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☆ In a New Cannabis Landscape, a Navy Veteran Battles for Racial Equity
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-25 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

“Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places. For decades, college students have found ways to mask the pungent aroma of marijuana smoke on campuses. A 1986 graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, Ms. James would sit on the steps outside her dorm and roll joints with her friends. It would be decades before Colorado became one of the first two states in the country to legalize recreational cannabis, but on campus, James never worried. “The worst that would happen is they would tell us to put it away, or they might take it from us, and that was the end of it,” Ms. James recalled of the campus police.

Persons: Wanda James, James, “, Ms Organizations: University of Colorado Locations: University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado

☆ ‘Subway Mania’ Brings the Cartoonish World of Pro Wrestling to Commuters
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-18 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For many New Yorkers, the city’s subways are the performance spaces they encounter most often. Everyday, dancers and musicians put on a subterranean revue that uses mass transit as a stage. In recent years, this moving festival has included “Subway Mania,” an homage to one of professional wrestling’s most popular period: the late 1990s to early 2000. The scene caught the attention of Shyama Venkateswar, 57, who was on her way home to Forest Hills, Queens. Her sons, now young adults, had watched World Wrestling Entertainment shows growing up, she said, so she followed the wrestlers aboard the train and abandoned her trip home.

Persons: ”, Kane, Stone, Steve Austin, Shyama Venkateswar Organizations: Lexington, Wrestling Entertainment Locations: Manhattan, Forest Hills, Queens

☆ The End (of Summer) Is Nigh. Let’s Enjoy It!
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-31 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Here’s the bad news: On Aug. 11, the sun in New York City set at 8 p.m. It will not set that late again until 2024. That doesn’t mean that it’s time to bring out the seasonal affective disorder lamps: summer doesn’t end until Sept. 23. But take the approaching end of the season as extra motivation to savor these last few weeks before temperatures dip and sunlight is at a premium. As the New York Yankee great Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” See family and friends during the Labor Day weekend, and then squeeze everything you can out of these final weeks.

Persons: Yogi Berra Organizations: New York Yankee, Labor Locations: New York City

☆ Can Complimenting Strangers Change the World? This Cafe Thinks So.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-09 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The man smiled. Another man, standing to his side, placed his palms on his chin as his jaw dropped. “You’re the most beautiful — thank you!” the first man replied. Ms. Villareal thanked him back and, as the car drove away, left him with another message: “I love you!”A video of the interaction, the first installment of La La Land Kind Cafe’s “Drive-By Kindness” series, uploaded to TikTok in November 2020, has racked up more than five million views. And after being told he looked handsome, a man responded, “We need to spread some more kindness and love.”

Persons: “, Ms, Villareal, ” Locations: TikTok, La

☆ If You Can’t Stand the Heat … We’ve Got Some Suggestions
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-27 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

As fireworks danced across the sky on the Fourth of July, the Earth heated up at record levels. (Records are made to be broken: Almost the entire Northern Hemisphere is again — or still — experiencing a nasty heat wave.) The spell set the tone for a steamy July in New York City, where your local ice cream parlor turned into the city’s hottest club. Temperatures are unlikely to cool off anytime soon, so here’s a little advice for August: structure your days around beating the heat. But if you’re tempted by one of the outdoor events below, make sure to stay hydrated!

Locations: New York City

☆ How a ‘Swole Woman’ Lifted Her Way to a New Outlook and Online Influence
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“It’s often guilt, guilt, guilt. You’re never doing enough,” Ms. Johnston said of the mainstream fitness climate. They’re about building a basic skill that is accessible to everybody.”In Ms. Johnston’s experience, that difference, in turn, can lead to better emotional and mental health. Ms. Johnston, who was an editor at Wirecutter, a New York Times Company that reviews products, from 2014 to 2018, began writing her Ask a Swole Woman column for the site Hairpin in 2016 (“swole” means very muscular). She found that her writing resonated with readers hungry for more accessible fitness writing, and after the site shut down in early 2018, her column bounced around before becoming part of the paid version of her newsletter.

Persons: “, You’re, Ms, Johnston, ” Organizations: New York Times Company

☆ Putting the Rich World of Philadelphia’s Public Art Online
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It was almost 90 degrees, and huge speakers drowned out Mr. Mansour, a self-described “mumbler” not keen on public speaking. There were people everywhere and Mr. Mansour, too, struggled, his face turning bright red. (“I blacked out,” Mr. Mansour said later of the moment.) Mr. Benner took control: He instructed Mr. Mansour to wave his hands in front of his face to cool himself down. He switched locations, first trying to record Mr. Mansour in an adjacent building (also too loud) before settling on a corner away from the commotion.

Persons: “, Livingston, Alexei Mansour, Mr, Brenner, Mansour, ”, ” Mr, Benner Organizations: Mx, Livingston Locations: Philadelphia

☆ In Los Angeles, Bringing Food, Soap and the Salon to the Homeless
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

‘It’s become a little internet family’Ms. Raines wants to spread that outlook — and has harnessed social media to do so. It is also a fund-raising device for an operation that runs entirely on donations, Ms. Raines said. “People have grown to love some of the people that we support and take care of,” Ms. Raines said. Some days, Ms. Raines brings McDonald’s burgers. Sometimes a chef in a food truck cooks enchiladas, chicken tortilla soup or vegan cauliflower steaks.

Persons: ‘ It’s, Ms, Raines, ” Ms, “ It’s, Sydney Granados Organizations: Costco Locations: Downtown Los Angeles

☆ The ‘Unofficial Talent Scout’ Who Celebrates New York’s Colorful Side
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

More Than Likes is a series about social media personalities who are trying to do positive things for their communities. Before he was New York Nico (handle: @newyorknico), the popular social-media documentarian of New York’s quirks and characters, Nicolas Heller was the “mayor of 16th Street” — at age 3. On his walk home from nursery school, Mr. Heller would check in with all the friendly faces on the block: the manager at Steak Frites who kept a tub of ice cream with the boy’s name on it; the security guard at the tile store who tipped his cap and made funny faces at him; the antique-clothing salespeople who would turn their standing mirror around so he could see his reflection.

Persons: Nico, Nicolas Heller, Heller, Steak

Mr. Vines, who now works out of a storefront in Fountain, N.C., grew up on a plantation in nearby Greene County during the Jim Crow era, working alongside his mother in the fields for meager wages. When he got older, he toured for a bit as a jazz musician. But the quest to recreate that one sound proved to be the animating force of his life. “These guitars here got a character and a sound of their own,” Mr. Vines said in a video accompanying his exhibition. “You’re going to get something really special and unique, like the opposite of a guitar you just buy off the rack.”

☆ An Influencer With a Mission: Supporting New York Restaurants
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

‘Tastes like home’“Do you smell that?” Mr. Cho asked as he walked through his old neighborhood, about a half-mile from Renee’s. The air carried an aroma that even the most daring fusion restaurant couldn’t dream of achieving: a mix of Thai, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and other cuisines. “Our audience tends to be very diverse, though 10 out of 10 times they’re English fluent, or culturally New York fluent,” Mr. Cho said. (The team recently added Helen Cho, a former producer for “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” to lead that charge.) Mr. Cho and Mr. Lee’s grandest vision is to create an incubator for small restaurant owners looking to scale.

☆ It’s Finally (Almost) Summer! Here’s What to Do in New York in June.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-25 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Memorial Day is here, and with it, the unofficial start of summer. Summer is just around the corner, and we’re here to help you navigate all the city has to offer — with some help from expert New Yorkers. (A scheduling note: Unlike in previous years, the Summer in the City newsletter will be monthly this season, with editions coming in late June, July and August that will cover the month following each of those dates. We’ll also be featuring photos by Daniel Arnold, a photographer based in New York. And for eating recommendations, head over to the Where to Eat: New York City newsletter, written by Nikita Richardson, one of our Food editors.)

☆ 30 Tons of Explosive Chemicals Lost During Rail Shipment
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Amanda Holpuch | Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

About 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used as a fertilizer and in explosives, went missing on a rail shipment from Wyoming to California in April and has still not been found, officials said. Dyno Nobel, an explosive manufacturing company, notified the federal government of the loss and said in a statement that it was investigating what happened during the nearly two-week journey. The company said the rail car with the material was sealed when it left a manufacturing site in Cheyenne, Wyo., and the seals “were still intact” when it arrived in Saltdale, Calif.“The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the rail car may have developed in transit,” the statement said.

☆ Martin Amis, Acclaimed Author of Bleakly Comic Novels, Dies at 73
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Dwight Garner | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As he aged, he stopped playing tennis, a sport he once played daily and wrote about often. He mostly stopped writing criticism, too. “Insulting people in print is a vice of youth,” he said in an interview with The Independent. Mr. Amis was shortlisted for the award in 1991 for “Time’s Arrow,” and longlisted in 2003 for “Yellow Dog.”His final novel, “Inside Story,” published in 2020, was a “novelized autobiography” that considered his friendship with Mr. Hitchens and his relationship with his father. In “The Information,” he wrote: “Every morning we leave more in the bed: certainty, vigor, past loves.

Art of Craft is a series about specialists whose work rises to the level of art. Are blacksmiths going extinct in America? Not according to Craig Kaviar, a prominent practitioner of the craft who is based in Louisville, Ky. If anything, he said, “there’s been a revival.”The industrial revolution rendered a lot of traditional blacksmith work — making hammers, nails, axes, shovels and more — obsolete. But blacksmiths like Mr. Kaviar, 69, have found success creating so-called “functional art.” Mr. Kaviar, for instance, is regionally known for making handrails forged with leaves and birds that have a rough-hewed, borderline macabre design evocative of the work of sculptors like Louise Bourgeois.

Art of Craft is a series about specialists whose work rises to the level of art. The textile artist Bisa Butler was working in her studio in Jersey City, N.J., one day when her husband, John Butler, a D.J., played the song “The World Is Yours” by the hip-hop artist Nas. The song had a particular resonance for Ms. Butler and something clicked: “We can make of this world what we want,” she said. “Right now if you watch the news or read the wrong paper, or any paper, you can get depressed,” Ms. Butler said. Pieces in Ms. Butler’s new show are priced at six figures and up.

Art of Craft is a series about specialists whose work rises to the level of art. Glass blowing, it turned out, was where Deborah Czeresko found a craft that engaged her whole body. She found the solution in a class at the New York Experimental Glass Workshop, now known as UrbanGlass: Glass blowing, she learned, required grip strength, endurance and balance. “It’s like a sport out there, in that it is physical, and it’s moving all the time,” said Czeresko. “So the knowledge was taken in through my body and came out through my body.”

☆ What We Know About the Allen, Texas, Mall Shooting
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The residents and authorities in a Dallas suburb on Sunday began to process the shooting at a crowded mall in which the police say a gunman killed at least eight people and injured at least seven others before a police officer killed him. The shooting happened on Saturday at the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas, about 25 miles north of Dallas, and turned a busy afternoon of shopping into chaos. How did the shooting unfold? Gunfire erupted around 3:30 p.m. local time, the police said, as throngs of shoppers filled the outdoor mall, which has more than 120 stores. A video posted on social media appears to show a figure clad in black getting out of a silver car in a parking lot and opening fire.

☆ At Camp Naru, Nobody Is ‘an Outlier’
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Christopher Lee | Joshua Needelman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the summer, he would attend camps for members of the Korean diaspora where Jason, who was born in South Korea, experienced a beautiful sense of belonging. At the beginning of this year, he transferred to Drexel University, where the 2022 incoming first-year class was 25.2 percent Asian. His decision was rooted in his experience at Camp Naru, which is designed to help campers and counselors alike develop and grow confident in their Korean identities. “It’s hard being the only Asian,” Jason said. But camps like Naru help members of the diaspora — adopted and otherwise — reconnect to their heritage, and with each other.

Kid Dynamite died in a car accident in Germany in 1963, leaving behind two children, including a son, Herman. Most of the more notable heirlooms, such as the mouthpiece to Kid Dynamite’s saxophone, Herman said, were donated by the family to the Amsterdam Museum. But what persists most potently of Kid Dynamite is his music. “It starts with a very long tone on the sax.”Kid Dynamite at the Sheherazade jazz club in Amsterdam in 1957. But now I recognize that intro, that long tone, as the departure of that boat.”— Sejla Rizvic

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