In the Manhattan D.A. Race, Arguing for a Fresh Point of View |
Weather: Clearing as the day goes on, but periods of showers or storms. High around 80. |
Alternate-side parking: In effect until Saturday (Juneteenth). |
 | | Sarah Blesener for The New York Times |
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One of the candidates for Manhattan district attorney, Eliza Orlins, has been a public defender for at least a decade. Another candidate, Tahanie Aboushi (above, center), has been a civil rights lawyer. A third candidate, Dan Quart, is a state assemblyman. |
None of the three has any experience being a prosecutor. And that, they say, is a good thing. |
Ms. Orlins, Ms. Aboushi and Mr. Quart have argued that true change in the criminal justice system — making it less punitive, for example, or less racist — can only come from someone who hasn't been tainted by the establishment. |
But they are having trouble raising money, and distinguishing themselves from one another and even other candidates with prosecutorial backgrounds. |
There are eight Democratic candidates vying to replace Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney, who is not running for re-election. Aside from Ms. Orlins, Ms. Aboushi and Mr. Quart, they are all former prosecutors. |
Among the leading candidates, Alvin Bragg has been a prosecutor in the state attorney general's office, and Tali Farhadian Weinstein has been a federal prosecutor and general counsel for the Brooklyn district attorney's office. |
Mr. Bragg has pledged to reform the Manhattan district attorney's office, saying he will work on reducing the number of people behind bars, create a unit to investigate police misconduct and overhaul the sex crimes unit. While Ms. Weinstein has staked out more moderate positions than other candidates, she has championed changes including forming a specialized unit to address gender-based violence. |
Ms. Orlins and Ms. Aboushi have both said they will cut the size of the district attorney's office in half and decline to prosecute many low-level crimes. |
Ms. Orlins has also spoken in favor of decriminalizing the buying and selling of sex. (Mr. Vance stopped prosecuting prostitution this spring.) |
Mr. Quart has taken a more moderate position and recently emphasized his commitment to public safety. |
A dead black bear with a large open wound was found in a parking lot on Staten Island, which has no known population of wild bears. [ABC 7] |
People who had been moved from homeless shelters into hotels during the pandemic are protesting a return to the status quo. [Gothamist] |
Eight years after Maya Wiley was tapped by Mayor Bill de Blasio to bring broadband to low-income neighborhoods, the program is still struggling. [The City] |
And finally: A trove of art in a humble apartment |
Observers of the art market have referred to the rising demand for work by contemporary African American artists in recent years as, among other things, a "furor" or "surging," and the work itself as "a hot commodity." Ten years ago, it was relatively rare to see a Black artist's work set a record at auction. |
Now, such sales are routine, boosted by numerous high-profile lots, perhaps most famously Kerry James Marshall's 1997 painting "Past Times" (purchased by the rapper and music producer Sean Combs for $21.1 million at a Sotheby's sale in 2018) and, more recently, Jean Michel-Basquiat's "In This Case" (1983), which sold at Christie's in May for $93.1 million — an astronomical price, but still only the second-highest ever paid for a Basquiat. |
Given the hype surrounding such figures, it's surprising that one of the more interesting collections of contemporary African American art is housed inside a fairly humble Manhattan two-bedroom apartment on Madison Avenue. |
It belongs to Alvin Hall, 68, a broadcaster, financial educator and author who, through good timing, taste and a bit of luck began collecting in the 1980s and has been able to buy masterpieces by artists whose work is now worth much more. At a time when art — and Black art in particular — has been inflated and commodified to the point of a quasi bank transaction, Hall is a model of best practices for non-billionaires hoping to amass a world-class collection. His apartment also illustrates some of the realities of how to live with art when you only have a minimal amount of space: He owns 377 works, 342 of which are in storage. |
It's Tuesday — stop and look. |
Metropolitan Diary: Hardware |
Walking up University Place toward Union Square, I saw a man coming out of a hardware store. |
As I walked by, a gray-haired woman holding a dog approached the man and asked whether he worked there. |
He tapped a cigarette out of a pack and nodded. |
"If I brought in a machete," she said, "Could you sharpen it?" |
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