Normal view

The Casting Call Was for Zombies. The Job Was Actually a Landlord Rally.

12 June 2026 at 20:53
Housing debates often involve theatrics. But when a group of actors, many of whom are renters, discovered they had been hired to join a pro-landlord demonstration, several said they felt deceived.

© Madison Swart for The New York Times

New York City actors who responded to a casting call asking for people to portray zombies found upon arrival that they would be marching to protest a proposed rent freeze on rent-stabilized homes.

Knicks in Five? Please Don’t Tempt the Jinx Gods.

12 June 2026 at 08:00
Some Knicks fans have predicted series sweeps. Others, conditioned by decades of failure, pay more heed to jinxes and superstitious rituals.

© Vincent Alban for The New York Times

The Knicks’ championship run has revealed a fundamental difference among some fans, with some unafraid of making boastful predictions and others recoiling at the jinx factor of doing so.

Mamdani Finds a Foil Familiar to New Yorkers: James Dolan

11 June 2026 at 23:38
Mr. Dolan, the owner of the New York Knicks, began a public feud with Mayor Zohran Mamdani with his team on the verge of an N.B.A. title.

© Brett Davis/Imagn Images

James Dolan suggested that the incompetence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, left them incapable of handling “anything like this.”
❌