Midday News: New Delivery Tip Rules in NYC, Midtown Rezoning Plan Approved, and Remembering Latin Jazz Icon Eddie Palmieri

Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC NOW, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, August 15th. Here's the midday news. I'm Janae Pierre. It'll now be easier for customers to tip their food delivery drivers. WNYC's Karen Yi reports three New York City council bills are now law.

Karen Yi: The measures will let customers who use apps like DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats to tip while they're placing an order instead of after they've ordered their food. The companies will also have to restore the minimum-tipping suggestion to 10%. Restaurant delivery workers said the apps made it harder to earn tips after the city required a minimum pay rate for every hour of active work. The package of bills lapsed into law after Mayor Adams failed to act on them for 30 days. Adams did veto two other bills that would have boosted pay for grocery delivery workers, who are currently exempt from the city's payrolls and other protections. Adams said increasing pay for 20,000 grocery delivery workers would increase food costs.

Janae Pierre: DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber did not immediately comment. One of the busiest parts of Manhattan could get even busier under a rezoning plan passed by the city council yesterday. The rezoning would allow for about 10,000 new homes to be added across 42 blocks of Midtown between West 23rd and 40th Streets and between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. It would also add a busway to 34th Street that city officials say would speed up MTA buses. About 3,000 of the anticipated housing units would be priced at affordable levels. Mayor Eric Adams supports the plan and says it's a down payment on building more housing in Manhattan.

[music]

Janae Pierre: It's currently 79 degrees. It'll be mostly sunny on your Friday with highs in the upper 80s.

[MUSIC - Eddie Palmieri: Palo Pa' Rumba]

Janae Pierre: Just over one week has gone by since one of Latin music's biggest legends died.

[MUSIC - Eddie Palmieri: Palo Pa' Rumba]

Janae Pierre: The composer, bandleader, and Latin jazz hero Eddie Palmieri died last Wednesday at the age of 88. Of his generation of musicians, Palmieri was the last one standing. His death represents the true end of an era for the Latin musicians who thrived in New York City in the '60s and '70s. Artist, activist, and music journalist Aurora Flores-Hostos knew and worked with Palmieri across decades. She joined my colleague, Michael Hill, to help make sense of his legacy and to elaborate on why salsa and Latin music are so important to New Yorkers.

Michael Hill: You knew Eddie Palmieri for more than 50 years. How'd you watch him change over that period?

Aurora Flores-Hostos: It was an organic process. The first tune I heard of Eddie Palmieri was La Malanga.

[MUSIC - Eddie Palmieri: La Malanga]

Aurora Flores-Hostos: It was straight-up salsa at the time. It was what we were all hearing.

[MUSIC - Eddie Palmieri: La Malanga]

Se acabó ya la malanga y no puedo comer.

No sé lo que hacer

Aurora Flores-Hostos: He was brash. At that time, he had already changed his style from La Perfecta when I met him. La Perfecta was more when I was a teenager, and then he had changed his style. Now, he was more street. He was more like all of us, and he was talking about social justice issues. He was using more jazz. He was using more R&B. He was using more of the language, the musical language of the streets, of Nuyoricans, of what we were growing up with.

Michael Hill: Eddie Palmieri helped usher in, as you said, the salsa era in the middle of the century. People call him the genre's innovator, but he also often chafed with the label of salsa music. Tell us a little bit about that conflict.

Aurora Flores-Hostos: Well, all of them started doing that because Tito Puente started doing that at the beginning, and mainly because under salsa. Salsa is not a genre of music. Salsa is a commercial turn. All of them started fighting against that commercial term. The thing was that under salsa, especially when you look at the history of this music, which was basically born here 100 years ago, it was a mix of the Cuban and Puerto Rican music that was being played on both islands.

Music comes from people. When people travel and go to different places, those influences are automatically infiltrated into the music. 100 years ago, that music started changing. It started changing with the Puerto Ricans that were here, the Cubans that were here, the Spanish that was here. We came together in New York. Together in New York, we made this music go viral. We made it go around the world. Eddie Palmieri was one of those driving forces.

Michael Hill: Palmieri was an incredibly prolific musician, as you mentioned. He recorded on 40 albums over the course of his career, played thousands of shows, worked on scores of collaborations. What are you listening to from that vast catalog as we remember him in the next days and weeks?

Aurora Flores-Hostos: Well, I love the tune Café.

[MUSIC - Eddie Palmieri: Café]

tosta'o y cola'o

Aurora Flores-Hostos: You hear Barry Rogers on there. When you hear Café, Barry Rogers is like a soleto. He's like an improvisational singer. I'm listening to Café. I'm listening to La Malanga. I'm also listening to Itutu Ache-

[MUSIC - Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente: Itutu Ache]

Aurora Flores-Hostos: -which is from the Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri Masterpiece album. Another great album where they even mix Mexican music, mariachi. Incredible, incredible, the music that comes from New York City and the mixture.

Michael Hill: Now, I'm sure this is hard to do. Just pick one. Do you have a favorite memory of Palmieri?

Aurora Flores-Hostos: I have so many, but I have one that really stands out. The one that stands out is when he was doing The White Album. I think CBS Records then was interested in him, and he had gotten a special signing. I remember at that time, he had bought a home in Long Island. He was living in Long Island. They'd given him this special piano. It was white. It was beautiful. I went to see him.

At the time, I was about seven months pregnant. Then, a couple of months later, on my due date, December 29th, 1981, that day, I knew I was not going to go to a hospital. I had all this energy. I told my husband, "I'm going dancing. I want to see Eddie Palmieri, and I'm going with or without you," so [laughs] I went. It was the old Cheetah club. I'm dancing, and I'm going down on the floor.

I'm twirling around, and people are going ooh and ah. They're being concerned. After the first set, Eddie gets off the stage. The place is packed, and he comes straight to our table. He gets real serious, and he tells my then-husband, "I'm going to need your help." He looks at me really seriously, and he says, "If she goes into labor now, I need you to help me put her on the stage, and it will be the first time I allow somebody to grandstand me." That was it. [laughs]

Michael Hill: Aurora, we would love to talk more about Eddie Palmieri, but we're out of time. Aurora Flores-Hostos is an artist, activist, music journalist, and a musician herself. Thank you so much for telling us about Eddie Palmieri.

Aurora Flores-Hostos: Thank you so much. You can find my articles on Substack. Thank you.

[MUSIC - Eddie Palmieri: Puerto Rico]

Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening. This is NYC NOW from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.

[music]

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