Hizzoner rolled out the first legislative bill signing of his administration with two weird events that featured fake restaurant decor including checkered tablecloths, salt-and-pepper shakers and phony table numbers.
Page A5From§Eachthe supper edition — 31 August 2026
New York Post declares Mamdani's NYC a disaster four separate times in one day.
As it ran on the front
In the interest of full disclosure, this columnist has read all four pieces, twice, and can report with total confidence that Zohran Mamdani's New York City is fine. It is a city. People live there. Some of them complain, which is the oldest civic tradition in the five boroughs, predating the borough of Queens itself.
Take the outdoor dining law — a mayor signed a bill letting restaurants serve food outside year-round, in what one paper described as a 'social media-ready' setting, and if that is now a scandal then I would like every restaurant patio in America placed under immediate federal review, starting with wherever the editorial board eats lunch.…
…(cont) Take the tenant complaints. Complaints are up. This is being described as a first step on 'the road to ruin,' which — housing complaints rising in a city with rent regulation is either a sign the system is broken or a sign tenants know they're allowed to complain now, and I genuinely don't — actually, hold on, those are the same finding read two different ways, and only one of those readings ran four times in the same publication.
Then there's Brad Lander, who according to one piece has 'learned' something about who dislikes him and why, presented as news rather than as the kind of sentence a person writes when they've already decided the ending.
And finally, 'Mamdanism falters,' a headline with a verb doing enormous unpaid labor.
Four stories. One mayor. Same week. I want to say that's normal news volume for a big-city executive, and it — it might be, actually, I don't have the comparison numbers in front of me, I don't know that any newsroom ran four pieces on the previous mayor's parking policy at this stage of his term, I'd have to check, and I don't especially want to.
What I will say, on the record, is that a press corps this concentrated on one man's outdoor seating usually has a reason, and it is rarely the seating.
“One paper, one mayor, four hit pieces same week — dining law bad, tenants bad, his deputy bad, the whole movement bad. That's not coverage, that's a campaign running under a masthead, and the masthead isn't on the ballot.”
“This is straight reporting on a mayor's record — a dining ordinance, a tenant complaint trend, a personnel dispute, an analysis piece. Four separate reporters, four separate stories, and if they happen to reach similar conclusions that's just what happens when the facts — did I say facts, I meant the assignments, when the assignments line up.”
The receipts
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This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.