May 19, 2026

THE BIG STORY

Photo: NYC Mayor’s Office/YouTube

For months, writes David Freedlander, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s opponents have looked for ways to knock him down a peg. They tried calling him an antisemite. They tried calling him weak on crime. Now, thanks to a 70-second video, they think they have something. The rich are threatening to move out of the city (for real this time, they mean it), and they have a single frame as explanation: a close-up of Mamdani standing at night in front of the $238 million penthouse of Ken Griffin — the Republican megadonor and billionaire CEO of the hedge fund Citadel — name-checking Griffin, tapping the camera, and promising to “tax the rich.”

INSTITUTIONS

Photo: Jenny Gorman/Met Opera

“It was not a difficult decision,” Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb told Rachel Corbett of accepting up to $200 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He has dealt with mounting debt, declining sales, and an aging patron class during his nearly 20 years on the job, and the pandemic gutted more than $150 million in revenue from the Met. 

Then, in April, Saudi Arabia called it off, blaming the war in Iran, and left Gelb scrambling for a way out of a fresh crisis. Facing a liquidity crunch and regional conflict, the Saudis are turning off the cash spigot across the board, shutting down funding for LIV Golf and scaling back plans for the estimated $500 billion megacity project Neom. The reneged opera deal, which had been announced when it was still in a “memorandum of understanding” phase, is a major setback for the nation’s largest performing-arts institution.

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HOUSING

Photo: Anne Kadet

Annie Grossman’s new landlord would like her to relocate to an apartment in the landmarked building he owns just down the block. It’s a tempting offer. If she gives up her rent-stabilized, 1,500-square-foot two-bedroom in Gramercy, for which she pays $1,300 a month, he’ll install Annie and her family in a larger, newly renovated unit at the same rate for the rest of her life. Anne Kadet reports on the family’s housing dilemma. 

DINING OUT

Video: Hugo Yu

A multicourse tasting can be transcendent or it can drown a chef’s talents in too-muchness. Hiroki Odo, whose namesake Odo serves a traditionally extravagant multi-dish kaiseki that’s been praised as one of the city’s great tasting menus, has opened Odo East Village as a kind of fine-dining izakaya with a menu reminiscent of the nine-course original but with the spirit of a jazzy Tokyo bar. The pressure’s off; the food isn’t, writes chief restaurant critic Matthew Schneier.

Bette Midler.       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

Boots Riley’s follow-up to his 2018 directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You, is even funnier, stranger, and sharper in its critique of capitalism. The surreal comedy is about a group of professional shoplifters, led by Keke Palmer, who get drawn into a war with a girlboss fashion CEO played by Demi Moore. —Alison Willmore

The true sign that summer is here is the return of the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park series, which kicks off this year with a Romeo & Juliet, directed by Saheem Ali, in which the lovers speak to each other in Spanish while the rest of the play is performed in English. Daniel Bravo Hernández and Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens play the young couple. —Jackson McHenry

This lineup arrived in my group chats like a boulder thrown into a lake. The selection of alternative artists, old and new, is purpose built for those who feel worshipful in response to certain guitar solos. A friend recalled her last time seeing one of the headliners, the Jesus and Mary Chain: “So loud my organs were vibrating.” For some people of taste, this is exactly the draw. —Amy Rose Spiegel

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