Mamdani Moves Into Gracie Mansion, and New Yorkers Repurpose MetroCards

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Elizabeth Shwe: Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is moving into Gracie Mansion, the F and M lines are switching East River tunnels between Manhattan and Queens, and how people have given their expired MetroCards a second life. From WNYC, this is NYC NOW. I'm Elizabeth Shwe, in for Janae Pierre.

New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani says he and his wife are moving into Gracie Mansion in the new year. The Queens residents will leave their rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria for the mayor's official residence in the Upper East Side after Mamdani's inauguration on January 1st. He says they've decided to move partly due to security concerns. They say they'll miss the food, drinks, and multiple languages spoken by residents in Astoria the most.

F train riders were in for a rude awakening on Monday morning. The line switched routes with the M train between Manhattan and Queens. The MTA says the move will help unclog a subway bottleneck that strained subway service along Queens Boulevard. On Monday morning, the F train's new tracks faced a major infrastructure issue that delayed riders. The MTA reports a switch failed at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street during the morning rush that sparked delays that persisted into the afternoon. MTA officials say the switch failure wasn't caused by the route swap and that crews were working to resolve the problem.

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Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is using his platform to push back on federal immigration enforcement. In a new video, Mamdani says all New Yorkers, regardless of their immigration status, have rights when approached by ICE agents.

Zohran Mamdani: ICE is legally allowed to lie to you, but you have the right to remain silent. If you're being detained, you may always ask, "Am I free to go?" Repeatedly until they answer you.

Elizabeth Shwe: The release follows a tense confrontation late last month in Chinatown where demonstrators blocked ICE vans from leaving a garage. Mamdani says the city will continue to resist what he calls abusive tactics.

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Up next, a progressive public school in Manhattan, long known by its acronym ICE, decided it's time for a rebrand. That's after the break.

Announcer: NYC NOW.

Elizabeth Shwe: A public school in New York City is moving away from its long-standing nickname of ICE. Ice, citing the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. WNYC's Jessica Gould reports.

Jessica Gould: For decades, students, staff and parents have referred to the Institute for Collaborative Education in Manhattan by its initials, ICE. Not anymore. Here's junior Shane Nesbitt.

Shane Nesbitt: We call our school NY.ICE now.

Jessica Gould: That's N-Y for New York, I-C-E, NY.ICE.

Shane Nesbitt: They changed it because, I mean, all the immigration and all the things that are happening with ICE is just not a good look for our school anymore.

Jessica Gould: Principal Peter Karp announced he'd be referring to the school by its full name or the extended initials, NY.ICE, after President Donald Trump's second inauguration. He said he wants to avoid any confusion or unnecessary emotional response associated with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The name change isn't official, but Nesbitt says all school sports uniforms and swag now feature the new acronym.

Shane Nesbitt: Now all the merchant stuff says NY.ICE on it.

Jessica Gould: The rebrand is just one example of how federal immigration policies are reverberating through school communities. Just weeks into the new administration, parents and teachers were distributing flyers on undocumented immigrants' rights. Some created encrypted chats to alert each other if ICE agents are nearby. After several public school students got detained at routine immigration check-ins, students, staff and parents organized fundraisers to help. Junior Mosey Nathan says he knows many immigrant families are fearful.

Mosey Nathan: You know, when you hear the word ICE, it can be pretty triggering for some people.

Jessica Gould: He says that's why he thinks his school's name change from ICE to NY.ICE is so important.

Mosey Nathan: I think it's a good way to be more inclusive of our community.

Jessica Gould: City schools have enrolled thousands of migrant students in recent years, but the Education Department says no immigration agents have tried to enter schools so far, and administrators have been instructed to call city lawyers if ICE does show up.

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Elizabeth Shwe: That was WNYC's Jessica Gould. The MTA is phasing out the MetroCard and replacing it with the OMNY tap system for good. That means you won't be able to buy a new MetroCard after December 31st. MetroCards have a distinctive thin and flexible yet sturdy design that sets it apart from credit cards and business cards, allowing folks to use it in pretty unique ways, which made me wonder, what are New Yorkers doing with their leftover MetroCards?

I went on a search and found some people with creative uses for their cards. For example, many nail technicians use MetroCards to pop off acrylic nails because it's a quick and easy way to remove them, especially in a time crunch. Kelly Lam, who works at Nail Chic Salon in Cobble Hill, told me that although it's common, she wouldn't recommend it.

Kelly Lam: How I would personally use it if majority of the nails are already lifted halfway or more, then I would shove a MetroCard underneath and try and lift up the nails, the enhancements. It's quick. Usually, it should be painless, but if the nails are very attached to your natural nails, then it will hurt.

Elizabeth Shwe: I also learned that MetroCards are the perfect tool for phone repair technicians who use them to remove the fragile digitizer screens on iPads and also to remove screen protectors from phones because of how bendy they are.

Brian Cambo Verde: They're soft enough and malleable enough and sturdy enough that they allow us to go through the entire screen and remove the adhesive without the risk of the tablets breaking.

Elizabeth Shwe: That's Brian Cambo Verde, a technician at MobiCompu Repair in Brooklyn. He says MetroCards are way cheaper than what's on the market, but he says they're really hard to come by now.

Brian Cambo Verde: Sometimes people would even come in here, we would be like, "Hey, do you happen to have any old MetroCards?" A lot of people just used to keep them in their wallets. They don't do that anymore. They're like, "No, I know you guys use MetroCards. If I find one, I'll give it to you." If I find one now is the phrase that people use because if you even see one.

Elizabeth Shwe: I also talked with Jodi Shapiro, a curator for the New York City Transit Museum, and she found a clever workaround for getting locked out of her hotel room by using her MetroCard.

Jodi Shapiro: I have used my MetroCard to open a hotel room door because credit cards were too thick, but the MetroCard just fit right in there. Of course, I told security, because you shouldn't be able to open a hotel room door with a credit card or a MetroCard.

Elizabeth Shwe: One of the more common ways that people are giving MetroCards a second life is through art. A lot of artists have incorporated the physical MetroCard into their work, and some have made an entire dress out of MetroCards. Juan Carlos Pinto is an artist who makes mosaics out of cut up pieces of MetroCards. He said it all started around 25 years ago when he got fined for jumping the turnstile. He collected all the MetroCards on the floor of that subway station, brought them home, and cut them up in anger.

Juan Carlos Pinto: After two hours doing that, when more calm down and I find out, "Wait a minute, there is five colors in the card. You got black, blue, yellow, red, and white." I have a pantone. I have a palette now.

Elizabeth Shwe: He says his favorite part of the MetroCard is actually the magnetic black stripe, which to him holds the unique transportation history of the person who once used it.

Juan Carlos Pinto: The portrait of Einstein, there is at least 75 magnetical stripes there. That's the history of 75 New Yorkers I never met and who maybe they met each other or maybe there's a marriage there or a crime. You never know.

Elizabeth Shwe: When I'm not producing for WNYC, I'm dancing. And during class one day, I noticed my dance teacher, Jenny Sowden, wearing a MetroCard as an earring, which I thought was pretty cool, and I had to ask her about it. She told me that she used to have an Altoids tin full of MetroCards to make a deck of cards out of them. When someone from her local buy nothing group asked for MetroCards to make a drag queen costume out of them, she gave them away, but she kept one special card for herself.

Jenny Sowden: Instead of it being a blue font, it was a green font. I made it into an earring, actually. I was inspired by this drag queen, and I was like, "Yes, if we're going to get rid of all these things, what are we going to do with them?"

Elizabeth Shwe: She wears it a few times a month because people's reactions to it crack her up.

Jenny Sowden: They would mime as if I would leave the earring in my ear and then I would crouch down over and slide the earring while it's still in my ear. I was like, "That just feels like I'm going to hurt myself."

Elizabeth Shwe: A lot of the people I spoke to, especially those who grew up in the city, like Brian the phone technician, expressed a lot of sadness for the MetroCard going away.

Brian Cambo Verde: I spent most of my life here, and like I said, I've been taking the train for as long as I can remember, ever since middle school, to commute to and from all the way through college now. Just personally, me, I grew up with the MetroCard, so I think for me, I'll always think that the MetroCard reigns supreme.

Elizabeth Shwe: Remember, you won't be able to buy any more MetroCards next year, but they'll still be accepted into 2026. If you still have money on yours, you don't have to get rid of them yet, although the MTA is encouraging transferring the rest of the money to an OMNY card.

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Thanks for listening to NYC NOW from WNYC. I'm Elizabeth Shwe. We'll be back tomorrow.

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