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.
Most of them have been spotlighted by ’50 Best’ before, but two took home specific honors this time. Martiny’s is the “Nikka Highest Climber Award” because it jumped 25 spots between 2023 and 2024, and Superbueno earned the “Disaronno Highest New Entry Award.”
“Each year, New York continues to excel in delivering the world’s most amazing craft cocktails. In 2024, New York holds 12 of the 26 U.S. listees, including the continent’s highest achievers,” the organization said in its press release.
Apparently, Mexico City is where it’s at right now for the best cocktails! The ’50 Best’ awards ceremony was held there again this year. The city “continues to platform the country’s place as a leader of the global cocktail scene.”
Below are the top 50 Best Bars in North America:
Handshake Speakeasy, Mexico City
Superbueno, New York
Overstory, New York
Martiny’s, New York
Rayo, Mexico City
Jewel of the South, New Orleans
Double Chicken Please, New York
Thunderbolt, Los Angeles
Licorería Limantour, Mexico City
Tlecān, Mexico City
Zapote Bar, Playa del Carmen
Katana Kitten, New York
Café La Trova, Miami
El Gallo Altanero, Guadalajara
Employees Only, New York
Aruba Day Drink, Tijuana
Café de Nadie, Mexico City
La Factoría, San Juan
Kumiko, Chicago
Dante, New York
Civil Liberties, Toronto
Service Bar, Washington DC
Allegory, Washington DC
Botanist Bar, Vancouver
Herbs & Rye, Las Vegas
Baltra Bar, Mexico City
Bekeb, San Miguel de Allende
Kaito del Valle, Mexico City
Bar Pompette, Toronto
True Laurel, San Francisco
Attaboy, New York
Meadowlark, Chicago
The Dead Rabbit, New York
Selva, Oaxaca
Library by the Sea, Grand Cayman
Century Grand, Phoenix
Arca, Tulum
Pacific Cocktail Heaven, San Francisco
Cloakroom, Montreal
Bar Mordecai, Toronto
Maison Premiere, New York
Hanky Panky, Mexico City
Angel’s Share, New York
Milady’s, New York
Brujas, Mexico City
Mírate, Los Angeles
Cure, New Orleans
Best Intentions, Chicago
The Keefer Bar, Vancouver
Atwater Cocktail Club, Montreal
If you want more top-notch bars to drink at, don’t miss our very own list of the 50 Best Bars in NYC, which include other spots like the Long Island Bar, Bemelmans Bar, Sunken Harbor Club, and Dutch Kills.
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