NYC NOW - Midday News: New Delivery Tip Rules in NYC, Midtown Rezoning Plan Approved, and Remembering Latin Jazz Icon Eddie Palmieri

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

New York City food delivery customers can now tip more easily under new City Council laws affecting apps like DoorDash and UberEats. Meanwhile, a sweeping Midtown rezoning could bring 10,000 new homes to Manhattan’s West Side. Plus, we remember Latin jazz legend Eddie Palmieri, who helped define New York’s salsa sound. Music journalist Aurora Flores Hostos joins us to reflect on his legacy.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, August 15th. Here's the midday news. I'm Junae Pierre. It'll now be easier for customers to tip their food delivery drivers. WMYC's Karen Yee reports three New York City Council bills are now law. The measures will let customers who use apps like DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats to tip while they're placing an order instead of after they've ordered their food. The companies will also have to restore the minimum tipping suggestion to 10%. Restaurant delivery workers said the apps made it harder to earn tips after the city required a minimum pay rate for every hour of active work.

The package of bills laps into law after Mayor Adams failed to act on them for 30 days. Adams did veto two other bills that would have boosted pay for grocery delivery workers who are currently exempt from the city's pay rules and other protections. Adams said increasing pay for 20,000 grocery delivery workers would increase food costs. DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber did not immediately comment. One of the busiest parts of Manhattan could get even busier under a rezoning plan passed by the city council yesterday. The rezoning would allow for about 10,000 new homes to be added across 42 blocks of Midtown between West 23rd and 40th streets and between 5th and 8th avenues. It would also add a busway to 34th Street that,

city officials say would speed up MTA buses. About 3,000 of the anticipated housing units would be priced at affordable levels. Mayor Eric Adams supports the plan and says it's a down payment on building more housing in Manhattan. It's currently 79 degrees. It'll be mostly sunny on your Friday with highs in the upper 80s. NYC. Just over one week has gone by since one of Latin music's biggest legends died. The composer, band leader, and Latin jazz hero Eddie Palmieri died last Wednesday at the age of 88. Of his generation of musicians, Palmieri was the last one standing.

His death represents the true end of an era for the Latin musicians who thrived in New York City in the 60s and 70s. Artists, activists, and music journalists Aurora Flores Ostas knew and worked. with Palmieri across decades. She joined my colleague Michael Hill to help make sense of his legacy and to elaborate on why salsa and Latin music are so important to New Yorkers. You knew Eddie Palmieri for more than 50 years. How'd you watch him change over that period? It was an organic process.

The first tune I heard of Eddie Palmieri was La Malanda. It was straight up santa at the time, you know, was what we were all eerie. He was brashed And he was At that time He had already changed his style From La Penteca when I met him La Penteca was more when I was a teenager

And then he had changed his style And now he was more street He was more like all of us And he was talking about Social Justice issues He was using more jazz He was using more R&B He was using more of the language

The musical language of the streets, of New Yorkans, of what we were growing up with. Eddie Palmeri helped usher in, as you said, the salsa era in the middle of the century. People call him the genre's innovator, but he also often chafed with the label of salsa music. Tell us a little bit about that, conflict. Well, all of them started doing that because Tito Puente started doing that at the beginning. And mainly because under salsa, salsa is not a genre of music. Salsa is a commercial turn.

So all of them started fighting against that commercial term. But the thing was that under salsa, especially when you look at the history of this music, which was like basically born here 100 years ago, you know, it was a mix of the Cuban and Puerto Rican music that was being played on both islands. Music comes from people. And when people travel and go to different places, those influences, are automatically infiltrated into the music. So 100 years ago, that music started changing. And it started changing with the Puerto Ricans that were here,

the Cubans that were here, the Spanish that was here. We came together in New York. And together in New York, we made this music go viral. And we made it go around the world. And Eddie Palmieri was one of those driving forces. Pomeri was an incredibly prolific musician, as you mentioned. He recorded on 40 albums over the course of his career, played thousands of shows, worked on scores of collaborations.

What are you listening to from that vast catalog as we remember him in the next days and weeks? Well, I love the tune, Café. You hear Barry Rogers on there. And when you hear Café, Perry Rogers is like a slurado. He's like an improvisational singer. So I'm listening to Cafe.

I'm listening to La Malanga. I'm also listening to Itutu Ache, which is from the Tito Puente and Eddie Palmary Masterpiece album, another great album, where they even mix Mexican music, Mariachi. Incredible, incredible, the music that comes from New York City and the mixture. Now, I'm sure this is hard to do. Just pick one.

Do you have a favorite memory of Palmary? I have so many, but I have one that really stands out. And the one that stands out is when he was doing the White Alp. And I think CBS Records, Zen was interested in him, and he had gotten a special signing. I remember at that time, he had bought a home in Mount Island. He was living in Long Island. They'd given him the special piano was white.

It was beautiful. And I went to see him. at the time I was about seven months pregnant. And then a couple of months later on my due day, December 29th, 1981, that day, I knew I was not going to go to a hospital. I had all this energy. And I told my husband, I'm going dancing. I want to see Eddie Palmieri, and I'm going with or without you.

So I went, it was the old cheetah club, and I'm dancing, and I'm going down on the floor, and I'm twirling around, and people are going, ooh, and ah, and they're being concerned. And after the first set, Eddie gets off the stage and the place is packed. And he comes straight to our table and he gets real serious. And he tells my then-husband, I'm going to need your help. And he looks at me really seriously. And he says, if he goes into labor now, I need you to help me put her on the stage. And it will be the first time I allow somebody to grandstand me.

That was it. Aurora, we would love to talk more about Eddie Palmieri, but we're out of time. Aurora, Florida's Oster's is an artist, activist, music journalist, and a musician herself. Thank you so much for telling us about Eddie Palmary. Thank you so much. And you can find my articles on Substack. Thank you. Thanks for listening.

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