a New York City construction worker who [hates Joe Biden](. - Meanwhile, Biden was up in Westchester [for a fundraiser]( at Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones' house. - Back at the White House, aides have changed up the president's routine so he no longer has to walk to his helicopter alone, which some advisers feared [made him look old](. - The burgers at [this West Village gas station]( look incredible. - Behold "Operation Menai Bridge," [the several-hundred-page plan]( for what happens when King Charles dies. - Sending a coworker a message that simply reads "hey" [is vicious](. - Emma Stone's [real name is]( Emily and she'd like us to call her that now. National Poetry Month Spotlight E Train to World Trade A barefoot man doing scratch-offs squeezes in the corner. Yesterday at rush hour a blanket-wrapped body, hemisphere where no one would go. A week ago a prophet predicted doomsday: You’re all gonna pay. The man in the corner mutters— I crane my neck but someone’s bicycle hides the numbers. A plastic real estate ad gleams: Put an offer on the table that takes others off of it. By the graveyard on Church St. my umbrella twists and snaps; jammed face-to-face under an overhang, we watch a woman sell replacements to rain-drenched passersby. I left my change at home, oh well. - Wilson Taylor More from Gothamist [second image]( [NYC gardeners push 'year of the milkweed' to save monarch butterflies from extinction]( Gardeners on Governors Island are planting milkweed — the monarch butterfly's main food source, nest, and nursery — as part of a larger nationwide effort to save the insect. [The Black Comic Book Festival returns to Harlem this weekend]( The two-day festival, also known as SchomCom, features dozens of panel participants, including artists, authors and comic-book creators from across the African and Black diaspora, as well as a marketplace with more than 50 comics world exhibitors. [We Rely On Your Support]( [NY finally has a housing deal. Will it work?]( The new plan includes a tax break incentive that'll requite developers to make a quarter of the apartments in their projects affordable to individuals with average earnings of no more than $80,000 a year or families of three earning around $112,000 annually. [Dinner reservations at Tatiana are ‘impossible’ to get, so I spent a month trying]( New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells recently named Tatiana the #1 restaurant in New York City. So one writer tried to actually eat there. 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