FAQ NYC

A story about the time that Phil Banks said stop-and-frisk wasn't a thing, plus a post-credits mini-concert from Jon Langford of the Mekons, performing last week in Alphabet City.

The progressive icon didn’t pay her hair person or makeup artist until after the Congressional Ethics Committee started looking into her Met Gala appearance, as a guest of Vogue, in that “Tax the Rich” gown. Meantime, the city’s budget season is heating up and the mayor and the City Council have very different ideas about how much the city should be spending and Eric Adams is fed up with masks. All that and much more from another jam-packed week in New York City gets discussed on the latest episode of THE CITY’s FAQ NYC podcast.

Bronxite Jason Morales has been selling pot, and racking up pot-related arrested, for 20-plus years. Now, he's thinking about a license and hoping for some support from the state that's promised to do legalization the right way and make right its historical wrongs — but has yet to issue a single license in the borough.

Was Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks’ “episode” — his word — in which he answered a couple pre-submitted questions from the public, but refused to answer one from a journalist, the newest entry in the Eric Adams extended universe?

Gary Weiss joins the pod to discuss "The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie" and his book about that.

A discussion of just some of the news from another jam-packed week in New York City with hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel.

Rusty Zimmerman is spending the year making oil paintings of and collecting oral histories from 200 people living in South Brooklyn. That includes FAQ NYC's own Harry Siegel, who joined Rusty for a conversation about the project, how people can support it and see it, and why he's giving the portraits away for free to their subjects.

And there’s really nothing funny about it.

Leonard Abrams, the founder and editor of the late, great East Village Eye (1979-1987) and Julie Golia, curator at the New York Public Library, which just acquired the paper’s archives, talk about chronicling, and preserving, the paper’s coverage of a time when “you go down to the Lower East Side [and] it’s very easy to survive except you might get killed—but probably not. So that was enough for a lot of people who really wanted… to do something meaningful with their lives. And they were able to.”

Trumpeter Greg Glassman sits down with saxophonist Stacy Dillard for a conversation — along with the two of them improvising on their instruments — about what it means, and what it takes, to make it as a jazz musician in New York City.