The past 12 months have hardly amounted to a banner year in the annals of New York City history.
The mayoral administration imploded under Eric Adams as he faced federal corruption charges; the migrant crisis deepened; violent crime was down but certain quality-of-life crimes, like retail theft, which can sour enthusiasm for city living, ticked upward.
Still, there were many moments in the light: Let’s not forget that the Albert Einstein College of Medicine received a $1 billion dollar gift to make tuition free forever (thanks to Ruth Gottesman); that Central Park’s Harlem Meer got ready for its close up (thanks to a $160 million, historic renovation); that “Anora,” Sean Baker’s film about a Brooklyn sex worker and the Russian oligarch’s son she impulsively marries, won the hearts and minds of moviegoers and the Palme d’Or.
And then there is all the human capital, the real reason to live in New York — all the under-the-radar (and on-the-radar) people who make the city worth the chaos. Meet seven of them, plus one awesome nonhuman.
Sean Malik Flynn
When his oldest daughter moved out of his house in the Bronx, Sean Malik Flynn, a single father, opened the window of his home’s newly spare room and got into beekeeping. Along with his daughter Alaura, who was still living with him, he started cultivating hives.
Eventually, they began donating them to churches and community gardens, figuring that the more bees they could bring to the area, the greater the output of those gardens could be and the higher the chance that the Bronx could shake its reputation as a food desert. Mr. Flynn also started making his own product: Boogie Down Bronx Honey. As his passion grew, he was moved to teach beekeeping to children in the neighborhood.
“Hearing kids talking, they think the ticket out of the hood is with a basketball or a microphone,” he said. He wanted to expand their range. His work caught the attention of Hannah Rafkin, a documentary filmmaker, and last week, “Keeper,” the beautifully moving short film she made about his work against the backdrop of his struggles with cancer, made the Oscar shortlist.
Clara Wu Tsai
On Oct. 24, the New York Liberty celebrated their first W.N.B.A. championship with a parade in Lower Manhattan. But it is Brooklyn where the team has brought the heat and glory to a flailing New York sports culture.
The Liberty would not be there if it were not for Clara Wu Tsai and her husband, Joe Tsai, who bought the team five years ago and moved it to Barclays Center, which the couple owns. Ms. Wu Tsai has been instrumental in luring key players, but her commitments to Brooklyn extend beyond basketball. As the founder of the Social Justice Fund, she has worked to increase economic equity there by expanding access to arts and education.
Kathleen Corradi
Easily the most popular person in the Adams administration at this point, Kathleen Corradi is the city’s first-ever rat czar. This year saw the debut of the National Urban Rat Summit, a gathering of academics and municipal leaders; a decline in rat sightings in some areas of the city; and vigorous enthusiasm for citizen-led rat warfare.
Between the end of July and beginning of November, for example, close to 2,000 people registered for Rat Academy, a training session regularly offered by the city’s Health Department to teach civilians how to prevent infestations and get rid of the most unwelcome guests when they show up. Ms. Corradi has also started a program called, cheekily enough, the Rat Pack, a broader three-part education program that includes an investigative “Rat Walk,” which she leads.
“Folks are really giving us their time,” she said.
Kareem Rahma
The subway system gives us plenty of reasons to hate it: the delays, the sketchy weekend service, the Niagara Falls stairwell experience every time there is a weather event. But Kareem Rahma helps us forget.
His popular and hilarious internet talk show, “Subway Takes,” reveals the subway for what it is at its best: a rickety all-access mixer — a caravan full of eccentrics, contrarians, weirdos, tell-alls and know-it-alls moving around, letting you know exactly what they think. “British food is disgusting.” “All ride-share apps should have a smell rating.” “Ghosting is fine.”
Central Park’s Madame Coyote
After Flaco the Owl flew into a building and died last winter, Central Park had a celebrity-animal void to fill. Flaco, as you will recall, gained international fame after someone mysteriously cut loose his mesh enclosure at Central Park Zoo, setting him free. Later, fascination fell on a male coyote in the park. But it wasn’t until the presence of a female coyote was confirmed this past summer that the paparazzi started paying attention. Seen roaming together, the two clearly had a thing. And they didn’t need Tinder.
Miranda Massie
A lawyer by training who had previously worked fighting toxins in public schools, Miranda Massie devoted herself to establishing a climate museum in New York City, after Hurricane Sandy.
“I knew it would be an uphill battle, but I didn’t know how steep the slope would be,” she said recently. Without a physical home, the museum has relied on pop-up locations for programming since its inception a decade ago. Announced this month: It will have a permanent 24,000-square-foot location near Hudson Yards in a development that will also include affordable housing. The museum will be the first in the country to address climate change exclusively.
As Ms. Massie put it: “It’s tremendously empowering for people to approach these questions through the arts.”
Tom Wright
Almost no one has done more to advance the cause of congestion pricing than Tom Wright, who has served as the president of the Regional Plan Association for the past decade.
A century-old nonprofit organization in the wonky business of devising public-works policy for the tristate area, R.P.A. has had him on its side since he started there as executive vice president two days after the Sept. 11 attacks. But his passion for congestion pricing goes back even further to the mid-1990s, when he began to see that if drivers could be made to pay more aggressively for the costs they levied on society, so many of the other things urban planners talked about could be unlocked, as he put it.
“It was not until Mayor Bloomberg that any politician or administration was willing to take it seriously,’’ he said. Barring a successful legal challenge from New Jersey, congestion pricing is set to go into effect in New York City on Jan. 5 and is expected to bring 10 percent fewer cars and trucks into Manhattan.
Miriam Reinharth
The recent murder of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, has ignited a national conversation about the pains and frustrations caused by denied claims. For years, both as a staff member and volunteer for the Community Service Society of New York, a social-service agency established in 1939, Miriam Reinharth helped ordinary New Yorkers navigate issues around insurance and medical debt.
Through her work on more than 820 cases, she saved clients nearly $374,000, according to Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president for health initiatives at C.S.S. That work ended last month, when Ms. Reinharth was struck and killed by an ambulance as she was crossing the street on the Upper West Side. “She had a larger-than-life personality and was completely dedicated to our clients,” Ms. Benjamin said. “She was tenacious. She would not give up.”
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