Sunday, 6 Oct 2024

Marijuana, E-Scooters, Driver’s Licenses: Last-Minute Deals in Albany

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It’s Tuesday. Will New York City keep allowing foie gras to be served?

Weather: The forecast for the last days of spring is looking dreary. Today, expect thunderstorms, heavy rain and wind gusts, with a high in the low 70s.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 4.

Imagine riding an electric scooter to your rent-stabilized apartment, where you enjoy legal marijuana.

This could become a reality for more New Yorkers (we see you, Bushwick hipsters), thanks to last-minute deals in the State Legislature.

Here are some of the major developments on a variety of complicated issues in the last days of the annual legislative session in Albany. It’s a tradition known as “the big ugly.”

? Marijuana

Marijuana can currently be purchased at dispensaries with a prescription.

After lengthy negotiations over the weekend, lawmakers were cautiously optimistic about reaching a deal on broader legalization before the legislative session ends tomorrow. Debates about revenue and political blowback doomed an earlier attempt to approve a bill.

Some advocates want to see money from a potentially lucrative market benefit those who suffered from anti-marijuana policing policies.

? E-scooters and ? e-bikes

Electric scooters and electric bikes will be allowed in New York State, except for Manhattan.

Once the state lifts its ban, each locality will have the option to allow them.

If a locality allows e-scooters and e-bikes, it will set its own rules about how users can operate them. Sharing services like Lime and Bird will need permission to operate.

E-scooters and e-bikes won’t be allowed in Manhattan, as a concession to lawmakers who thought the borough’s streets were too crowded to ride safely.

? Driver’s licenses

Undocumented immigrants were once able to obtain New York driver’s licenses.

But after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, an executive order required applicants to supply a Social Security number, effectively barring undocumented immigrants from getting a license.

Yesterday, the Legislature completed approval on a bill to once again grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, and Governor Cuomo signed the bill soon after. The issue had been deeply polarizing, splintering progressive and moderate suburban Democrats.

? Paid surrogacy

Forty-seven states allow women to be paid for carrying someone else’s baby to term.

New York isn’t one of them. Mr. Cuomo and some Democrats want to lift the ban. Opponents include the Roman Catholic Church and prominent feminists like Gloria Steinem, who said the practice could make women more vulnerable to reproductive trafficking.

? Rent rules

A new deal will expand rent stabilization protections throughout the state and make those protections permanent.

There will be limits on how much landlords can charge tenants before moving in and while they are in a unit. Landlords who illegally evict tenants will also face stiffer penalties.

From The Times

Paul Manafort seemed headed to Rikers. Then the Justice Department intervened.

Alex Jones’s legal team is said to have sent child porn in the Sandy Hook hoax case.

Nxivm trial: The sex cult was like a “horror movie,” a prosecutor said.

Some students get extra time on New York City’s entrance exam for its elite high schools. Forty-two percent are white.

A year later, the death of a New York veteran in a Pennsylvania jail remains a mystery.

Gloria Vanderbilt, the builder of a fashion empire, died in Manhattan. She was 95.

[Want more news from New York and around the region? Check out our full coverage.]

The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

What we’re reading

The city and state are teaming up to crack down on transit fare evasion. Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo made the announcement separately. [Politico NY]

To combat extreme heat, some public housing residents in the Bronx and Manhattan are getting free ways to cool off. [WNYC]

More people may be able to qualify for artist live-work spaces in SoHo and NoHo. [Curbed]

Coming up today

Mort Garson’s 1976 album, “Mother Earth’s Plantasia,” was written for plants and those who love them. Listen to the album at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden ahead of its reissue on vinyl. 5 p.m. [$40]

Learn to start a daily drawing practice by creating comic strips at the Artist Co-op in Manhattan. 7 p.m. [Free with R.S.V.P.]

The Urban Choir Project’s three choirs perform pop and indie songs at (Le) Poisson Rouge in Manhattan, along with the group Bandits on the Run. 7 p.m. [$15]

“Profiled,” a show at Littlefield in Brooklyn, asks comedians to make the case for reparations in celebration of Juneteenth. 8 p.m. [$10]

— Vivian Ewing

Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.

And finally: The real dog moms of New York City

An excerpt from an article by Rachel Syme:

Last month, 12 women in black sequin cocktail dresses stood on a stage inside a theater on the Brooklyn waterfront.

You might assume that someone would have thought of this perfect Venn diagram of social media, beauty pageant, puppy adoration, grinning female empowerment and Gilded Age excess by now. But in fact, this was the first Miss Dog Mom USA pageant.

The spectacle onstage was a live-action mash-up of “Best in Show” and “Drop Dead Gorgeous,” with a dollop of “Dance Moms” on the side.

The grand prize was a $1,000 award, a pageant sash and a yearlong contract to wave from parade floats and officiate at canine weddings (yes, they exist) as Miss Dog Mom 2019.

The pageant was the brainchild of Desh Valcin, 31. Years ago she competed in Miss Teen USA and enjoyed it. In 2015, she started a luxury dog events company, Chase & Papi, which organizes fancy “Yappy Hour” parties.

Later, she wondered how she could fuse her love of beauty pageants with her passion for her pets? Then it hit her. “What if we did a pageant modeled after Miss USA, where people get to showcase their style in addition to their dogs?” she remembered thinking.

Among the contestants were a teacher, a professional dog walker and a former Miss Texas Teen, not to mention a Yorkiepoo, a longhaired Chihuahua and a pair of Pomskies.

The pageant included a dance number, a costume competition and an evening-wear segment (women in floor-length ball gowns; dogs in three-piece suits, tiny tuxedos and one in a pink cupcake dress). For the five finalists, there were interview questions from the judges.

In the end, the winner was Maria Ducasse, and her Shih Tzu-greyhound mix, Bella. Ms. Ducasse is also the founder of East New York Dog Lovers, a nonprofit that provides fostering services for dog owners dealing with job loss or eviction.

It’s Tuesday — strut your stuff.

Metropolitan Diary: My Harlem window

Dear Diary:

The city finds its way through my Harlem window.

The commuter train wails from the tracks above Lexington Avenue. Planes going west and south crisscross every half-minute without incident. Sirens blare down Fifth Avenue.

There is a gruff man who goes west in the morning, east in the afternoon. He is known around the neighborhood by his singular dress: a head-to-toe paint-splattered canvas, a walking Pollock.

There is the woman who waddles down the sidewalk, her thick hair bouncing in step and obscuring her face entirely except for the peepholes around her eyes.

There is the actress who was on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” There is a speckled Great Dane whose head is the same size as the newborn it is sniffing in its stroller.

By three o’clock, there are children on low-riding bikes and young women howling with laughter as they rap in unison down the street. There is a couple fighting in the park. There is a painter whose house is boarded up after nearly burning down last year. He is unlocking his bike.

For years there used to be a man whose faded suit hung over him loosely and bunched at his ankles as he crossed diagonally through the park at 5:45 p.m. each day. He wore a hat and looked down as he walked alone, mostly indistinguishable from any other man, from time itself.

And then he vanished, and I often wonder to where.

— Selin Thomas

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