NYC NOW - November 29, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

The NYPD is preparing for protests related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war during the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting. Also, Mount Sinai Health officials defended their plan to shut down Beth Israel Hospital at a heated community forum in Manhattan on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the city's recent crackdown on unlicensed vendors has reached Prospect Park's farmers market in Brooklyn. Plus, worried landlords across New York City are banning tenants from storing e-bikes in their buildings for fear of lithium battery fires. Finally, WNYC's Community Partnerships desk regularly teams up with the nonprofit, Street Lab, to collect and share stories from neighborhoods across the five boroughs. Our latest stop is in Brooklyn's Kensington neighborhood.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, November 29th. Here's the midday news from David First. The NYPD is preparing for protests during the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting tonight. WNYC's Catalina Gonella reports. Organizers for the pro-Palestinian community group within our lifetime are calling for people to, quote, flood the tree lighting for Gaza, starting with a rally at 6 o'clock.

The NYPD says it'll be responding around the area of the tree lighting. The department similarly prepared for protests related to the Israel-Hamas war ahead of last week's Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters ended up being arrested after disrupting the procession. The tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Officials with Mount Sinai health systems are defending their plan to shut down Beth Israel Hospital in the East Village by next July. At a heated community forum in Manhattan last night, hospital representatives said patients could go to other emergency rooms or use Mount Sinai's network of outpatient services. But residents and local elected officials say that's not enough. Arlene Miller of Stuy Town was among those who spoke. It's a disgrace. What I really want to know is can this hospital be?

be sold to somebody else who would like to run it as the hospital it used to be. Mount Sinai officials say the move is unavoidable due to financial losses and a declining patient census. The closure plan still needs to be approved by the State Department of Health. The city's recent crackdown on unlicensed vendors has reached Prospects Parks, farmers' market in Brooklyn. The Parks Department says they've been warning unlicensed vendors in Grand Army Plaza to pack it up, including a man who was arrested by Parks Police last weekend. A video of the incident shows the man who hasn't been identified by a table where he has a bong, some banners for trippy gods, and a cat inside a pet carrier.

You can't put your hands on me. I'm not putting nothing behind my back because you're not a police officer. You're not a police officer. You're not putting your hands on you. Parks officials say the man had been warned several times before his arrest for unlawful vending and solicitation. His cat was taken to a city shelter to a way to pick up. It's 30 degrees right now. It's going to be mostly sunny. We're not going to get out of the 30s today, just a high of 37 this afternoon, a little warmer tomorrow, sunny with a high of 47. This is WNYC.

Landlords across New York City are banning tenants from storing e-bikes in their buildings. They're worried about fires sparked by unregulated. lithium batteries. WNYC's Stephen Nesson reports on the latest twist in the city's ongoing battle over e-bikes. Every morning, West Harlem resident Manuel Mancilla has to schlep his two kids up a steep hill to get to school in daycare. He pops the two-year-old in a stroller and attaches a strap to the five-year-old who's riding a scooter. So she's basically like water skiing behind the stroller, which is much better than pulling the scooter. Let's just call it part of my weekly exercise routine.

He wants to buy a cargo e-bike, one with a UL-certified or safe battery, to make life easier. But still, his building won't allow it. One reason may have to do more with insurance than the bike itself. Owners are incentivized to proactively be punitive against the renter on these batteries because they're frankly scared of losing their insurance coverage if it's found out that they have renters that are bringing these batteries into the business. buildings. That's Jay Martin, the executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, a trade organization that lobbies on behalf of 4,000 owners of rent-stabilized properties in New York

City. And the crackdown in buildings is now having an impact on e-bike sales, too. I think there's been so much negativity that we're fighting uphill against negativity. That's Shane Hall, the bike buyer at Bicycles NYC on the Upper East Side. Hall's shop only sells e-bikes with certified batteries, and he blamed. the rash of fires on bad batteries or ones that have been tinkered with. There were like people trying to repair batteries. Don't fix a battery. Don't do it. Still, even with his legit batteries, Hall says e-bike sales are down 15 to 20 percent compared to last year. The city has introduced several measures this year to make e-bikes safer.

It began doing random inspections of bike shops searching for illegal batteries. It plans to roll out safe charging locations for delivery workers, and a new law forces the city to create a trade-in program to swap out bad batteries for good ones. But for now, building owners remain skittish about allowing e-bikes in their buildings. Stephen Nesson, WNYC News. WNYC's Community Partnerships desk regularly teams up with the nonprofit street lab to collect and share stories from neighborhoods across the five boroughs. We recently stationed ourselves in Brooklyn's Kensington neighborhood. Here's some of what we heard. My name is Shuhano Dean, and I'm from Borough Park slash Kensington. My story is I'm the oldest of five girls, and I'm currently a

freshman in college, so it's really exciting, staying in the city for college, and just like being able to be with family. Growing up, since I am, Bengals, I grew up with Bengali culture my whole life and it really has impact my love for the social sciences. That's what I studied in high school and made me just appreciate like the culture that we have here and how unique it is. And it shapes like just the culture of Brooklyn in general. My name is Rifat Sultan. I am a mother. I have two kids and one girl and one boy.

I am one year ago in New York. I'm from Bangladesh. My husband is work. And I am looking for job. I have no choice because of my rent is very high. Because now here is one person income is not possible for a survive family. I have dream. I have a small house and here is my family members is here.

That's it. That's my dream. My name is David Moretsky. Like memberhood, this is the place which I visit regularly. This is the best produce store in the city. And then it's multicultural. Multicultural, everybody, multi-religion, multicultural. They're all mixed as a real America.

I like it. Because I originally born in Ukraine in Kyiv, yeah. And when I visited and I saw the people homogenic, very much, all the sort of like all the same. And I said, oh, I miss this diversity. So that's what I like about this neighborhood. It's just very diversified. I came in 75 as a young man fleeing the Soviet Union, fleeing the inequality, many things,

And I'm an artist and I look for artistic freedom, first of all, and everything else. My name is Cheryl Klein. My story is a story about thinking about stories. My grandfather was a professor of children's literature, and I'm now a children's book, editor, and author, and a mother. So I spend a lot of my day thinking about the narratives we tell to children, how to make those the best narratives possible, so they can then tell better narratives with their own lives.

and the business of doing that as well, because since it's both an art and a science. My name is Mike Rosenbluth, and I'm a Kensingtonian. This neighborhood is so rich in culture, and it's rich in options. I can crisscross Brooklyn, every which way. I can get the F-Train, the G-Train. I can take the B-35 bus.

I can take the 67-69-103 and get wherever the heck I need to go. This neighborhood is between Borough Park and Kensington and Prospect Park and the mix of folks, whether they're coming from a mosque or a shul or a church, it's just so unique because it does all come together in this neighborhood. My name is Doja Khanakar. It's really nice to be in this neighborhood, but more than anything, it's really nice to be in New York. I've lived in a lot of places.

When I was really young, I lived in the Maldives, and I grew up in Bangladesh. Then I moved to America, and I lived in Iowa, and I lived in Chicago, and I lived in D.C. And finally, New York feels like home of all the places that I've been to. It's a place for all the oddballs to end up, to some extent, you know, everyone finds their home over here. It feels like I can blend in in this neighborhood that I don't seem to stick out so much. The signs are in Bangla. I can hear my own language. There's just something about the sheer size of this place.

All the people that are here. All the people that come here. Voices from Brooklyn's Kensington neighborhood. The next stop for WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk and Street Lab is Manhattan's Meatpacking district. Look for us Thursday, December 7th, weather permitting, on Gansivort Street between 10th Avenue and Washington Street, between 12 and 2 in the afternoon. Thanks for listening. We'll from WNYC now from WNYC.

Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.