The buds have bloomed, the temperatures have risen, and the city’s best parks are filling up with folks in serious need of a vitamin D boost. Yes, summer is on the horizon and with it comes the return of some of our favorite outdoor bars, including Watermark Bar, which will be back as the tropically-themed Watermark Beach this May.
The 10,000-square-foot outdoor bar and restaurant at Pier 15 in the Seaport District will officially reopen for the season with an all-day Cinco de Mayo Beach Bash on Sunday, May 5, starting at noon, complete with $5 tacos and Coronas until 3pm as well as live DJs and free Cinco beads for the first 500 people. (You can RSVP for free entry here.)
That sunny soiree kicks off a full season of fun at Watermark Beach, which will be gussied up for the warm weather with Instagram-ready tiki decor, seasonal drinks and twinkling lights for when the party stretches into the nighttime hours. And this summer, the al fresco experience will introduce new cabanas and a curated new cocktail program, in addition to large-format Cooler Packages, which will allow guests to have their canned and bottled drinks ready on ice as they visit.
The new Cooler Packages range from the $150 “Be Cool” option—which gets you eight canned cocktails or beers (Truly Tequila Soda, Coney Island IPA) as well as two mini bottles of “Rosé My Way” Hampton Water Rosé Wine—to the $300 Picnic Royalty package, equipped with one bottle of Casamigos or Titos, one bottle of Prosecco or Rosé and four canned cocktails or beers.
Balance out all the booze with a food menu full snacky, shareable items like jumbo chicken sliders, crispy coconut shrimp, carne asada tacos, classic lobster rolls and more. Check out pictures of the food-and-drink items, as well as the waterfront space below:
WatermarkCuisine at Watermark BeachWatermarkGrand Oyster Lobster Tower at Watermark BeachWatermarkPicnic Pier Packages at Watermark BeachWatermarkWatermark BeachWatermarkWatermark Beach
In the modern world, the eternal quest for space echoes across the urban landscape, suburban homes, and cozy countryside retreats alike. Whether you are a business looking to store inventory, a homemaker combating the clutter, or a digital nomad seeking a safe deposit for personal belongings, the need for effective storage is a universal challenge.…
Think bugs are creepy? Think again. That’s the message of IMAGINARI, an immersive art and science experience that opened today in Manhattan.
The year-long exhibition called The Insect World shows just how cool—and important—bugs actually are. You’ll get to walk through fields of 6-foot flowers, come face-to-face with Picasso bug artwork, and see a mantis partying under a disco ball. Larger-than-life ladybug sculptures dot the floor, and 200 faux monarch butterflies perch on a 12-foot cherry blossom tree. It all adds up to an important message of environmental stewardship. Tickets are on sale now for $36; the all-ages exhibition will be on view for one year.
IMAGINARI is the brainchild of Linda Uribe, who sees it as more than an exhibit. It’s a “community of people who want to do good,” she says. Amid a deluge of terrifying climate news, she hopes the exhibit will inspire people to take on conservation activities with excitement instead of dread.
While the exhibition is visually stunning and certainly Instagram-worthy, it also packs plenty of environmental messaging and cool science facts into its 12,000-square-foot space. For example, insects represent 80% of the world’s species with more than 1 million known species and potentially millions more to be discovered. These powerful pollinators also serve as sanitation experts. Bugs of all shapes and sizes get their moment in the spotlight at IMAGINARI.
Photograph: By Harol Baez / Courtesy of IMAGINARI
An oversized mantis sculpture offers a chance to admire the creature’s beauty. Fun fact: Mantises are the only insects in the world capable of turning their heads 180 degrees. Another sculpture spotlights the humble dung beetle (which kids will certainly love), while an artistic installation showcases the beauty of the Picasso bug (a patterned bug native to Africa). Graceful ladybug sculptures fly overhead.
In addition to sculpture, bugs are also the subject of close-up photography, textile artwork, and a film compilation. The stunning pieces show off insects’ colors and iridescence. As Uribe says, “insects are like the jewelry of nature.”
Photograph: By Harol Baez / Courtesy of IMAGINARI | Artwork by John Goodman
The collection features creations of renowned artists, including Marlene Huissoud, Bronx-based John Goodman, Japanese fiber artist Yumi Okita, the Seattle-based paper art duo Moth & Myth, New York-based artist Bella Hatkoff, macro photographer Thilina Hettiarachchi.
During the experience, listen for the specially curated ambient music to calm your nerves. Each guest will take home a pack of flower seeds that they can plant.
Photograph: By Harol Baez / Courtesy of IMAGINARI
Expect to spend more than an hour walking through the exhibition. Before you go, stop in the gift shop to see a loom—how ANYBAG (a New York bag) creates their recycled plastic bag tote. The Manhattan-based company repurposes and upcycles single-use plastic bags from NYC, saving them from reaching landfills and waterways.
Also at IMAGINARI, keep an eye out for workshops, classes, and other special programming. A floral design class, a beekeeping workshop, and a panel on sustainable landscape architecture are already on the schedule.
Find IMAGINARI at 200 Hudson Street in Tribeca, near Hudson Square, through April 2025. It’s a project of Hudson Square Properties, a joint venture of Trinity Church Wall Street, Norges Bank Investment Management, and Hines.
As any Italian living in NYC knows, some of the most delicious, Italian-tasting food in the city can be found at Piccola Cucina, a trio of restaurants by chef and restaurateur Philip Guardione.
Until now, Guardione has been operating his three Sicilian eateries—Piccola Cucina Enoteca, Osteria and Estiatorio—within the confines of Manhattan’s culinary scene. That has officially changed with the debut of Piccola Cucina Casa, a new concept that just opened at 141 Nevins Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.
The new location will be slinging out familiar dishes—ricciole pasta with braised tuna, pistacchio foam, ‘nduja and taralli crumble and a cotoletta alla Milanese, for example—but also serve as the owner’s first foray beyond traditional dining. In fact, on top of the restaurant on the ground floor is a duo of recently renovated guesthouse suites that people can actually rent out.
Photograph: Courtesy of Piccola Cucina Casa
According to an official company spokesperson, Piccola Cucina’s apartments are inspired by the Italian concept of “villeggiatura,” basically resting in a pleasant place.
“Guardione wanted to offer insiders a ‘Piccola Cucina Casa 360’ [experience], like a bed and breakfast,” the spokesperson explained, also noting that “inquiries will be handled very old school.” The exact reservation process is not entirely clear at the moment.
Photograph: Courtesy of Piccola Cucina Casa
At the moment, the two units—each one boasting a private patio, wood beam ceilings, brick walls, windows galore and skylights—are available for rent on a monthly basis for about $4,500.
But back to the restaurant: the excellent Italian fare will be complemented by cocktails and what the eatery claims to be the most comprehensive Sicilian wine list in the city (we believe it). Among the over 150 different selections on offer are picks from Veneto, Toscana, Guili Venezia, Etna, Messina and more.
As the weather turns warmer, folks heading to the Rockaways should consider spending some time at the new 35-acre preserve that officials just unveiled.
Photograph: Daniel Avila
Boasting five different ecosystems, the new preserve features accessible connections to the Rockaway boardwalk and beach as well.
Expect a number of pedestrian pathways weaving through the preserve, allowing visitors to come face to face with the various natural environments on site: maritime grassland, maritime dunes, maritime shrubland, maritime forest and maritime swale.
Photograph: Daniel Avila
Officials have also built a new welcome center, home to a community meeting space, office space for park rangers, crew headquarters for maintenance staff and public restrooms, according to an official press release.
“The Rockaway renaissance takes another historic step forward today,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Jr. in an official statement. “What was once a vacant, overgrown illegal dumping ground for decades is now a stunning hub of wildlife and a successful example of what community-centered sustainability work looks like.”
Photograph: Daniel Avila
But there’s more: a local non-profit, RISE, has also set up camp in the area. The organization will be operating a native plant nursery, “raising locally-adapted native plant seedlings and saplings to support ongoing revegetation of the nature preserve, dunes, and other natural areas around the coast,” reads the press release, while an urban farm will be producing food as well.
The new preserve is part of a larger project called Arverne East that includes the revamping of a vacant 116-acre oceanfront site on the Rockaway Peninsula. When completed, the development will include 1,650 units of housing, most of which will be affordable, plus non-residential spaces, outdoor public destinations and more.
The area is about to look very different, starting with the new preserve.
Petitioning season formally wraps at the beginning of April during New York election years, kicking off the true contest of out-lawyering fellow candidates to get their names knocked off the ballot for the next month. Accusations of signature fraud abound in this objection period, leaving the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) and the courts with the task of sorting through it all.
“So the motion is made and seconded? Candidate is off the ballot” is what a commissioner would say, often with little fanfare.
Every petition form is presumed to be valid upon filing if it contains enough signatures for the candidate’s desired office. Any registered voter can then challenge the validity of a petition, usually within a few days of the last filing date. In the best cases, objectors will challenge several candidates in a race or multiple races and the BOE will find the claims against them invalid. They’re safe and on the ballot until the state primary on June 25.
In undesirable circumstances, candidates or their representatives are harangued, scrutinized, dragged through the mud by their opponents, sued, overburdened with the sheer bureaucracy of the electoral system, or kicked off the ballot by the BOE. In the worst cases, criminal charges are filed against a candidate with possible prison time eventually, but experts consider that rare.
It’s a delicate routine that most candidates running for elected office dutifully leave in the hands of election attorneys if they can afford to do so.
“Petitioning challenging is an age-old practice where often, party organizations seek to knock off challengers from the ballot,” said New York Law School Professor Jeffrey M. Wice, who specializes in redistricting, voting rights, and census law. “New York makes it complicated and time-consuming—petition challenges are often successful because of clerical mistakes, illegible writing. There’s a number of reasons a candidate can be removed from the ballot if there are enough fraudulent or incorrect signatures.”
Because of the high level of competition between all candidates, some resort to shadier tactics, like forging dates on signatures or signing dead people’s names. Black and brown candidates are not immune to this.
Assemblymember Eddie Gibbs, who is running for re-election to the Assembly in the 68th District and is a district leader, has had a penchant for digging up election fraud since 2013 because of his lowkey rivalry with district leader Johnathan Ruiz. “We would first work together and then we actively started supporting different candidates and running against each other,” said Gibbs as he headed out to check with residents about their signatures last week. “The first time he beat me, I looked at his petitions thoroughly and I was like, ‘These are good signatures,’ so I didn’t bother [to challenge]. The second time, I saw the same pattern on signatures, so I went to the BOE and started putting in names and you see them in red—that means these people are deceased. I said, ‘Let me walk to the door.’And I take the signature to folks and they are pissed.”
According to the current BOE New York County’s recorded objection ledger, Gibbs has had his own petitions challenged by a few people, including his opponent in the Assembly race, Xavier Santiago. Gibbs also challenged Santiago and candidate William Smith. But his main targets were 68th District leader candidates Juhaib Choudhury, Nina Saxon, and Ruiz.
Gibbs planned on suing all three based on incorrect dates and improper witnesses—the latter is a serious violation he said he found in their petitioning forms. Witnesses to petition signatures have to be accurately reported and aren’t usually the candidates themselves. Gibbs’s sleuth team double-checked the dates and people collected through residents’ home security cameras.
Some candidates have the double worry of being targeted because of their race or ethnicity, especially if they’re the only person of color running for an office in a primarily white district or county. Such is the situation for Westchester County District Attorney candidate William Wagstaff III, who is running against DA candidate Susan Cacace to replace DA Miriam Rocah.
To summarize, Wagstaff received complaints from his volunteer petitioners and multiple people who had signed petitions for his candidacy that they were being “menaced, intimidated, and threatened” by investigators hired by Cacace to question the validity of the petitions they signed, according to his campaign. Wagstaff’s team slammed the tactic as an attempt to disenfranchise voters, specifically Black voters, in Westchester. By April 14, Cacace filed a lawsuit alleging that Wagstaff had committed election fraud by submitting “improperly witnessed signatures.”
The Westchester community corralled huge support for Wagstaff with a rally in front of the Westchester County courthouse. Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard, who nominated Wagstaff, said at the rally that she has no qualms with Cacace hiring campaign staff to confirm petition signatures, and has challenged signatures herself. “But what I do have a problem with is the intimidation tactics that were used to disenfranchise my constituents and women, because I believe 80 percent of the people they went to challenge, to question and intimidate were women, Black women, and women from Mount Vernon,” Patterson-Howard said.
Sarah K. Steiner, one of the state’s leading election law practitioners, attended the BOE commissioner’s meeting this Tuesday on behalf of several Queens county candidates and said the Wagstaff accusations were “shameful,” in her opinion. “They misconstrued so much and turned something that was nothing into something they could get some headlines for before it all went away. I hate when that happens,” Steiner said. “It was done as a campaign technique. I don’t think anybody thought there was actual fraud.”
The BOE is now moving on to the fairly short appeals process for candidates who were removed from the ballot, determinations commence on May 1. Steiner said she doesn’t “necessarily” consider being removed from the ballot a sign that someone is unfit for office, but she thinks that the petitioning and objection process leaves a lot of room for “human error” as it stands now. She is in favor of reforming the traditional paper process to include electronic petitioning to reduce the likelihood of fraud claims.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member who writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visitinghttps://bit.ly/amnews1.
