Title: Mayor Mamdani's Name Dropping Strategy, Staten Island's Award Winning Bathroom, and the Comedy Grind.

Announcer: NYC Now.

Janae Pierre: From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre. On this podcast, we spend a lot of time talking about politics and all the breaking news happening in New York City, but another way to understand this city is through its culture, the art, the comedy, the music, and the unexpected stories that reveal what this city is paying attention to right now. This right here is our arts and culture check-in. It's a look at the stories coming across our arts and culture desk, some big, some weird, some easy to miss, but together they give us a snapshot of where New York City culture is in this moment.

Joining me to walk through what's been landing on his desk this week is our arts and culture editor, Matthew Schnipper. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matthew Schnipper: Thank you for having me.

Janae Pierre: Before we get into everything that you've been covering this week, what do you love most about New York City culture? I know that you've been here 20 years. You were born here but moved over to Connecticut. What do you enjoy most about New York City culture?

Matthew Schnipper: What I enjoy most about New York City culture is the just unknowability of it. There's too much. There's just too much. It's like you go to a restaurant-- it's like a buffet. I still eat at buffets. I remember after COVID, they were like, "You'll never eat at a buffet again." You know what? I go downstairs and I eat a buffet for lunch.

Janae Pierre: Are people there with you?

Matthew Schnipper: There's hella people at the buffet, yes. I think it's like that. You're not going to eat everything. You're not going to go to a buffet and eat everything, but it's nice to know it's all there. Like, "Oh, do I want pork loin for lunch? I can have it." That's what New York City feels like. You want to do anything you can. It's all happening today.

Janae Pierre: All right. What's going on? What's coming off of your desk this week?

Matthew Schnipper: We have been tracking one of our favorite millennials, Mayor Mamdani, and all of the references he's been using in his speeches and as he's beginning to appear around town as our new mayor. You may have seen at his inauguration, one of our favorite things that he did-

Janae Pierre: I'm outside.

Matthew Schnipper: -I'm outside-- was he shouted out Jadakiss, he quoted Jadakiss at his inauguration.

Mayor Mamdani: Throughout it all, we will, in the words of Jason Terrance Phillips, better known as Jadakiss or J to the Muah, be outside.

Janae Pierre: That's big, so big. The locks went crazy.

Matthew Schnipper: If he shouts out Sheek Louch, I think I'll probably pass out. He shouted out Jadakiss really to say, "Hey, I'm going to be available. I'm here, I'm your mayor, I'm going to be on the streets." There are a lot of different ways he could have said that, I'm sure Ed Koch had his way of talking to the people, but he chose very specifically to use the voice of a New York rapper to do that.

Janae Pierre: Yes. Pretty cool.

Matthew Schnipper: I think that's cool. I think it makes sense for him. That is the world that he lives in. He was a rapper himself at one point. These are the people he wants to reach in the city, he wants to reach people who know who Jadakiss is. I think those are the people who voted for him. We thought, "Wait a second, this guy is always talking about somebody." He's always dropping a reference, be it sports, music, food.

Janae Pierre: Yes, so true.

Matthew Schnipper: Let's keep track. For the next four years or the next eight years, we will be keeping a running list of the major cultural references that Mayor Mamdani makes as he moves his way around the city.

Janae Pierre: Whoa, I got a feeling that's going to be a lengthy list.

Matthew Schnipper: I agree with you. I've already had to go, "He put a song in his Instagram. Do I need to-- Is that big enough, J Dilla? Should we talk about that?" Being a part of the cultural world is very important to him, and I think it's going to be a lot of the bread and butter of how he communicates with people.

Janae Pierre: Yes. It's all about that street cred, right?

Matthew Schnipper: Yes, exactly. A vote is a vote is a vote, wherever it comes from. I think he's been really successful at getting people to support him by saying he's reading, listening to, eating, watching the same things as everybody else.

Janae Pierre: Talk more about those cultural references.

Matthew Schnipper: One that I thought was particularly interesting was one actually that he modulated depending on the audience that he had. He is quickly going after junk fees, fees that you have at the gym, where they say, "Oh, you got to pay this extra for membership."

Janae Pierre: We hate those.

Matthew Schnipper: He talked about gym memberships and talked about concert ticket fees. In one speech about this, when he was talking to a group of millennial creators, he referenced Lucy Dacus, who is an indie musician who performed at his inauguration. She played a socialist anthem, Bread and Roses. He said, "Oh, yes, when you're scrimping, scrounging, and saving up for these Lucy Dacus tickets, you don't want the extra fee on your $30."

At another speech, he switched it up. When he had another group of people, he was talking about Taylor Swift, not Lucy Dacus. He didn't want this to go over their heads. He said, "I'm going to take this mainstream," and he said, "Okay, then you're saving hundreds of dollars to see Taylor Swift. You don't want the fee there." I thought being nimble like that, and using the reference very specifically-tailored, I thought it was genuinely clever. It shows he's really paying attention to who he's talking to. He wants to get that cred.

He could have said Taylor Swift to the millennial creators. That would have made sense. I'm sure a lot of them made their way down to MetLife Stadium when she was there for the Eras Tour. He said, "Okay, I'm going to go a level deeper, and I'm going to talk about Lucy Dacus here." I think that that is the type of thing that makes people really attached to him is that he feels like he's speaking their language because, honestly, he is.

Janae Pierre: Matt, those cultural references, have they always landed for Mamdani?

Matthew Schnipper: That's a really good question. Yes, I think so. Look, this is a guy with a magnetic personality, with a great smile, and he's showing up and he's saying Taylor Swift, Jadakiss, the Knicks, like, "I'm your guy. Come ride in the taxi with me. Let's go. I love this Chai Spot in the Upper East Side and this one in Astoria." I think it's the type of thing where if you're not paying attention, they'll roll off your back. If you don't know who Taylor Swift is or Lucy Dacus in this, you still are going to be mad about extra fees at the gym or the concert tickets. He doesn't need it to connect. It's this extra detail.

You know what, the thing when they say like when you get dressed in the morning, take one thing off? He's like, "What if I just put one extra one on?" It's going to be a small one, maybe nobody will notice, maybe it's just a tiny pin, but for the people who are paying attention to that detail, it will connect. If you don't know who Jadakiss is, if you don't know what I'm outside is, you could Google it. If you don't get it, did it make a speech worse at the inauguration?

Janae Pierre: No.

Matthew Schnipper: I don't think so. I think he does this in a way that doesn't say, "You've got to know what I'm talking about. If you don't get this reference, you're cut out." He does it in a way that will just bring more people in.

Janae Pierre: Another story that came from your desk, Matt, mentions a Staten Island restroom that won an architectural award.

Matthew Schnipper: A major architectural award.

Janae Pierre: That's crazy. Tell me more about this.

Matthew Schnipper: Every year, the American Institute of Architects in New York gives some awards. They basically give awards to New York City buildings, structures, and to New York City architects who may have been working outside of the city.

Janae Pierre: Yes, but why a restroom?

Matthew Schnipper: That is a great question. There is, I have to say, a lovely looking restroom in Staten Island, in a park, which is modular. This is a prototype for a way that we may be able to have further restrooms in the city, the kinds that you can just drop out of a truck and just deposit somewhere. It's this really lovely structure, this blue and white tiled comfort station, as it's called officially.

I think it's really cool, actually, that this institution is looking not just apartment building library. We have some of those on the list, I'm sure deserving of their awards, but they said, "What other buildings exist, and where are they?" I think it's adventurous to go out actually and start to look for the way in which architecture and public works affect your day-to-day life.

Janae Pierre: Adventurous, to say the least. I'm just thinking back at this restroom in comparison to an apartment building or a library, and I'm just wondering, how does something like this even get judged in the first place?

Matthew Schnipper: Oh, that's a great question. It's hard to say, "How do you judge a restroom versus a movie theater versus an airport?" Last year they awarded a bench.

Janae Pierre: A bench?

Matthew Schnipper: A bench. Look, I think it's fun, and punchy, and weird to go and look for this stuff, but it's real. To me, I think that these, and I'm not inside the judges' minds, obviously, but I think it's cool that they're saying, "What actually makes a difference? What does design do for people?" I'm not an expert in that world, but it's something that makes a real, real, real difference. Forget the necessity of public restrooms, which is an entire other story, but what if they were a nice experience?

Janae Pierre: Who's to say that I can't pee comfortably in a public space?

Matthew Schnipper: Yes, and with beauty. I think we all deserve that.

Janae Pierre: Definitely.

Matthew Schnipper: I think keeping that in mind when you are-- not just the pee element of it, the sitting element of it, bus shelters, armrests on the subway, windows that go down easy, whatever you may have, the simple things that really do affect how we live. I think this is a New York City award. That's a thing that really says, "We pay attention to what's happening, how you are living your life as you move around." I think it was really cool that they did that.

Janae Pierre: What's the actual design detail here? Like what won judges over, I'm wondering.

Matthew Schnipper: Oh, I think that they were impressed both with the elegance of it, but I think that what they've said was, "This is a thing that is a modular design. This can be picked up and dropped into any other part of the city." I think not just, "It's an effective tactical thing." We have room for the Gehry buildings and the IM Pei buildings and all of those in the city, this is a thing that is both elegant and useful. They can produce these on an assembly line.

Janae Pierre: That's pretty cool.

Matthew Schnipper: Yes, I think it is cool. This is a thing they can make a bunch of, and it'll look the same and cost less because they can buy it in wholesale. If you can do that while not also making it ugly, Godspeed.

Janae Pierre: There's a photo of this public restroom-

Matthew Schnipper: Yes. What do you think?

Janae Pierre: -on our Gothamist site. Go ahead and check it out. I'm impressed.

Matthew Schnipper: You're going to go to Staten Island just to pee?

Janae Pierre: No. Not at all. Not at all.

Matthew Schnipper: I do want to say, if you have peed in this restroom and you have feedback, please send us a note.

Janae Pierre: Yes, send us an email at nycnow@wnyc.org. We'd love to hear about your experience.

Matthew Schnipper: I don't know that I thought I would be coming here talking about doing pee reviews, but yes, all right.

Janae Pierre: Here we are.

Matthew Schnipper: New York City takes you in all kinds of places.

Janae Pierre: That's why you love your job.

Matthew Schnipper: Yes.

Janae Pierre: We're talking arts and culture. We'll be back with more stories from Matt's desk. Stay with us after the break.

[music]

Janae Pierre: Welcome back. We're talking to arts and culture editor, Matthew Schnipper. What else are you working on the arts and culture desk?

Matthew Schnipper: We have a great story this week by a great freelancer named Jamie McClellan. He saw the new Bradley Cooper movie, Is This Thing On? In that movie, Will Arnett, who is a sad divorce guy, basically stumbles onto an open mic at the Comedy Cellar, which is a huge club in the city, and crushes it and has a whole new life as a comedian. Jamie went out to go find out, how do you get a gig at the Comedy Cellar? How does it actually work?

What he found out was that you basically suck for a long time in a lot of different places, clubs in Brooklyn, anywhere that will take you, until you make connections. First off, you got to not suck forever, so you got to get better, but a lot of it is social. You're going out, you're meeting other people, you're meeting other comics, who are then going to put the word in with the other bookers, who are going to give you an audition, and eventually you're going to build your way up.

What I was interested in was seeing how methodical this thing was. You know when you are starting out, you're going to be at the bottom for a long time, and you need to keep climbing, and climbing, and climbing. The people he talked to were very aware. It was not like, oh, they moved here, and they're like, "I'm going to be a star tomorrow." They were like, "No, I'm going to show up at the open mic night at Freddy's again, and again, and again, and again." I think there was something charming about that perseverance.

Janae Pierre: A real grind.

Matthew Schnipper: Yes.

Janae Pierre: It doesn't sound guaranteed. You can go out and make a name for yourself in Brooklyn and all these other places, but you're not guaranteed a slot no matter how many shows the Comedy Cellar has each night.

Matthew Schnipper: No. He talked to a comedian named Stef Dag, who you might know from Instagram, she has a funny show on social media called Hot and Single. She has grinded for a long time. What she said was, "You're not going to be good for 10 years," which I found to be a devastating quote. I think what's implied in there is not you'll be good after 10 years. You might be bad after that, too. Imagine if you had to do 10 years of job interviews to get the one thing that you wanted, and you were doing it every day.

One guy was going out and doing a dozen open mics a week, both to get better, obviously, you need that practice, but also just to be in front of people. It's like the worst dating experience or something, where you're like, "Somebody look at me. Anybody? I'll try this new place." I will say, actually, he noted at one of the open mics that he went to, it was all men, 100% dudes, and he was the only person who did not perform. A reporter. No one was there to just enjoy the comedy. It was like a little factory of people just going up and having their chance. Honestly, it sounded really sad. I know it's supposed to be funny, but it sounded like a bummer.

Janae Pierre: No, it does sound depressing AF.

Matthew Schnipper: Yes. It made me appreciate people's perseverance. I don't know that I admired it. In some ways, it's like there is a little bit of delusion if you think you are going to go and become a star and get into that world. Obviously some people do make it. There are people on those stages that are making people laugh, that is clear, but the amount of people that are not on those stages performing, not making people laugh is just a lot.

Janae Pierre: I'm going to say something, and I'm not trying to take away from what the Comedy Cellar is, but even if you make it on the stage at the Comedy Cellar, that's not saying you've made it as a comedian.

Matthew Schnipper: Go ahead.

Janae Pierre: You still have to get paid, you still have to put food on the table.

Matthew Schnipper: Right. You need to go back to the Comedy Cellar the next day with new jokes. It may happen for a moment, and that's it. You have to keep going. I thought it was interesting that Jamie, our writer, was shocked how much of a fairy tale it really was.

Janae Pierre: A fairy tale indeed. Hey, Alexa, play It Was All A Dream by the Notorious BIG.

Matthew Schnipper: He didn't know that song was about trying to make it in stand-up comedy in New York City.

Janae Pierre: Speaking of comedy, I remember the New York Post story saying that Hannibal Buress has a club in Williamsburg-

Matthew Schnipper: Isola, yes.

Janae Pierre: -and now it's closing.

Matthew Schnipper: Now he doesn't. Hannibal Buress, he got roasted not so long ago about being a landlord. I don't know if you remember this by any means. I think he was talking about, I think, on Eric Andre Show, and he talked about owning property, and people were like, "Nobody wants to be a landlord." Except for him, I guess. He also was an entrepreneur, and he opened up this club. It's in the space of the former knitting factory on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg. It opened up early 2025, and it didn't last a year.

Janae Pierre: Yikes.

Matthew Schnipper: We've been trying to do some reporting on this. We reached out to some folks who performed at the club, they said they got paid as normal, things are fine, but Buress just stopped paying and the club was done.

Janae Pierre: That is surprising to hear as you just shared with us that he's a landlord.

Matthew Schnipper: Yes, exactly. To me, he was like, "I think I'm done." It's sad anytime an independent venue closes in the city, but it is surprising when one that is six or eight months old closes. To me, that shows not a lot of planning. Some people said, "Oh, his club closed? I didn't know that his club existed in the first place." I'll be honest with you, neither did I. I didn't know that, Janae. It was like, "Oh, he has that? Doesn't he live in LA? He's got a club in New York? What's the deal with this?"

It did not seem like it was a place that carved out a niche for itself. Without being Hannibal Buress' accountant, I feel like he had enough money to pay the rent.

Janae Pierre: One can have the money, the rent can still be too damn high.

Matthew Schnipper: Sure, but it wasn't like he had this club for 10 years and it spiked up. I think he probably knew what he was getting into. Did he lose interest? Did he just go, "This was a bad idea"? Did he have big ambitions that they couldn't follow through? We reached out to him, but we have not had comment back. I am hoping Hannibal Buress will hit us up and talk to us about why his club shut down. He has said that he will pay all the money he owes, he just hasn't gotten it to the landlords yet.

Janae Pierre: I hate to see so much turnaround in such a great spot.

Matthew Schnipper: Yes. It's a cool venue.

Janae Pierre: All right, Matt, what's your favorite band?

Matthew Schnipper: Black Flag.

Janae Pierre: What's the last album you listened to?

Matthew Schnipper: Dopesmoker by Sleep.

Janae Pierre: Cardi B or Nicki?

Matthew Schnipper: Is the answer not obvious? No. Cardi.

Janae Pierre: All right. Kendrick or Drake?

Matthew Schnipper: Am I going to get doxxed by Nicki stans right now?

Janae Pierre: I don't know. The Barbz are crazy.

Matthew Schnipper: The Barbz. Thank you. Yes, they are. Kendrick.

Janae Pierre: What's your favorite bagel?

Matthew Schnipper: Garlic bagel. I paused for a while because I feel like that's the thing you'll get doxxed. Garlic bagel, not toasted, with egg and cheese.

Janae Pierre: No cream cheese?

Matthew Schnipper: No.

Janae Pierre: What's a hot take of yours, Matt?

Matthew Schnipper: I'm going to quickly say Bob Weir died this past week. I'm definitely a deadhead. Bob Weir songs were the worst Grateful Dead songs.

Janae Pierre: Whoa. Hit us up. NYC Now at wnyc.org. Let us know if you agree or disagree.

Matthew Schnipper: Some of them are good, but not all of them.

Janae Pierre: Matthew Schnipper is WMYC's arts and culture editor. Thanks so much for joining me, Matt.

Matthew Schnipper: Thank you, Janae.

Janae Pierre: We can't wait to talk to you next time.

Matthew Schnipper: I can't wait to talk to you. Too spicy?

Janae Pierre: I think it's spicy. I like it.

[music]

 

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