NYC NOW - October 4, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

According to a new Marist College poll, more than two-thirds of respondents said they want New York City Mayor Eric Adams to resign following his indictment on fraud and bribery charges. And, a judge has ruled that a jury can hear various statements made to police by Daniel Penny, who choked a homeless subway passenger to death last year. Plus, WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen talks with sanitation commissioner Jessica Tisch days before the city’s compost service goes into effect for all five boroughs. Also, WNYC’s Ryan Kailath follows the longest serving docent at the Rubin Museum which closes permanently Sunday. And finally, a forecast for stargazers this weekend

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jene Pierre. New York City residents want Mayor Adams to go. That's according to a new mayor's college poll. More than two-thirds of respondents said they want the mayor to resign following his indictment on fraud and bribery charges. Here's mayor's pollster Lee Meringa. The bottom line in all this is, you know, there's not a lot of friends in the city for him anymore. 26% approval rating.

That's down from last year of 37%. And he had 61% when he first took office. The mayor is accused of accepting lavish travel perks and illegal campaign contributions from Turkish nationals who then leaned on him for favors. The mayor maintains his innocence and says he's not resigning. A judge has ruled that a jury can hear various statements made to police by a man who choked a homeless subway passenger

to death last year. Daniel Penny is facing manslaughter and homicide charges for choking Jordan Neely on the F train. Penny says he was trying to protect fellow subway riders because Neely was scaring people. Defense attorneys asked the judge to bar statements that Penny made to police after he choked Neely. But a judge says police followed proper protocols before asking Penny questions, so anything he said can be used in court. Penny's lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment. Starting this weekend, all New Yorkers in every borough will be required to separate out their food scraps from their trash for the city's curbside compost collection. The Department of Sanitation has been phasing in the compost surface over the last few years, and this Sunday, it takes effect citywide. Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch talked about it with WMYC's Tiffany Hanson.

The commissioner starts by sharing what New Yorkers should start doing on their recycling days. In addition to putting out your metal glass plastic and your paper cardboard, you can also put out your compostable material, which means basically anything from your kitchen, anything from your yard. If you cook it or you grow it, you can throw it. And we will take that material that you set out on your recycling day and we will send it to be composted and make soil out of it or we will use it to make renewable energy. I can imagine that the volume of food scraps and, as you're saying, you know, yard waste, et cetera, has to be enormous for a city this size. So what are you expecting and how will all of that be handled? It actually is enormous. We do studies of our waste. And what we found last year was that one third of the material that is placed in the black trash bags is food waste.

And so it's a huge opportunity to increase New York City's diversion rate. Instead of sending that food waste to sit in landfill where it will produce methane for decades, we want to take it, we want to send it to a compost facility, we want to create soil, or we want to create renewable energy. It's a huge win for the environment. And we are prepared to handle the huge volume of compostable material that we are going to get. So we had a notice put up in the elevator in our building talking about the composting that's coming and what our building would like us to do. What I'm curious about is what happens if people don't participate?

So we want to give New Yorkers an opportunity to develop the muscle memory of separating out the food scraps and the yard waste. So at first, there will be no fines for lack of compliance. But the program does become mandatory this April, and this April fines will begin for failure to separate out food and yard waste and participate in the curbside composting program. The fines are the same fines that you'd get for failure to recycle. For smaller buildings, one-tate units, it's $25 for the first fine. And for larger buildings of nine units and up, it's $100 for the first fine. So those are fines that are directed toward landlords and building management or? That's right. Property owners.

Got it. And let's say you really want to be composting in New York City, but your building management is slow to roll it out. You can put in a 3-1-1 complaint to us and we will go around and see your building manager and remind them that the program is mandatory. But I do believe that now that the program is becoming mandatory that all building managers will have to comply with the program. Otherwise, they'll face fines. All right. Earlier this year, the city was offering compost back to residents. I'm not seeing any events scheduled through the give back program through the rest of the years. So I'm curious what the city is going to do with all of this compost. We're now going to be

creating, especially over the winter months when folks might not necessarily be thinking they need it. Yeah, so we do a lot with the soil that we create. Obviously, as you mentioned, we do compost givebacks, and we've been doing more of those recently than ever before. But we also put it in our parks. We give it to community gardens. Landscapers are able to buy the soil from us. So there is a lot of soil that we produce and a lot that is given away or sold and used on the market. That's New York City's sanitation commissioner Jessica Tisch, talking with WMYC's Tiffany Hansen.

The Rubin Museum is closing for good this Sunday. After the break, we meet a man who's led tours at the museum for 19 years. Stick around. The Rubin Museum in Chelsea is closing its doors after 20 years. It's a loss for fans of their Himalayan region art and artifacts, and also for one of the museum's longest-serving docents, who WMYC's Ryan Kailath caught up with. on one of his final tours. Nathan Ron first visited the Rubin

a few days after it opened in 2004. I will never forget the date because it was the second October, which is also Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. He immediately struck up a friendship with the museum's founders, Donald and Shelley Rubin. And I told Donald that, I said, do you know that the date that this museum started

is iconic in India, and it's a holiday in India? Every school kid, every person who works is completely off that day. and spend their day doing work involved with love and compassion. Ron had only been in New York a few years at that point. This museum was home away from home for me. I have done 19 hikes in the Himalayas, and so when I walked in here, this space made my heart beat faster.

Just this beautiful energy of the mountains and right in the midst of New York City, where we need it the most. He became one of the first docents to volunteer and says since then he's given at least two tours a month every month for 19 years. The experience connected him to New Yorkers and tourists and himself. He built visits into the curriculum for his students, learning to connect meditative art with medicine,

presented academic papers and TED talks on the subject. It's been a great journey. I am going to miss the museum at my Friday evenings over here, just connecting to people, connecting to musicians, connecting to actors, connecting to my medical students. The museum's last day is Sunday. They plan to sell the building and transition to a touring exhibition model, loaning out their collection.

Ron's favorite exhibit, the Tibetan Shrine Room, will head to the Brooklyn Museum for a six-year loan next year. So it's a very bittersweet feeling because even though the physical museum no longer going to exist, the legacy will be there in people's heart and people's minds. That's WMYC's Ryan Kailat. October is when autumn stargazing begins. Alongside the moon, a few planets will pose in the night sky this weekend, right after sunset. Here's WMYC's Rosemary Misdairy with more.

On October 5th, you will see Venus, a really bright dot right next to the waxing crescent moon. The site reminds me of a motif you often see above baby cribs. So if you like shots of beautiful, iconic astronomy photography, that would be a nice. shot to get. The third brightest object in the sky will be Jupiter, and that's visible around 9.30 p.m. Saturn is also visible. Mars will be a little bit more difficult because it comes out later in the evening just before midnight. But by the end of October, it'll be coming up earlier, just before 11 p.m. Also in the skies this month, two meteor showers. Here's Rosemary again. The first meteor shower is the Draconids. It's a very short meteor shower. It starts on October 6th, last five days,

ends October 10th. Its peak is on October 7th, and it will peak with 10 meteors per hour. And the best time to catch it is early evening, because you want to avoid excessive moonlight. The second meteor shower, the Orionids, they already started at the end of last month, and they're going to last a long time. They'll be going until November 22nd. and the peak is October 21st. There's some great stargazing ahead of us. Hope you get out and enjoy it. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC.

Shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Boutage, Amber Bruce, Owen Kaplan, Audrey Cooper, Leora Noam Kravitz, Jared Marcel, and Wayne Showmeister, with help from all of my wonderful colleagues in the WNYC Newsroom. Our show art was designed by the people at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrato. I'm Jenae Pierre.

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.