NYC NOW - Midday News: Early Voting Is Underway, Selecting the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and the Business of Counterfeit Luxury Goods

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Early voting gets underway across New York City. Plus, the legendary Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree has been selected. And finally, a look at the long tradition of selling counterfeit luxury items in Lower Manhattan.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Monday, October 27. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. It was a busy first weekend of early voting. WMMIC's Bridget Bergen has this exclusive analysis of turnout so far. Five times the number of people voted early compared to the same period four years ago. And slightly more than half of the voters were boomers in Gen X. so voters aged 55 and up. Pace University political scientist, Laura Taman, says the results are good news for the boomer in the race, Andrew Cuomo.

You'd rather be the Cuomo campaign. This will definitely give them some encouragement. Turnouts so far contrasts with the Democratic primary, which Assembly member Zoran Mamdani won handily thanks to younger voters. Taman says that leaves a question. Are the young people who are so excited going to come? back. We'll have to see. Early voting runs through November 2nd. Election Day is November 4th. The legendary Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has been selected. This year's tree is a Norway spruce from East Greenbush, New York. That's just outside of Albany. Rockafelah Center says the tree will be cut down on November 6th and then arrive in Midtown two days later. It will be decorated

with 50,000 festive lights and a big old star on the top. The tree will be lit during a live broadcast on December 3rd and will stay on display until mid-January. That'll be donated to become lumber for the nonprofit habitat for humanity. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation says air quality is good today and is expected to stay that way. Mid-50s right now with sunshine in the city, sunny and 56 for a higher day with the calm wind, mostly clear low 40s tonight. Then tomorrow, sunny, mid-50s, but watch out for those strong winds. Stay tuned for more after the break.

NYC now. New York City's election is next week, and early voting is underway. This election will decide more than just the city's next mayor. Voters will also be asked about council races, district attorney races, judges, and ballot initiatives. So this week, we'll be talking through some of those. I believe it was here is Rosemary. joins us now to explain why in the first ballot initiative asked voters in New York City about an Olympic facility 200 miles away? Hi, Rosemary. Tell us about this. Hi, Michael. First, the facility is called

Mount Van Hovenberg. It's an Olympic sports complex, and it's really important for competitive sports. It's just over 1,000 acres. It hosted the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, and it's also important because it has the oldest bobsled track in North America and the second oldest in the world. And it's located in Lake Placid. It's on about a thousand acres. And it has hiking trails, cross-country skiing. I've gone cross-country skiing there before. And it's a place that people in the Adirondacks and outside of the Anderondacks come to use for winter sports. So what exactly would New York voters be authorizing or rejecting under this proposal? Well, this proposal is more of a mea culpa. For decades, the facility has been

cutting down trees and protected forest preserve that's supposed to remain untouched. And they've done this to maintain and expand their facilities. And the state-run Olympic Authority that manages the facility has a track record of illegally illegally clearing protected parkland. Recently, they got in trouble for clearing forest land illegally for the World Cup mountain bike races at Whiteface Mountain. Essentially, voters are retroactive. actively giving permission for the facility to expand into 323 acres of forever wildland.

And that means state protected land. And they're allowing them to expand and improve its cross-country skiing trails and its biathlon facility. In exchange, the state will purchase a minimum of 2,500 acres of forest in another part of the Anderondex as a kind of land swap. There's no timeline or exact location for the purchase right now. Why do they need voters permission? Just to zoom out a little, Adirondack Park is the largest publicly protected park in the continental United States.

If you took Yellowstone, the Everglades, Glacier and Grand Canyon National Parks and smash them all together, they would still be smaller than Adirondack Park, which is in total six million acres. Wow. And it's state constitutionally protected. And according to the Forever Wildlaws, only New York State voters can authorize cutting down a single tree in the Adirondack preserve. Where do local groups in the Adirondack stand on these questions? Local groups such as the Adirondack Council support the measure. Other Olympic state-run facilities such as Whiteface Mountain Ski Resort already have special exemption to clear surrounding publicly owned land to maintain its trails and structures. And so that's similar to what Mount Van Hovenberg has been doing illegally for decades.

WNMC's Rosemary, Ms. Derry. Thanks so much for this. Wow. Thank you, Michael. Last week, federal officers detained nine men selling counterfeit goods on Canal Street. WNMIC Stephen Nesson reports. They were targeting an underground economy that has persisted in Lower Manhattan for centuries. It was unusually quiet in Chinatown last Thursday, less than 48 hours after a federal immigration raid made headlines. The sidewalks here are typically crowded with vendors hawking knockoff name brand purses, watches, and sneakers. But a little after one in the afternoon, I spot just one guy with a small stash of bags.

He packed up and moved along after a few minutes. I was actually kind of glad that it wasn't like that because then you have people like haggling you get in your face. That's 40-year-old tourist Stephen Pedro from Dallas, Texas. Before the raid, though, Pedro partook in Canal Street's notorious black market. He bought some knock-off purses for his wife. I don't make thousands of dollars that come and buy my wife, things like that. The quality is good.

You get a lot for your money. There's a long tradition of selling counterfeit luxury items in Lower Manhattan. Rutgers University historian Jack Chen says even in the Port City's earliest days, cheap porcelain was sold to folks who couldn't afford the high-end stuff from China. Knockoffs that were made in Europe.

Knock-off porcelains were attempted to be made in the U.S. as well. Just like today, where luxury purses can be found for the bargain bin price of 50 bucks or less. In some ways, Chinatown now is playing out the history of the city. Luxury brands have been trying to shut down this black market since at least the 1980s. They hired private investigators to track down vendors. They would go into disguises and things like that. And they would go into each store and look to see which stores were selling what that day. And then they would call it in.

That's Rob Holmes. His dad was a private investigator hired to be on the lookout for knockoff luxury watches around the Canal Street air. Holmes is a PI himself. He says he's usually hired to root out fake jerseys and sneakers. Kenneth Ma is a second-generation Chinese American who owns Chinatown optical on Mott Street. He says he's glad to see something being done about the street vendors, which he says doesn't help the neighborhood's reputation. It's a really bad look, I could say, for both New York City and for Chinatown, especially,

to be known as the counterfeit center of New York. And we have some of the best services, haircuts, bubble tea, ramen, noodles, wantons, whatever, gumblings, obstacle shops in the world. So I won't be known for that and not for counterfeiting. Ma wishes city officials would have reigned in the street vendor sooner and says he doesn't like the targeting and detainment of immigrants by federal officials. Stephen Nesson, WNYC News. Thanks for listening.

NYC Now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.