NYC NOW - Winter Slump, Spring Concerts, and Jesse Jackson’s Legacy in NYC

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

New Yorkers are slogging through the late winter blues, and in this week’s arts and culture check in, WNYC and Gothamist arts and culture editor Matthew Schnipper joins us to talk about why February can feel especially brutal, a packed spring concert calendar including Shelter’s 35th anniversary, Mayor Mamdani’s latest cultural references, the Tin Building’s pivot to a balloon museum, and a major new digital archive project at the Center for Brooklyn History. Plus, as funeral services are held this weekend, reporter Arun Venugopal examines the life and legacy of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his lasting impact on politics and culture.

Welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre. A long winter, new music shows, and the tin building becomes a balloon museum? That's all ahead in this week's arts and culture check-in. But first, here's what's happening in New York City. A stalled proposal for a massive housing project in Queens is getting new life after Mayor Zoran Mamdani's White House visit this week. Mamdani and President Trump met to talk about housing in their second oval office meeting. A spokesperson for the mayor said the two discussed how Trump could help the city

build 12,000 housing units, although he did not specify the location. However, three sources briefed on the meeting who were not authorized to speak, told WMYC that Mamdani pitched a new development at Sunnyside Yards. It's a de Blasio era proposal that stalled under the Adams administration. Mamdani shared a photo of him with the president holding mock front pages. One reads, Trump to City Let's Build, a riff on the classic Ford to City dropped dead. Federal data shows ICE has held over 120 children in controversial hold rooms in Lower Manhattan under President Trump. Conditions in hold rooms at 26 Federal Plaza have been called inhumane in court filings from detainees. They cite inadequate food, overcrowding, and lack of hygiene

products. ICE's own internal rules generally prohibit holding children there unless they pose a safety risk. More than 5,400 people have been held at the site this year. That already surpasses totals for the entire four years of the previous administration. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. It's the year of the horse in the lunar calendar, and people will be celebrating this Sunday at the annual Lunar New Year parade in Manhattan's Chinatown. If you don't have plans yet this weekend, consider catching the parade at Mott and Canal Streets. Festivities kick off at one in the afternoon. There will be lion dances and percussive instruments along the route, which ends near Sarah D. Roosevelt Park

on Forsyth Street. Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? Speaking of fun, coming up, we check in with our arts and culture desk to see what's happening in our region. That's after the break. A long winter, new music to check out in the month of March, and the 10 building becomes a museum. That's all ahead on the arts and culture check-in with our arts and culture editor, Matthew Snipper. What's up, Matt? Hi, Junae. Thanks for having me. Happy to have you all the time. What is up? Snow? I mean, who wants to talk about this?

Nobody wants to go. We wanted to go away. Nobody wants to hear about it. But, you know, I had this experience where I was like, all right, sun's going to be shining this week. You know, after Tuesday is just blizzard nightmare. And then I woke up on Wednesday and it was snowing again. And I just was like, I literally said out loud. I said, are you kidding me? I mean, it was like I was getting trolled by Mother Nature.

I was like, this is, I'm getting, you know, trolled by the stratosphere or whatever. Where does snow come from? Clouds. Not the stratosphere. I'm like, I don't know. But I do know. Swine the culture in there. Not a meteorologist.

No, but I know that your desk has been working on some reporting about how long this winter feels. Yes. You know, we were talking about how to cover the snowstorm. Obviously, we, you know, Gothamist and WMYC brings you lots of news about how to move around in the snow, how much snow is coming, when it is coming. But we also went, man, this blows. Like this is what I'm feeling what people talking about. People are like, okay, I need to know, is there school or not? You know, is the subway running?

Yes. But also when people talk, they kind of go, dude, like not anymore. Not again. Not again. So our reporter Hannah Frischberg, contact a couple therapists. She said, are we making this up? or is this worse than usual? You know, as a person who often deals with seasonal depression,

I can only imagine what that reporting was like for her. So Hannah found out from talking to one of these therapists who said, yeah, people are bummed. And not only our patients, all the therapists are bummed, you know, which I thought I was like, all right, this is pretty universal. Both of the therapists that she spoke to said 100%. This is just so much more of a thing in their conversations with patients than it has been in seasons past. It absolutely has been keeping people down in a way that they found, I don't want to say insurmountable, but near to it.

They were like, yeah, it just keeps coming. We're not in control of this, and it's going to continue to happen. But what you can be in control of is how much you use your vitamin D supplements. So keep that handy. Yeah, you know, I started taking vitamin D two weeks ago. I've never taken it before and I was like, maybe this is going to help, you know? I mean, it's not going to hurt. So I got some capsules.

They had a sunshine on them. For those listening, you know, aren't aware of vitamin D is what a nutrient you get from the sun. I think it helps with your muscles, your bones. I think it helps for your brain from not breaking, basically. So you can get this in pill form. So I'm just doubling the daily amount because I think I have been pretty down and out looking particularly pale. Oh, my goodness. Feeling particularly pale, actually.

So I'm going hard on that. Yeah. So, Matt, what else is keeping you from being sad this winter? Sad is a sort of unfunny acronym. Whoever came up with that, I think, gets some booze. But it is short for seasonal effective disorder, which basically means, you know, you're bummed in the wintertime. I suppose it's seasonal. It could be neutral.

Maybe there are some people somewhere who are bummed in the summer, but I doubt it. Yeah. You know, a lot of people, my downstairs neighbors, shout out to Nick and Amy. They have a thing called a sad lamp, basically, which is a flat screen that pumps out faux sunshine. They have like, you know, the flat screen TV wall sized of sad lamps. And they turn this thing on and it is, it's incredible. Like the whole room is just glowing. So I want to get one of those for myself, but I've enjoyed going down to my downstairs neighbor's house and kind of basking in there. sad glow. Yeah. I mean, the other thing that I've been doing, I would say my consistent

single source of happiness and I did do this this weekend is just watching traders. Oh my goodness. Love traders. So if you haven't done that this winter, I would say, subscribe to Peacock.

You can cancel it after you watch all of traders. Yeah, you can't. I did cancel after last season. I would never, for those of you were traders, fans, would be out immediately as a trader. Same.

I would be so stressed out. It's insane. But I've been watching Traders and now I'm waiting for the, I think the last episode this coming week. Yeah. Which I'm excited and stressed about. Same. I hope you know who gets you know what. Yes.

Are you up to date? Yeah. Oh, man. I just don't want to spoil it for anyone else. But. All right. Resvice, Dorinda, though. RIP to all my housewives.

Yeah. So sad. Yeah, it's bad. I was rooting for each and every one of them. My God. So for folks who don't have a sad lamp or who don't have peacock and really could use some help this winter as it still goes on, is there a hotline or a number they can call? Talk to someone? Yeah, Jeney, there is a number you can call.

You can call 9888, which is a mental health support hotline and talk to somebody who can help you figure out how to get the help you need. Yeah. You know, Matt, February has come and gone. It's already over. And so that means that there's a new list of music concerts that we can check out in March. Yes. We have, thank you to music writer, Hage Steamer, a great list of shows coming up in March. And honestly, we had trouble narrowing it down. There is a ton of music coming up to see this month. I've got tickets actually to a few things already. Date night. babysitters set. And I'm actually pretty stoked. I mean, and it's a pretty vast array of stuff happening. Okay.

Who should we check out? I mean, I will shout out quickly. This isn't in our list because it was just too obvious, I think, for a lot of people. Because you're going to go or you're not. But Lady Gaga is going to be playing. Come on now. So to all the monsters out there waiting. Are you a big Gaga fan?

I'm a Gaga fan. I wouldn't call myself a monster. Is it a little monster, right? Wouldn't call myself any kind of monster. I don't know. I'm not a music editor anymore, so I don't, I don't. Oh. All right.

Pause up here from our producer. Okay. The littlest monster over there. I love it. Now, Mitzky, who is sort of a indie icon, I would say, is playing six shows at the shed this month, which is a pretty serious run. So it's got a, she has a new album coming out. She has inspired a lot of passion from her fans. She's an amazing lyricist.

And I think as she has continued her career has leaned further into a kind of theatrical quality in her music and performances. So getting a lot of costuming, a lot of high drama. She's great. So she's going to be at the shed. I've seen her perform a couple of different times in different sized venues. And she's just, she is intense no matter what she does in the best way. You know, I'm not actually such a musical theater kind of person. And that's not to say that she is, you know, kind of bringing it in any sort of Broadway style, but she is a very, I don't think it's unfair to say over the top performer.

She really, it's earnest, but it is with with passion and verve. Yeah. And kind of to let her, to see her performing with a full kind of theatrical backing, as opposed to seeing her just, you know, with her band, but to really see her have the space to open it up, be creative and bring along people beside her who are going to be kind of having, you know, echoing. her vibe, I think those are going to be really interesting shows. That should be really cool. Love a high energy show, love an over-the-top artist. So, yeah, definitely a cool one. I love her.

Who else? So separate from that, there is a festival that happened in New Jersey in July called Dripping. It happens on the grounds of a Renaissance Fair. It's a kind of techno-forward festival, but they have live music. And the folks who put that on also have an ongoing performance series. at the club nowadays in Queens. Love that spot. Near nowadays, at a still unannounced venue,

they're actually running a three-night run called Planetarium, where they're going to be having a bunch of different ambient music, where you can go and lay down and chill out, and they're going to have some really subtle live performances. The woman Elery Saxal, who I think is just fantastic, is going to be playing. She's a composer. She's done some soundtracks.

She just put out a new album of improvised music with a saxophone player called Henry Solomon. It's excellent. She knows how to bring some real texture and passion to the ambient music that she's done. So I think that is going to be a really nice way to both kind of zone in and zone out. Sometimes one of those things where the quietest music can actually have the most texture. So you can find yourself both relaxing but focusing on the kind of little nuggets of sound. Yeah. And did I hear you say like people will be like laying out?

Why would you not be? Okay. Who wants to be vertical when you're listening to music? All right. Any other vertical shows that we can check on? I think Sunrah Orchestra, so for those who are not familiar with Sun Ra, he is a legendary jazz keyboardist. He, who passed some time. But his group featuring the, I believe, now 100-year-old saxophone player, Marshall Allen, is still very regularly performing.

Okay. Which is amazing. And Marshall Allen, I've seen him play not so long ago. He's still a powerhouse. He looks great. He's in great shape. What he has coming out of the instrument, I mean, it's hard for anybody to get out of a saxophone for a hundred-year-old musician to be kind of blaring with that kind of fire is awesome. Yeah.

I don't mean to imply that 100 is old. But, you know, who knows how long he's going to be around. Keep it real. Yeah. 100 is old. He is old. And he is a real legend. If you have not seen him, go see him.

So he's playing at TVI on March 11th. Okay. With the whole orchestra. And they are still enrobed. They're a great, fun, amazing group to see. Nice. Right now on PBS also is a documentary, I think an American Masters about SunRah that is really worth watching. Okay.

Well do. He's great. Anything for our house music lovers? Yes. So if you are a house music fan in New York City, chances are pretty good you have been to a shelter party. The DJ Timmy Registered has been throwing this party. It was a club in Tribeca in the past. Now it's a kind of roving party.

And he plays a lot of different kinds of genres. He plays Latin music. He'll play pop and pop and R&B. But he plays kind of eternal sounding music, stuff that really transcends time and space. And it just feels kind of levitating kind of music. I think that's the best kind of thing that house music can do to you. Yeah. So there is an anniversary for shelter, a 35th anniversary party that's happening actually over two nights.

One night at the $3 bill. Love that spot. venue in Greenpoint and then again at public records where he is a resident the next night. And those are happening in early March. On Gothamist, we actually have an interview that should be up tomorrow with, to me, about kind of the history of shelter, but also about how DJing has changed in New York, how club culture has changed, what keeps him interested, and how he, you know, kind of stays up to date. It's really interesting.

You know, he talked a lot about how the idea of the idea of the. this 12-hour DJ set isn't prevalent anymore. One thing he also talks about is, you know, drugs and alcohol have not been welcome at his parties. People have always drink Gatorade. Phones are not allowed on the dance floor. Because there is a little bit of, honestly, of giving up, you're not going to be, you know, you're not going to have a drink there. You're not going to be checking your phone.

You do need to submit a little bit. But it also means that everybody around you has done the same thing. Yeah. 35 years is a long time. That's even longer than Mayor Mumdani has been alive. Speaking of Mumdani, I know that you have been keeping up with his cultural references, and I want to share a quote. As George Orwell wrote nearly 80 years ago, they compel us to reject the evidence of our eyes and our ears. When did Mayor Mumdani say that him? Where was he? So Mom Doni was talking about 1984, I was quoting 1984 when he was talking about the shootings of Alex Pretty and Renee Good.

And just the kind of the pushback from Christy Noam and other. people in the Trump administration to say, okay, what you saw is not what you have seen. You know, this was a shooting that happened because of X, not because of Y. And the, I think, forced, you know, I hesitate Jesus word, but almost kind of gaslighting that, you know, people have felt when kind of going, hey, look, I saw 17 videos of this. It looked like this. And then the government saying, no, no, it looked like this. You're wrong. Mom, Donnie couldn't explain that himself. And I thought what was interesting about using Orwell to do this. is think about how canonized Orwell is. You know, 1984, this is a book you read in high school. Like, these are things that we go, oh, my God, you know, Big Brother was invented in this book. He's using the heft of Orwell to kind of like you say, okay, you don't even have to believe me, Mom, Donnie, believe this guy. He said it so well that every high school student in America is reading this as a warning sign.

So the same thing has been talked about and we've all gone, okay, we need to, you know, absorb this lesson. So I thought that Mom Dani picked that out and said, you know, you don't have to believe me, believe this guy who's given you this warning decades and decades and decades ago. I thought that was very smart that he chose to invoke Orwell. It was on an interfaith breakfast in early February. He gave a speech. And this actually wasn't even the subject. Most of we was talking about. He was talking, I think, largely about Ramadan coming up and being excited to be, I mean, honestly, it was a pretty joyous speech. but I felt like he needed to take a moment to address what was going on.

One story that I found very interesting that came off of the Arts and Culture Desk this week, the tin building is now becoming a museum? A balloon museum. That's wild to me. Yes. From oysters to balloons. Oysters to balloons. One man's delicacy is another man's balloon.

Tell us more about this story. The tin building is a food hall that has been opened by Jean-George with some. financial backing from others. And it just basically has not worked. It's not been open very long. They were, you know, losing, I forget what, you know, six figure sum a day. There were more workers there than actual people. Yeah.

I mean, food critics would know better than me, but it does make me think, you know, this kind of people see the ghost kitchen and the idea of the food hall. And honestly, I still feel like this makes you seem like you're going to eat at the airport. Have you eaten at the tin building? I haven't eaten there, but I did hang out there to watch the rain pass. And then I love just being honest. That's kind of like what it's good for when you're down at South Reese C. A dry spot. I just don't think this isn't kind of what people want to eat.

I think this is the kind of thing that you want to do when you're like on your lunch break. And that's like the best you can get, you know. Like I was at the airport and I was at LaGuardia and I went to Bubbies at LaGuardia. daughter and we had, you know, pancakes. And it was, it was cute. I was, like, delighted that it existed. Yeah. Eating in a giant open space with 70 different restaurants that you kind of want to go to

is not a thing you're going to do on a Saturday. I just wondered how much of a destination it would be. Like, you're in New York City. Who's going out and say, hey, guys, let's go to that food hall. Yeah. I mean, what I'm bummed about is all the people who work there, you know, because they put a lot of effort, a lot of money behind this. and seem like, yeah, you know, this is going to be an anchor location for, you know, a new burgeoning up-and-coming neighborhood, whatever kind of, you know, garbage real estate agent would say. And, like, it's not.

People didn't want it. Yeah. You know, so basically everybody is out. And now they've signed a lease for five years of balloon excitement. I mean, I love a balloon. You know, you want to go to balloon saloon in Tribeca, like a longstanding, like, small business. Like, go support that. Yeah.

Like, we don't need this. Balloons, we're taking care of in New York. Balloons alone, order from them, they are great. Everyone will be delighted. Not this. Before I let you go, Matt, there's one other story. The Center for Brooklyn History, can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah.

I want to say, go check out the story on gotthmus.com. Basically, the Brooklyn Pipe Library has some archivists who are going through. I mean, the way that described it, it sounds like basically like big boxes of junk that have been in storage in upstate New York, which includes several locks of Alexander Hamilton's hair. Fascinating to some of us. I'm sorry. It's like if you went into an estate sale for Brooklyn history is what it sounds like.

And they're kind of going, oh, what are we got here? What do we got here? You know, there was kind of weird looking fake heads from an old Coney Island ride. There are ceramic models of the Williamsburg Savings Bank building. And this stuff has just been sitting in storage forever. So the archivists are going through everything. cataloging it, photographing it, cleaning it, measuring it, and they're going to put everything up on a, you know, hopefully soon to be revealed website so that you can go through and, you know, see what the history of the borough is. What's the goal of this project?

To, you know, not have history be forgotten. Look, everyone has a storage space. Everybody's got a bunch of bins that they're like, yeah, I'm going to go through this forever. And then, you know, eventually you go through it or like you let your lease on your storage space laps and all your stuff gets thrown away. Imagine if that was a borough, you know? So I think actually making sure that an entire giant part of our city's history is not just kind of languishing is crucial. Yeah, yeah. All right.

That's WMYC's Arts and Culture editor Matthew Schnipper. Matt, thanks again. Janay, thank you for having me. Always a pleasure. Also, quick shout out to Luther Vandross, Mariah Carey and Wu-Tang Clan. They were all nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So that is really cool. All New York connections there.

That's very cool. all well-deserved. Yeah, yeah. All right, so my colleague, Matt, just ended that last segment talking about Brooklyn history. But let's discuss one national and historical figure. Civil rights leader, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, will be laid to rest this weekend. His life as a political activist impacted others to be the change they wanted to see, from New Yorkers like the Reverend Al Sharpton to Mayor Zoramam Dhani.

It's safe to say they all stand on his shoulders. My colleague Arun Vanacalpawal recently wrote about Jackson's impact on New York City for our new site, Gothamus, and he joins me now. Hey, Arun. Hey, Janay. You know, as a race and justice reporter yourself, what will you remember Jesse Jackson for? So I grew up in suburban Texas, and in the 1980s, which is when he kind of really achieved a lot of. a certain, you know, extraordinary level of prominence in the political world.

I was not politicized. I was too young to really make sense of it, but all I could really sense was, in a very unaware way, was that he was sort of like the inheritor of the civil rights movement. It was his cadence. He was statuesque, held himself very powerfully.

And, you know, as a kid, you absorb these things. He was a very impressive person. I remember him performing in the early 70s on Sesame Street. And it's this incredible moment where he's standing before this big group of kids and having them participate in this kind of call-and-response poem called I Am Somebody. And it was kind of just an extraordinary moment where he was really having this. them say these things like, you know, I am somebody, I may be poor, but I am somebody, I may be on welfare, but I am somebody. I think it's just really poignant. Yeah, I'll also always remember

that and I will always remember Jesse Jackson's famous words, keep hope alive. Love that. And he spoke about that hope and, you know, what it takes to keep that hope during an interview on WMYC in 2019. Here's what he said. to lose when you stop kicking, when you stop cutting water. And we're still swimming sometime underwater. Never want to balance unless we fought. We fight back, we win. And that therein lies the hope.

So he's saying there, you only lose when you stop kicking, when you stop cutting water, and we were still swimming sometimes underwater. Arun, what do you make of that? here we are we're kind of marking the passing of this person who I think was for a good stretch perhaps the most important civil rights leader in America for years but what those words make me kind of think of is when I you know I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people who do that kind of work in in less glorified ways who work in communities do grassroots work And it sounds like the thing that they in some ways internalize and live out, which is that there's not a lot of wins when you work deep in the trenches of inequality and often in dignity.

You have to just keep at it. You recalibrate what serves as a win, a victory. It's not something that we in the mainstream media tend to often see as wins and the zeros and ones. a score sheet of political power. It's something else. I think that's what he's saying. You just have to keep on moving. Keep at it.

Swimming sometime under the water, I think that's what a lot of people do. And that's how they sort of internalize what is of consequence. Jesse Jackson ran for president of the United States twice. He was unsuccessful in both those bids. He ran once in 1984 and then again in 1988. I want to talk about that 80s. because some political experts that you talked with said Jackson's second run paved the way for

the election of New York City's first black mayor. I'm talking about David Dinkins. Could you talk more about that? Yeah. I mean, I think we have to remind ourselves as New Yorkers and New York is often not as ahead of the pack as we want to convince ourselves that it is. Often it is leading. And, you know, I grew up in Houston where we had a female mayor, where we had a woman mayor and Kathy Whitmire in the early 80s. There were cities around the country, big cities like L.A. and Chicago that were electing black mayors in the 80s. And there was this slow rise. But New York City was kind of not part of that until Jesse Jackson's second campaign. His campaigns really mobilized voters who had not been mobilized prior to that.

And that was part of the strength and power of these campaigns of Jesse Jackson's in New York City. He in 1988 lost a state of New York, but he really turned out voters, communities of color, other voters in New York City. And that really kind of alerted people to the fact that maybe there's something going on here. And the co-chair of his New York State campaign was David Dinkins, who was at the time, the borough president of Manhattan. And using the energy and force and the intelligence gleaned from that campaign, he launched his own campaign for mayor and he won. And, you know, he did that despite all the naysaysaysers at the time. And he did it with help from Jesse Jackson. Yeah, yeah.

In your article on our news site, Gothamist, you remind us that Jesse Jackson had this long and storied history in New York City. his Rainbow Push Coalition had an office on Wall Street in a building that was actually owned by Donald Trump. He was also arrested here, you know, quite a few times during various demonstrations. But something that Jesse Jackson did well was take big moral stands without losing public support. Where do you see that legacy in New York politics today? Yeah, I mean, yes, he said something that in some ways, I think, defined him politically. Certainly in New York City for decades, he was very active in pushing to end apartheid rule in South Africa. He was very vocal in support of the Palestinian cause.

And some of those things were seen as setting the stage for future leaders, people who kind of brought some of these issues more and more into the mainstream. One of the people I spoke to, Jean Theo Harris, a distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College. She told me, you know, Jesse Jackson was the Bernie Sanders of his time. And she also said, you know, one of the shoulders that Zoran Mamdani stands on is that of Jesse Jackson. And so in some ways, you know, when we think about how outside of the mainstream, if you will, Zeran Mamdani's championing of pro-Palestinian rights were not too long ago. He didn't really back away from them. And yet he won.

And that was seen as an, you know, extraordinary thing given the politics of New York City historically. And so in many ways, all of that, you know, these built upon like building blocks, you know, over the decades for someone like Jesse Jackson, then Bernie Sanders, and then today, Zora Mandani, who in many ways, you know, he's internationally renowned for some of these stances. Yeah, for sure. That's WNYC's in Roon, Venna Kappaul. Thanks a lot of Roan. Thanks, Jene. You've been listening to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. See you next time.