Thursday’s Headlines: Great Bridge, Long Table Edition

By now, you’ve heard of Andy Lerner and Maryam Banikarim, who created The Longest Table, the city non-profit whose sole goal is to get neighbors together around a table, eating and talking as … neighbors.

Lerner and Banikarim, who won the “Most Inspiring Community Connectors” award this year at the Open Plans Public Space Awards, have inspired “Longest Tables” in 30 cities towns and cities all over the country since 2022 (check out some on the group’s website),

But on Wednesday, Banikarim raised the stakes (or were those steaks) by setting up a demonstration “table” on the Brooklyn Bridge footpath to promote the group’s most ambitious community event ever: A “Longest Table” occupying the entire Brooklyn Bridge footpath.

Obviously something like that will need city approval, so organizers started their campaign on social media. Check it out below and definitely get involved. After all, we can all get behind the group’s mantra: “No speeches. No agenda. Just neighbors, food, and a couple of hours to remember what community feels like. We’re rebuilding it one table at a time.”

In other news:

• Gov. Hochul touted her car insurance “reforms” during an appearance at an auto body shop in Manhattan. (NY1) (For more, check out the latest from Austin C. Jefferson at Streetsblog Empire State.)
• You love him in his new “Old Man Vertical” series and his old horizontal “Criminal Mischief” series (now on Season 5!), but now you can catch Streetsblog Editor Gersh Kuntzman on stage tonight as part of the “Not In My Backyard” comedy roundtable show at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater on E. 14th Street. Details and cheap tickets are here.
• Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Van Wyck Expressway widening is allegedly almost done, nine years after it began. (Queens Eagle)
• NYPD won’t allow “uncontrolled” Knicks viewing parties, and is blaming social media influencers for earlier chaos. (Gothamist)
• Cops arrested a hit-and-run driver who fled one crash only to immediately cause another, injuring two seniors in the process. (QNS)
• A woman who struck and killed a man in Brooklyn almost a year-and-a-half ago was finally arrested. (News 12 Brooklyn)
• Possibly related: The Bronx’s official World Cup “fan zone” won’t be on a street. (PIX11)
• New York and New Jersey’s attorneys general are investigating FIFA’s ticket prices. (The Athletic, WSJ)
• City Council members pushed back on the mayor’s underfunding of parks at a hearing on Wednesday. (NY Post)
• The next World Trade Center tower is on hold due to material costs. (Crain’s)
• Central Park’s “Ranger Corps” are now on bikes. (NY1)
• Gov. Hochul’s take on Trump’s Penn Station plan: “It looks very grand.” (Ramsey Khalifeh via X)
• Transit ridership is up across the country amid high gas prices. (Jalopnik)
• A hit-and-run driver injured a pedestrian on Staten Island on Tuesday. (S.I. Advance)
• The Mamdani administration cut the ribbon on McGuinness Boulevard on Wednesday, The City reported. We were there, too, and appreciated that DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn said that street safety projects should not be forced to wait until someone is killed. But Flynn would not commit to a timeline for beginning the capital improvement of McGuinness, which is likely years delayed in the say way that the project was delayed. (Want to know more about that delay/Adams era corruption: Head to the latest screening of Ben Wolf’s “Changing Lanes” next Thursday at the Greenpoint Library. Info here.)

And here’s a picture from the ceremony:

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