Latest news with #K-town
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Demise of Outdoor Dining Isn't Really Anyone's Preference. So How Did We End Up Here?
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. In the uncertain post-pandemic days, there were few sights that announced New York City's rise from the ashes quite like a stroll down the block of West 32nd Street known as K-Town. At one point, this little stretch of noodle bars, Korean bakeries, and karaoke spots had 22 restaurants with tables strewn across the sidewalk and stacked up in elaborate 'streeteries' in the curb lane. On warm nights, it was as lively as a festival. The K-town sheds, wrote Nancy Groce of the American Folklife Center, were 'outstanding examples of folk architecture.' The economist Tyler Cowen wrote that while he had never seen Lower Manhattan so alive, 'the most vibrant single street for both food and socializing was slightly further north in Koreatown.' It is all gone now. Where there were once 22 outdoor dining setups, today there is one, a bright-red pavilion hung with string lights and lined with freshly planted flowers, overseen by a plastic owl to keep the pigeons away. It belongs to the restaurant Shanghai Mong, whose owner Tora Yi told me that it had been a struggle to get it even conditionally approved. Elsewhere on West 32nd Street on a sunny Thursday spring afternoon? A Ram truck with a yellow barnacle on its windshield, a handful of mopeds under rain covers, and a lot of empty parking spaces. Quiet. As K-Town goes, so goes New York. During the pandemic the city counted 13,000 outdoor dining setups generating $373 million in wages and nearly $10 million in tax revenue each year. But as the 'temporary' program concluded its third summer, the typical NIMBY concerns (noise, parking) were compounded by unaddressed problems like rats, sidewalk obstructions, and ramshackle structures. After much debate, the city sought a reset by offering a 'permanent' outdoor dining program that required the streeteries and sidewalk cafés to be dismantled each fall. In its first spring, this diminished program has given final approval, as of Wednesday, to just 67 restaurants. 'This rollout has been nothing short of disastrous,' Julie Menin, a council member from the Upper East Side, said at a hearing this week. Chi Ossé, a council member from Brooklyn, said the execution was so bad it amounted to sabotage: 'I believe the intention was to kill the program.' Lincoln Restler thought the plan was so bad he didn't vote for it. And now? 'It's a failure.' New York isn't the only city to have pulled back from the outdoor dining phenomenon. As virus fears faded and health restrictions fell away, many big-city residents watched outdoor dining disappear too, done in by some combination of policy change and attrition. What separated New York was the program's scope, popularity, and political support—a product of the sheer value of all that 'new' space in a famously cramped city. Those converted parking spots produced 2.4 million square feet of new commercial space, the equivalent of a new Empire State Building diced up outside 10,000 storefronts. Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and a candidate in June's Democratic mayoral primary, told me the issue was bigger than where we put tables and chairs. 'People are fed up with a city government that doesn't work,' he said. 'That's how I read why more people voted for Trump [in New York]. So when something like this happens, and the city can't get its act together, it keeps weakening trust in government at a time when trust in government is so weak.' In Lander's view, there are problems with both the law and its execution. He blames the city council's program—which requires professionally drawn plans, community board review, hefty fees, and seasonal disassembly—for whittling applications for the program down to just 3,000 last summer. He blames the Eric Adams administration for getting less than 100 of those applications over the line this winter. Some 2,600 establishments (such as Shanghai Mong) are allowed to operate with 'provisional' Department of Transportation approval. Diners may not notice the difference, but it's risky ground for a big investment. It may also pose problems for serving drinks when pandemic-era alcohol rules expire this summer, since the State Liquor Authority will only recognize completed approvals. Restaurant advocates say the onerous application has led to a familiar pattern: outdoor restaurants in rich neighborhoods, and the rest of the city left out (or, really, in). Even the conditional approvals have yielded just 78 outdoor setups in the Bronx, the city's poorest borough, down from more than 1,000 in recent years. Naturally, in the hearing, staffers at the city's Department of Transportation, which administers the certification, took the view that the problem was the council's own procedure. And several members of the City Council seem to agree. As the local news site Hell Gate put it: 'After Passing Legislation That Decimated Outdoor Dining, NYC Council Demands to Know What Killed Outdoor Dining.' Then the question is: Who is ready to design a new, more lenient law to facilitate outdoor dining, without the 'seasonal' requirement that analysts have described as a poison pill because of the required storage costs and staffing changes? It wouldn't be unheard of—Toronto, for example, successfully revised its program after participation dropped following post-pandemic changes. Restler, the Brooklyn councilman who has been one of outdoor dining's biggest supporters (and refused to vote for the current program), said he is drawing up just such a law. But the urgency of the post-pandemic period has faded, and larger problems loom in the form of confrontations with an increasingly hostile Trump administration. It's not clear the whole council will want to reopen the subject before this year's mayoral election, let alone vote for a year-round dining option it rejected just 24 months ago. It feels good to say 'I told you so'—but not as good as having lunch outside.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Yahoo
Man allegedly fires gun at LAPD helicopter, is fatally shot by police
Authorities fatally shot a man in Reseda on Sunday evening after he allegedly fired a gun at a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter. The deadly shooting began with a call to police around 6:25 p.m. about an assault with a deadly weapon in the 6400 block of Reseda Boulevard, according to the LAPD. Upon arriving, officers said they saw a man run into an apartment complex near the intersection of Reseda and Victory boulevards. An LAPD helicopter also responded to the scene and reported that the suspect appeared to fire his handgun at the airship. Initial reports indicated the helicopter was not struck. Police then pursued the suspect into the rear alley of the apartment complex, where a police shooting took place. Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to the incident and pronounced the man dead at the scene. Read more: LAPD tactics faulted in shooting of mentally ill K-town man — but killing ruled justified The department's Force Investigation Division is investigating the shooting. The suspect's handgun was recovered and will be examined alongside video and physical evidence, authorities said. No officers or civilians were injured during the incident, and there are no outstanding suspects, police said. This is the 11th person that has been struck by LAPD gunfire in 2025, according to police records. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Yahoo
Man allegedly fires gun at LAPD helicopter, is fatally shot by police
Authorities fatally shot a man in Reseda on Sunday evening after he allegedly fired a gun at a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter. The deadly shooting began with a call to police around 6:25 p.m. about an assault with a deadly weapon in the 6400 block of Reseda Boulevard, according to the LAPD. Upon arriving, officers said they saw a man run into an apartment complex near the intersection of Reseda and Victory boulevards. An LAPD helicopter also responded to the scene and reported that the suspect appeared to fire his handgun at the airship. Initial reports indicated the helicopter was not struck. Police then pursued the suspect into the rear alley of the apartment complex, where a police shooting took place. Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to the incident and pronounced the man dead at the scene. Read more: LAPD tactics faulted in shooting of mentally ill K-town man — but killing ruled justified The department's Force Investigation Division is investigating the shooting. The suspect's handgun was recovered and will be examined alongside video and physical evidence, authorities said. No officers or civilians were injured during the incident, and there are no outstanding suspects, police said. This is the 11th person that has been struck by LAPD gunfire in 2025, according to police records. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Elisa Wouk Almino named editor in chief of Image magazine
The following announcement is sent on behalf of Executive Editor Terry Tang: I'm delighted to announce that Elisa Wouk Almino has been named editor in chief of Image magazine. Wouk Almino joined the L.A. Times in 2022 as Image's deputy editor. Her creativity and editorial ambition are exceptional. Under her leadership in 2024, the magazine has thrived by offering readers a glorious and authentic view of the makers of L.A. style, fashion and art. She has recruited top talent for the magazine's pages and published thought-provoking, unexpected stories on art and fashion, from deeply felt essays on surfing and personal style to visual stories, such as one that re-created old K-town beauty pageants. Wouk Almino has also written memorable essays of her own, including profiles on L.A. luminaries such as Catherine Opie, Sérgio Mendes and Ed Ruscha. And she has led new projects such as Image's activation at Art Basel Miami in 2022 and the Image party at Soho Warehouse, which drew over 600 people last year. Prior to joining Image, Wouk Almino was a senior editor at Hyperallergic, where she launched and ran the art magazine's L.A. bureau. Before moving to Los Angeles in 2018, she lived in New York for 10 years, where she worked at and wrote for various publications including Words Without Borders, n+1, the Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, Rizzoli, Guernica and the Nation. At one point, she gave gallery tours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and taught art criticism and literary translation at UCLA Extension and Catapult. She started in her new role Monday.
