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      ‘The Miser’ Review: Updating Molière, but Missing a Key Ingredient

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      This Molière in the Park production doesn’t have the sharp satirical bite of the original.The support beam of theater in France, Molière is nowhere near as famous in the United States. Yet the comic high jinks, star-crossed lovers and long-lost relatives that pop up in his play “The Miser,” first produced in 1668, will be instantly familiar to anybody who has ever seen a Shakespeare comedy.Where Molière stands out, however, is as a sharp social satirist whose denouncing of the vain, the hypocritical and the simply deluded have not aged — once timely, they are now timeless. Unfortunately it is precisely that element that is missing from the Molière in the Park production of “The Miser” at the LeFrak Center in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.The title character, Harpagon (Francesca Faridany), is a curdled, choleric, elderly man consumed by greed. It’s not even that he wants money to live in luxury: Harpagon just wants to possess it.The play relentlessly ridicules Harpagon and his pathological greed, along with his tyrannical ways at home, where he lords it over his two daughters, the flighty Elise (Ismenia Mendes) and the flashy Cleante (Alana Raquel Bowers). Complicating matters, Elise is in love with her father’s steward, Valere (Calvin Leon Smith, fresh from a terrific turn as the closeted Larry in “Fat Ham”), while Harpagon and Cleante both covet the fetching Marianne (MaYaa Boateng, from “Fairview”).That women are playing Cleante (a man in the original) and Harpagon indicates that the director Lucie Tiberghien, who is also the artistic director of Molière in the Park, is not stuck in tradition. Although it doesn’t gum up the works, why keep Harpagon as a male character, for example, and make Cleante a female one? This is where Molière’s relative obscurity in the United States becomes an asset since many audience members would not even be aware of the difference, as everything is played matter-of-factly.Trickier is Faridany as Harpagon. An essential part of the play is that the character covets the same woman as his son (OK, daughter), so his being an elderly man adds an element of discomfort. This does not hit as hard when he is played by a woman who is far from “over 70,” Harpagon’s intended age.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paul Auster, Prolific Author and Brooklyn Literary Star, Dies at 77

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      With critically lauded works like “The New York Trilogy,” the charismatic author and patron saint of his adopted borough drew worldwide acclaim.Paul Auster, the prolific novelist, memoirist and screenwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s with his postmodern reanimation of the noir novel and who endured to become one of the signature New York writers of his generation, died of complications from lung cancer at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening. He was 77.His death was confirmed by a friend, Jacki Lyden.With his hooded eyes, soulful air and leading-man looks, Mr. Auster was often described as a “literary superstar” in news accounts. The Times Literary Supplement of Britain once called him “one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers.”Though a New Jersey native, he became indelibly linked with the rhythms of his adopted city, which was a character of sorts in much of his work — particularly Brooklyn, where he settled in 1980 amid the oak-lined streets of brownstones in the Park Slope neighborhood.As his reputation grew, Mr. Auster came to be seen as a guardian of Brooklyn’s rich literary past, as well as an inspiration to a new generation of novelists who flocked to the borough in the 1990s and later.“Paul Auster was the Brooklyn novelist back in the ’80s and ’90s, when I was growing up there, at a time when very few famous writers lived in the borough,” the author and poet Meghan O’Rourke, who was raised in nearby Prospect Heights, wrote in an email. “His books were on all my parents’ friends’ shelves. As teenagers, my friends and I read Auster’s work avidly for both its strangeness — that touch of European surrealism — and its closeness.“Long before ‘Brooklyn’ became a place where every novelist seemed to live, from Colson Whitehead to Jhumpa Lahiri,” she added, “Auster made being a writer seem like something real, something a person actually did.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Schtick’s Pop-Up Event Series for Seder Celebrates Jewish Culture

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      The dinner parties held by Shtick, a pop-up series celebrating Jewish culture, draw out New York’s influencers, artists, designers and celebrities.Why was this Seder different from all other Seders?Start with the setup: a glittering table set for 100, running the length of a drafty warehouse in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. And it was not just any old warehouse; this is where Joyva, the stalwart kosher candy company, stores its stacks of halvah, a fudgelike sesame confection.Then there were the guests: not your typical Passover assortment of Tisches, Kaplans and Rubensteins. Sitting elbow to elbow at the table, waiting to snap matzo, were dozens of New York influencers, artists, designers, creative directors, chefs and fashionistas. If the prophet Elijah showed up midway through the meal, his seatmates would have surely asked for his Instagram handle.Also unlike most seders, this one, on Thursday night (before the start of the holiday), featured a D.J. with face tattoos who blasted a Hot 97-style air horn at intervals throughout the evening.It was all the doing of Shtick, a pop-up dinner party series around the city that celebrates Jewish culture. The events are mostly invite-only. Guests at the Seder and past parties have included Brett Gelman, the actor; Samantha Ronson, the D.J.; Richard Kind, the actor; Chi Ossé, the Brooklyn city councilman; and the actor David Schwimmer.Shtick is more or less a one-woman project, run by Jacqueline Lobel, a freelance television producer and director whose aim, she said, is to organize “Jewish communal dining experiences that are sexy.”The event began with a cocktail hour on the factory floor at Joyva, a kosher candy company. Its co-president, Richard Radutzky, helped Jacqueline Lobel, Shtick’s founder, announce the start of the Seder.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Another Subway Shooting, NYC Wrestles With Question of Safety

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      Even with the National Guard patrolling the system, some New Yorkers say they don’t feel secure, particularly after the subway shooting in Brooklyn on Thursday. Others remain unfazed.The subway crime that Jimmy Sumampow had been hearing about in recent years — as well as his own experience — had already led him to make plans to leave New York City. Then, on Friday, he saw a video online of the shooting on an A train this week.“I’m scared,” said Mr. Sumampow, 46, after seeing the video. Mr. Sumampow lives in Elmhurst, Queens, but plans to board an Amtrak train on Monday for Florida, where he has a new job and an apartment lined up. “I feel I should move out for a while and see if New York takes action and gets better,” he said.For Elise Anderson, however, the shooting did not raise her level of concern.“I wouldn’t say I’m any more scared,” Ms. Anderson, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident, said as she waited at the Port Authority Bus Terminal subway station on Friday for a downtown A train. “I think we’re in one of the safest cities in the world.”In interviews across the city this week, New Yorkers wrestled with a question that cut to the core of the city’s identity: Is the subway system safe? Subway crime data in recent years shows a muddled picture, and just as they have in surveys of riders and polls of residents, New Yorkers’ opinions diverge.But barely more than a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard and State Police into the subway to increase security and help ease New Yorkers’ fears, the shooting seemed to underscore the limits of law enforcement’s ability to improve safety underground.The episode took place at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, where the Police Department maintains an outpost, Transit District 30, that is regularly staffed by officers. Moments before the shooting, two additional officers entered the station to inspect the platforms and train cars, Kaz Daughtry, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of operations, said at a news conference on Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Top Editor of The Jewish Press Pleads Guilty to Jan. 6 Charge

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      Elliot Resnick, a longtime journalist at The Jewish Press, admitted that he impeded officers’ efforts to keep a mob from storming the U.S. Capitol.A onetime top editor of an Orthodox Jewish newspaper in Brooklyn pleaded guilty on Tuesday to obstructing police officers’ efforts to hold off the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The editor, Elliot Resnick, entered the plea, to a felony count of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder, before Judge Rudolph Contreras of Federal District Court in Washington. Mr. Resnick, 40, of Manhattan, is scheduled to be sentenced in June.Clay Kaminski, a federal public defender who is representing Mr. Resnick, declined to comment.At the time of the riot, Mr. Resnick was the top editor of The Jewish Press, which began publishing in 1960 and describes itself on its website as “the largest independent weekly Jewish newspaper in the United States” and “politically incorrect long before the phrase was coined.”After Politico reported in April 2021 that Mr. Resnick, who began working at The Jewish Press in 2006, had been part of the Jan. 6 mob, the paper’s editorial board published a statement saying he had been in Washington to cover the day’s events as a journalist.“The Jewish Press does not see why Elliot’s personal views on former President Trump should make him any different from the dozens of other journalists covering the events, including many inside the Capitol building during the riots,” the editorial board wrote.Citing court records, Justice Department officials said on Tuesday that Mr. Resnick had not been acting as a journalist that day. Shlomo Greenwald, who replaced Mr. Resnick as the paper’s top editor in May 2021, did not respond to email and phone inquiries on Tuesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      F.B.I. Raided Homes of Second Adams Aide and Ex-Turkish Airline Official

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      On the same day the federal authorities raided the home of Mayor Eric Adams’s chief fund-raiser, they also searched the residences of two people with ties to Turkey.As F.B.I. agents searched the home of Mayor Eric Adams’s chief fund-raiser earlier this month for evidence his campaign conspired with Turkey, separate teams executed warrants at the residences of two others with ties to the mayor and that country, several people with knowledge of the matter said.In addition to the home of the fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs, investigators also searched the New Jersey houses of Rana Abbasova, an aide in Mr. Adams’s international affairs office, four of the people said, and Cenk Öcal, a former Turkish Airlines executive who served on his transition team, two people said.The coordinated raids were the first public sign of a broad corruption investigation into the mayor’s 2021 campaign. As part of the inquiry, the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are examining whether the Turkish government conspired with Mr. Adams’s campaign to funnel foreign donations into campaign coffers and whether Mr. Adams pressured Fire Department officials to sign off on a new high-rise Turkish consulate despite safety concerns.Both Ms. Abbasova and Mr. Öcal have ties to Turkey. She was Mr. Adams’s longtime liaison to the Turkish community when he served as Brooklyn borough president; he was the general manager of the New York office of Turkish Airlines until early last year. Ms. Abbasova, Mr. Öcal, Ms. Suggs and Mr. Adams have not been accused of wrongdoing.The searches began early on the morning of Nov. 2, when a team of F.B.I. agents descended on the brick Fort Lee, N.J., townhouse of Ms. Abbasova, 41, who serves as the director of protocol in the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs. It was not clear what, if anything, they took from the home.A separate team of agents visited the New Jersey home of Mr. Öcal, a former flight attendant who, according to his LinkedIn page, rose to become a Turkish Airlines general manager, first in Sofia, Bulgaria, and then in New York. Mr. Öcal, according to a Turkish news report, was fired from the airline in early 2022 during a shake-up at the company.Ms. Abbasova and Mr. Öcal did not respond to messages seeking comment, and it could not immediately be determined whether they had hired lawyers.Evan Thies, a spokesman for Mr. Adams’s campaign, said, “Ms. Abbasova was not employed by or paid by the campaign.” Fabien Levy, a spokesman for City Hall, said in a statement that the mayor was cooperating with investigators. Mr. Adams has denied any wrongdoing and, through his attorney Boyd Johnson, noted that the campaign had proactively reported an unidentified individual to federal investigators for recently acting “improperly.”On Thursday, two people briefed on the matter confirmed earlier reporting in The New York Post that the individual was Ms. Abbasova. Mr. Thies declined to elaborate on the conduct in question.Representatives for the F.B.I. and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.The raids occurred on the same morning that agents searched Ms. Suggs’s Brooklyn home and left with three iPhones, two laptop computers and other evidence, records show.The searches came as federal officials were examining potential malfeasance in Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign, an inquiry so far-reaching that, last Monday, agents approached Mr. Adams on the street outside of an event in Manhattan, asked his security detail to step aside, and climbed into his car alongside him. Pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, they seized his electronic devices.Less than three weeks ago, Ms. Abbasova, who earns $81,000 in her current post, stood just behind Mr. Adams’s right shoulder during a flag-raising ceremony at Bowling Green to mark the 100th anniversary of the Turkish republic. The Turkish consul general and U.S. ambassador were in attendance as Mr. Adams spoke of his affection for the country.“I‘m probably the only mayor in the history of this city that has not only visited Turkey — Türkiye — once, but I think I’m on my sixth or seventh visit to Türkiye,” Mr. Adams said.In a 2017 interview with a pro-government Turkish news outlet, Mr. Adams said he preferred to fly Turkish Airlines on international trips, in part because the airline accommodated his dietary needs as a vegan. “Turkish Airlines is my way of flying,” he told the newspaper.At the flag raising, Ms. Abbasova handed a folder containing an honorary citation to the mayor, who awarded it to a local Turkish community member. Then she distributed small red Turkish flags to some children.She began working for Mr. Adams as a volunteer in his first term as borough president, as he tried to make inroads to the Turkish and Azerbaijani communities in Brooklyn. She was given an office to use at Borough Hall, a former aide said.She has been on his government staff since at least 2018, when city records indicate she joined the borough president’s office as a “community coordinator,” earning $50,000 a year. Her title in 2021 was “assistant to the compliance unit,” according to a list provided to Mr. Adams’s successor as borough president, Antonio Reynoso, Kristina Naplatarski, a spokeswoman for Mr. Reynoso, said.While there, Ms. Abbasova managed relationships between Mr. Adams and “stakeholders” from the Middle East and Central Asia, “organized Turkic heritage events,” “assisted with sister cities agreements,” and “worked with embassies and consulates to build relationships,” according to her profile on the website of the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs.In 2015, several years before she officially joined his staff, Ms. Abbasova traveled to Turkey with Mr. Adams on a trip sponsored by the Turkish consulate and the World Tourism Forum Institute, an organization whose mission is to boost global tourism.The current borough president’s office does not have a position like the one held by Ms. Abbasova, according to Ms. Naplatarski.“We do not,” she said, “nor have we ever under this administration.”Susan Beachy More

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      What We Know About the Criminal Investigation into Eric Adams’s Campaign

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      Federal authorities are examining whether the mayor’s 2021 campaign accepted illegal donations, including from the Turkish government.After federal authorities raided the home of Mayor Eric Adams’s chief fund-raiser on Nov. 2, a broad criminal inquiry into the fund-raising practices of Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign spilled into public view.Federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. are examining whether the campaign conspired with members of the Turkish government, including its consulate in New York, to receive illegal donations, according to a search warrant obtained by The New York Times.Only two years into his first term, Mr. Adams has confronted a migrant crisis and the city’s struggle to recover from the pandemic, along with intense scrutiny of chaotic and violent conditions at the Rikers Island jail complex. But from a personal and a public relations perspective, the investigation into his fund-raising poses perhaps the steepest challenge yet for the mayor, who has already raised more than $2.5 million for his re-election bid in 2025.Here’s what we know about the investigation.What are the federal authorities investigating?The full scope of the federal criminal inquiry is not yet clear, but the investigation has focused at least in part on whether Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and Turkish nationals to receive illegal donations.According to the search warrant, federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. are also examining the role of a Brooklyn building company, KSK Construction, which is owned by Turkish immigrants and which organized a fund-raising event for Mr. Adams in May 2021.The search warrant also indicated that investigators were reviewing whether anyone affiliated with the mayor’s campaign provided any legal or illegal benefits — which could range from governmental action to financial favors — to the construction company and its employees, or to Turkish officials.The search warrant was executed on Nov. 2, the day that federal agents raided the Brooklyn home of Mr. Adams’s chief fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs.Who is Brianna Suggs?Ms. Suggs was an inexperienced 23-year-old former intern when Mr. Adams’s campaign tapped her to run its fund-raising operation for his successful 2021 mayoral bid. Now 25, she has become embroiled in a sprawling federal investigation.Even before graduating from Brooklyn College in 2020, Ms. Suggs was on Mr. Adams’s staff in his previous job as Brooklyn borough president. She has a close relationship both with Mr. Adams and his top aide and confidante, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, and she impressed some who interacted with her at campaign fund-raisers as smart and easy to work with.After the election, Ms. Suggs remained an essential cog in Mr. Adams’s fund-raising machine. She has not been accused of wrongdoing.During the raid of her house in Crown Heights, federal agents seized two laptop computers, three iPhones and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.”How does Mr. Adams fit in?Mr. Adams has not been accused of wrongdoing. The mayor was in Washington, D.C. on the morning of the raid and had plans to speak with White House officials and members of Congress about the migrant crisis. He abruptly canceled the meetings and returned to New York.He later said he hurried back to be present for his team and to show support for Ms. Suggs.“Although I am mayor, I have not stopped being a man and a human,” he said, but added that he did not speak with his aide on the day of the raid.Have the authorities approached Mr. Adams directly?Days after Ms. Suggs’s house was raided, federal agents approached Mr. Adams after an event in Manhattan, asked his security detail to step aside and got into his SUV with him. The F.B.I. seized at least two cellphones and an iPad from the mayor, copied the devices and returned them within days, the mayor’s lawyer said.After The Times reported on the seizure, a lawyer for Mr. Adams and his campaign said in a statement that the mayor was cooperating with federal authorities and had already “proactively reported” at least one instance of improper behavior.“After learning of the federal investigation, it was discovered that an individual had recently acted improperly,” said the lawyer, Boyd Johnson. “In the spirit of transparency and cooperation, this behavior was immediately and proactively reported to investigators.”Mr. Johnson reiterated that Mr. Adams had not been accused of wrongdoing and had “immediately complied with the F.B.I.’s request and provided them with electronic devices.”Mr. Johnson did not identify the individual who was alleged to have acted improperly. He also did not detail the conduct reported to authorities or make clear whether the reported misconduct was related to the seizure of the mayor’s devices. A spokesman for Mr. Adams’s campaign said it would be inappropriate to discuss those issues because the investigation is ongoing.In his own statement, Mr. Adams said, “As a former member of law enforcement, I expect all members of my staff to follow the law and fully cooperate with any sort of investigation — and I will continue to do exactly that.”He added that he had “nothing to hide.”What does Turkey have to do with it?Federal authorities have been examining an episode involving Mr. Adams and the newly built Turkish consulate building in New York that occurred after he had won the Democratic nomination for mayor in the summer of 2021, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.The Turkish consulate general planned to open its new building in time for the start of the United Nations General Assembly that September. But the Fire Department had not signed off on its fire safety plans, which had several problems — an obstacle that threatened to derail the Turkish government’s plans.As Brooklyn borough president, Mr. Adams cultivated ties with local Turkish community members as well as Turkish government officials, who paid for part of a trip he made to Turkey in 2015. Mr. Adams has said he has visited Turkey six or seven times in all.After winning the Democratic nomination, Mr. Adams was all but guaranteed to become the next mayor of New York. He contacted then-Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro, relaying the Turkish government’s desire to use the building at least on a temporary basis, the people said.The city ultimately issued a temporary certificate of occupancy for the building, near the United Nations in Midtown Manhattan.The unusual intervention paved the way for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to preside over the grand opening of the $300 million, 35-story tower on his September 2021 visit to New York, despite the numerous flaws in its fire safety system, according to the people familiar with the matter and city records. The skyscraper reflected Turkey’s “increased power,” Mr. Erdogan said at its ribbon-cutting.In response to questions from The Times, Mr. Adams’s campaign issued a statement from the mayor.“As a borough president, part of my routine role was to notify government agencies of issues on behalf of constituents and constituencies,” Mr. Adams said. “I have not been accused of wrongdoing, and I will continue to cooperate with investigators.” More

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      Matt Damon Joins Fight Over Upper West Side Church

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      The actor will appear in performances meant to benefit a group that wants to save West Park Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side from demolition.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at how a campaign to save a church from demolition — despite church leaders wanting the building torn down — lined up the actor Matt Damon for a fund-raiser.Julia Nikhinson/Associated PressHow do you get a star like Matt Damon to appear in a benefit performance of a play in a church on the Upper West Side?“You ask him,” said Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote the play in question, “This Is Our Youth.”Damon will appear in a performance of “This Is Our Youth” on Nov. 16. The show is a fund-raiser for the Center at West Park, which leases the West Park Presbyterian Church, on West 86th Street at Amsterdam Avenue. Tickets start at $500. The top price for a second performance, on Nov. 17, will be $250, and there will be no fixed admission for some seats; those who attend can pay what they wish.Damon is the latest celebrity to support the center and its campaign, against the congregation’s wishes, to prevent the demolition of the Romanesque Revival-style church. The actors Mark Ruffalo and Wendell Pierce; the comedian Amy Schumer; and the rapper and actor Common have also gotten involved in the cause.Together, they are lending their boldface names to an effort to raise money for the center, including to make repairs to the building that are necessary so that the scaffolding and sidewalk shed that have long covered the property can be removed.Debby Hirshman, the center’s executive director, said the goal was to bring in more than $300,000 from the “This Is Our Youth” performances. That would be in addition to a new capital campaign meant to raise $2 million for repairs to the building — a sum that opponents of demolition say would cover the cost of work outlined in a recent report by an engineering consultant for the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.A spokeswoman for the church challenged that analysis, calling it “a Band-Aid solution” that would not pay for interior work that is needed to satisfy fire safety rules and accessibility regulations, just as a lawyer for the center disputed a financial analysis done for the landmarks commission.That document said the building, in the hands of an owner other than the congregation, could not earn a reasonable return. Hirshman said she had met with church officials last summer and had offered to make the church “financially whole” if it withdrew a hardship application it filed with the landmarks commission last year.The application was a first step toward demolishing the building as part of a real estate deal that would give the congregation space in what would be a new apartment building on the site. The church — which was designated a city landmark, over the congregation’s objections, in 2010 — stands to receive $30 million from a developer it signed a binding contract with in 2022.Hirshman said church leaders had rejected her proposal.The center had offered earlier to buy the building; a spokesman for the church said that “none of the offers have been feasible or realistic, given the cost of repairs.” The spokeswoman also questioned the center’s “ongoing inability to raise sufficient funds” to pay for repairs.The landmarks commission has not scheduled a vote on the church’s application.As for Damon’s appearances in “This Is Our Youth” next week, Lonergan turned to him because Josh Hamilton, who had appeared in the original Off Broadway production, was unavailable. The rest of the cast was already set — Ruffalo, reprising his breakout role from 1996, and Missy Yager, along with the director Mark Brokaw. Ruffalo became involved with the center last year and even buttonholed Mayor Eric Adams at the Tribeca Film Festival to argue for saving the building.It helped that Damon and Lonergan knew each other, and that Damon knew the play: He appeared in a London production of it for two months in 2002.“I explained the situation to him and immediately he said, ‘I’m in,’ which is what I thought he would say if he was available,” Lonergan said, “and as a matter of fact, he had an apartment one block away from the church for a year or two, maybe. This is going back a ways.” He said Damon wanted to “keep what’s special about the neighborhood special.”WeatherEnjoy a mostly sunny sky today with high temperatures around the low 50s. In the evening, prepare for a chance of rain and temps near the high 40s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Friday (Veterans Day).The latest New York newsFlaco perching inside an East Village sculpture garden on Monday. His life on the loose could be entering a dangerous new phase.Jacqueline EmeryLocal newsFeathered fugitive: Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl, whose escape from the Central Park Zoo captured the public’s attention, turned up in Manhattan’s East Village, about five miles from the wooded park area he had settled into since flying free nine months ago.Code of conduct: New Yorkers are reacquainting themselves with the unofficial subway rules — no eye contact; no stinky food — as the city rebounds from the Covid-19 pandemic.Sunny-day flooding: As high tide floods increase in some parts of the city, residents are asking themselves: When does a place become unlivable?ICYMI: Trump’s testimonyTakeaways: Former President Donald J. Trump took the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday as he tried to preserve the business empire that made him famous. Here’s what we learned.Understanding Trump’s defense: Christopher M. Kise and Alina Habba, the two lawyers who joined the former president at the defense table, represent different aspects of what their client seeks in a defender.In South Brooklyn, a Democrat defeats an ex-DemocratAnna Watts for The New York TimesDemocrats held onto a City Council seat in Brooklyn that had shown signs of drifting away. Justin Brannan, a Democrat who is the Council’s powerful finance chairman, defeated his Republican opponent, Ari Kagan, according to The Associated Press.Both are sitting Council members who found themselves facing off in the same district because of redistricting. Kagan, a former radio and television host from Belarus who was elected as a Democrat in 2021, switched parties last year.On Tuesday, Brannan called his victory a triumph over “toxic tribalism” and promised to serve all constituents, regardless of their political affiliations.In another Brooklyn district, created to amplify the voices of Asian voters, the Democrat, Susan Zhuang, defeated Ying Tan, the Republican. Both candidates built their campaigns around the issues of crime, education and the quality of New York City life.Elsewhere in the city, many Democrats ran unopposed, including Yusef Salaam, one of the so-called Central Park Five defendants, Black and Latino men who were exonerated in 2002 in the rape and assault of a female jogger in Central Park 13 years earlier. He won a contested primary in Harlem this past summer.As Salaam prepared to give his victory speech on Tuesday, my colleague Jeffery C. Mays noted, it was not lost on him that former President Trump was facing multiple criminal trials. Trump had called for the reinstatement of the death penalty after Salaam’s arrest.“Karma is real, and we have to remember that,” Salaam said.METROPOLITAN diaryJob at Macy’sDear Diary:One thing I always wanted to do was work at Macy’s in New York City. I got the opportunity when things slowed down at my actual job and management asked for volunteers to take unpaid time off.I took a month, and my husband and I went to New York City. We found a short-term apartment and I applied for a job at Macy’s during the Christmas season. I did not say I only planned to work there a month.I was in my 50s at the time and I started working with a group of men and women who were much younger.I spent my first day learning how to operate the cash register and where everything in the store was. It was so exciting.When it was time for lunch, some of the younger women asked me to go to lunch with them at McDonald’s. Wow. Of course I went. They mostly spoke Spanish. I didn’t understand them, but I didn’t care.I couldn’t have been any more excited when the day was over and I clocked out and headed to the door. Outside, the young women yelled out to me: Come on, Alice. It’s this way to the subway.They wanted me to come with them, but I just said no, thank you. I lived right across the street.— Alice RedmondIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Kellina Moore and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More