May 12, 2026

THE BIG STORY

Photo: Google Earth

Over the past decade, a new generation of retail brands — including Everlane, Aesop, Buck Mason, and Warby Parker — have branched out from their Elizabeth Street origins and multiplied across the city. Of course, you won’t find them on mall-brand shopping corridors like Manhattan’s 34th Street or Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Instead, these chains have congregated in stylish shopping strips like Bleecker Street in the West Village and Cobble Hill’s Bergen Street — corridors that have a distinctly “neighborhood” feel and attract younger shoppers with plenty of cash and a taste for (mildly) adventurous fashion. Now, writes Anne Cadet, there are little Nolitas everywhere.

THE CITY POLITIC

Photo: Shawn Inglima/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promise of a rent freeze inches closer to the finish line, Clio Chang reports. Last week, the Rent Guidelines Board, the independent body that decides on annual rental adjustments for the city’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, issued its preliminary vote. Crowds of tenants showed up inside La Guardia Community College in Queens as the board voted. It set a range between 0 and 2 percent for one-year leases and between 0 and 4 percent for two-year leases. These numbers aren’t binding, but the final vote, which will happen at the end of June, traditionally falls within the ranges (which means the rent freeze is still a possibility).

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ADVICE

Illustration: Emma Erickson

Dear Apartment Department,

When I moved into my rent-stabilized apartment around ten years ago, I assumed it was temporary and I’d eventually buy a place one day. Obviously, that hasn’t happened and I’m now realizing that it probably never will — I just can’t afford it. I love my current apartment and would ideally like to stay here long term, but the only problem is it’s old and a lot of things could use updating. I was considering doing some of my own renovations (other people have done it in the building and my landlord doesn’t seem to care). I’m thinking of putting in a washer and dryer and remodeling the kitchen with new cabinets, a sink, and countertops. But is it foolish to spend thousands of dollars on a place that, despite guaranteed lease renewals, isn’t actually mine? 

Sincerely, 
Fixer Upper 

ARCHITECTURE

Video: Courtesy of Subject

Michelle Sinclair Colman started racing skyscraper stairwells a little over a year ago. While this may sound like a possibly unhinged way to spend one’s weekends, tower running, as it’s officially called, is a real sport, with organized races, rankings, commentary, and a global following. And these races do more than test endurance, she writes. They reveal the hidden logic of these buildings, particularly the architectural nuances and eccentricities of their often unseen stairwells.

"I remember reading On the Calculation of Volume last summer. I was on vacation and I  was sobbing, and I tried to make my friends and girlfriend promise it wouldn’t happen to us and that we would all believe each other if we got stuck in a time loop." —Tyhe Cooper        Photo: Frankie Alduino

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The Receptionist is a Second Stage production at the Irene Diamond Stage at Signature Center through May 24.     Photo: Joan Marcus

Pam MacKinnon directs Pulitzer finalist Eisa Davis’s new play about four gifted teenagers whose lives intertwine at a prestigious music program in Berkeley. Davis also wrote the music, which is never quite the same performance to performance, as her characters wonder whether and how to connect and create in the face of a burning world. —Sara Holdren

Frida Kahlo lived like an opera character: Her sufferings, imagination, and romance with Diego Rivera all deserved orchestral accompaniment. In her 2022 opera, Gabriela Lena Frank maps that tumult onto the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the work makes its Met debut in a production by Deborah Colker. —Justin Davidson

Now in its 17th year, this self-confident art fair has always gone its own way: It is less pressured, more fun, and looser in feeling. It includes 76 galleries and artist-run spaces, more than a third of which are new. That makes it a big small fair — and a good one. Returning exhibitors include Anton Kern Gallery, Uffner & Liu, and David Kordansky Gallery, which will present a solo show of the great underknown New York artist Jason Fox. —Jerry Saltz

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A weekly roundup of Curbed’s coverage for real-estate obsessives.