NYC NOW - Midday News: LGBTQ Trailblazer Dies, NYPD Seeks Driver in Brooklyn Hit-and-Run, AG Letitia James Responds to Federal Indictment, and It’s Soup Season

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Miss Major Griffin Gracy, a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall uprising and a longtime LGBTQ and public health activist, has died. Meanwhile, the NYPD is searching for a driver who struck an 11 year-old boy on an electric scooter in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The child remains in critical condition. Also, New York Attorney General Letitia James is speaking publicly after her federal indictment last week by the Trump administration’s Justice Department. And as temperatures drop, Gothamist food writer Robert Sietsema joins us to talk about the best spots in the city for a comforting bowl of soup.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, October 14th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. A veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising has died. Miss Major Griffin Gracie was a longtime LGBTQ rights and public health activist, known to many as Mama Major. She participated in the Stonewall Uprising in New York City and became a, figure, major figure, helping New Yorkers during the HIV-AIDS crisis in the 80s. A post on the Facebook page for Griffin Gracie's organization, House of Gigi, said last

month that she had been admitted to a hospital with a blood clot, a post to the same page announced her death yesterday in her home in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was 78. The NYPD is looking for a driver who hit an 11-year-old boy on an electric scooter yesterday in Brooklyn. It happened on Ocean Parkway and Graves. and just before six, police say a black sedan hit the boy. The driver got out and ran away. The child is in critical condition. New York Attorney General Tish James is speaking out after she was

indicted by Trump administration's Justice Department last week. I'll not capitulate. James spoke at a rally for New York City mayor, old candidate Zeran Mamdani, yesterday last night in Washington Heights. The grand jury indicted her last week for alleged mortgage fraud. She says she is supporting Mamdani for mayor to bring an end to an era of cynical politics. Early voting begins on October 25th. 57 and cloudy now, mostly cloudy today, a higher of 62. Winds gusting, though, to 25 miles an hour. Tomorrow, mostly sunny, 66, and still with some strong winds.

And then Wednesday night, mid-40s, windy, and cold. Stay close. There's more after the break. On WNYC, I'm David Furr. A few days ago, it was 83 degrees, and I was wading into the surf at the Jersey shore, but it finally feels like fall around here. And when the weather gets cold, what can beat a comforting bowl of hot soup? Robert Sietzuma writes about food for Gothamist and for his substack, Robert Sietzama's New York, and he has decided it is now time for soup.

His latest column highlights some of the best places for soup around the city. Robert, welcome back. Hey, David, so glad to be here. What are we talking about here? A cup of soup before the meal, or are you making soup the main course today? Well, luckily, most of these places offer soups in several sizes. Sometimes it's just a cup, and then you can order two soups, or it's a bowl, and the bowl is the entire meal, especially with some nice bread on the side.

Okay, well, I have my spoon ready. Where should we head first? some soup in New York City. So let's start with a more obscure one. Lately, I've been eating a lot of chakurtma. Now, can anybody tell me where chakirtma comes from? I am not raising my hand. Okay. It is a Georgian soup, and I don't mean from the peach state. I mean from Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains, it's a chicken soup, and who doesn't like chicken soup? But then they like mutated by putting in egg yolks as the thickeners. So you get this like marvelous kind of yellowish white color. And then they throw in barberries. Barberries are like these little succulent berries.

Usually use dry like raisins. And they're in the soup along with a substantial amount of chicken. And you can get this soup at Mima, M-E-A-M-A-M-A, a New Georgian wine bar in the East. Village. Once again, what's the name of the soup? Chakurtma. Don't try to spell it, though. This is radio. We're not spelling too many words here. So, okay, what's next? A choice of two soups that causes controversy wherever it goes. If you take two New Yorkers and ask them red clam chowder or white clam chowder, in other words, the clam chowder erroneously called Manhattan clam chowder or the soup called New England clam chowder, even though it's eaten anywhere there's cream on the seaboard. What should you get a pick? I'm all about the New England clam chowder.

Forget about it. It's not even a question. My son spilled Manhattan clam chowder in the car one time. There's some deep issues there. I won't take sides. As a matter of fact, I've been in places in Long Island where they make something called Long Island clam chowder where they dump the two together. And it achieves a lovely shade of milky orange. Okay. So the bottom line is both are great. They're both great. And I'm not going to take sides because whenever I find a place like the famous clam bar,

Randazzo's in Sheepshead Bay, that serves both, I order both. All of this sounds delicious so far. What can we finish with? Well, let's go a little more obscure and get the soup called Man Chow, M-A-N-C-H-O-W. and you think that must be a hearty soup that comes in a can from Campbell's. But no, Manchow is a corruption of Manchurian, and it's a keystone of the Indo-Chinese cuisine, the Indian and Chinese fusion cuisine that is currently wildly popular in Elmhurst in Jackson Heights and a few other places. You can find it on Lexington Avenue.

And what it is, it's a very old-fashioned kind of. Chinese soup that is thickened with cornstarch. It has a very dark broth and a lot of vegetables and tofu and it has like those fried Hong Kong style noodles on top. So you get your crunch, you get your squish, you get your beefy, chickeny, who knows what's in that broth, but it's just delicious. And I get it a Tangra masala, T-A-N-G-R-A, which was the city's first Indo-Chinese restaurant at the corner of Broadway and Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst. And it's just perfect timing because the weather has just finally turned cooler. Robert Sietzima writes about food for our news site, Gothamist, and of course for his

substack, Robert Sietzima's New York. Thanks again, Robert. Thanks for all the soup suggestions. Thank you, David. Now I'm going to run out and have some soup. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday.

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