If you’re anything like me, you’re really enjoying the new X-Men 97 show by Marvel Animation on Disney+ and you want to tell everyone about it (episode 5, right?). 

Well, Airbnb can do you one better and you don’t even need powers! It’s launching a chance to stay at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning in Westchester, NY. The stay, which is set up inside a four-bedroom mansion in High Castle and “hosted” by Jubilee, is a 2D experience that includes:

• A new student orientation video from Jubilee
• The opportunity to concoct experiments in Beast’s lab
• The chance to train like an X-Man in the Danger Room
• A stop in the iconic War Room for team briefings and to try on Cerebro
• Staying overnight in either host Jubilee’s bedroom straight out of the 90s, Wolverine’s room inspired by the series, Beast’s lab, or the new recruits dorm room.
• Beignets for breakfast (Gambit’s secret recipe)

On the Airbnb listing for the X-Mansion, Jubilee writes about the experience:

“Hey, I’m Jubilee! If I’m not at the mall, you can find me hanging with my fellow X-Men. We’re talking Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine! I learned how to light up the sky at Xavier’s Institute for Higher Learning. Basically, I have the power to shoot fireworks from my hands. Rad, huh? Can’t wait to have you over to the house so you can see what we’re all about.”

Before you leave, you’ll get debriefed on your new mutant powers an official diploma and a class photo.

The space itself looks like the animated series come to life — certainly worth hosting the likes of Magneto and our beloved hero Gambit. 

Booking opens at airbnb.com at 5:30pm today (May 1) with stays starting in June. When you try booking, you’ll need to provide your preferred stay dates, your guests, and answer a question about why you want to go. Airbnb will randomly select potential guests and ask them to book it. 

Requests to book close at 11:59pm PT on May 13, 2024, and it’s $97 per person to stay the night.

If you can’t secure the stay, you can just go to the two-hour X-Men experience at the X-Mansion, which you can book starting May 9 right here.

This experience is part of Airbnb’s Icons program, a new category of “extraordinary experiences hosted by the greatest names in music, film, television, art, sports, and more.” 

“Icons take you inside worlds that only existed in your imagination—until now,” Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder and CEO, said. “As life becomes increasingly digital, we’re focused on bringing more magic into the real world. With Icons, we’ve created the most extraordinary experiences on Earth.” 

* This article was originally published here

May is full of reasons to celebrate: not only is it the end of that long, cold New York winter, but there’s also Cinco de Mayo as well as, uh, the birthday of action star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on May 2. All of those festivities are coming together for the fourth annual Guac on the Rock campaign, an initiative from Johnson and his small-batch Teremana Tequila brand. And for the first time, the campaign is stretching out from a mere week of free guacamole to an entire month of gratis guac. 

RECOMMENDED: The best spots for guacamole in NYC, from traditional Mexican recipes to unorthodox takes

From Wednesday, May 1 through Friday, May 31, Johnson’s Teremana Tequila will reimburse restaurant goers for their guacamole orders up to $1,000,000, when they purchase guac with any Teremana cocktail. (Yes, alas, that does mean you have to be age 21 and over to participate.) All you have to do is head to guacontherock.com and use the restaurant locator to find a participating eatery or bar near you. Once there, order a Teremana drink and guacamole; snap a picture of your itemized receipt and submit it on the Guac on the Rock website; and you’ll see a reimbursement (of up to $10) via Venmo for that guac starter, no matter if you dine in or take out.  

Launched in 2021, the nationwide, charitable initiative aims to encourage consumers to support America’s restaurants, by generating additional revenue for the local venues as well as tips for hospitality workers. 

“For Cinco de Mayo and my birthday this year, I’m happy that the Guac will be on the Rock for a full month,” said Johnson in a statement. “It’s a testament to the incredible success of Teremana that we are able to give back to our tremendous bars and restaurants and our loyal fans for a fourth year in a row—in an even bigger way than before. I can’t wait to see more people come together to support our nation’s hospitality workers and say thank you by raising a Teremana Toast and participating in Guac on the Rock!”

* This article was originally published here

Two empty chairs sat stage left by the time New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board (NYC RGB) issued a preliminary vote allowing landlords to raise rents on rent-stabilized residential units this past Tuesday. The initial hikes were initially locked to a range of 2 to 4.5% for one-year leases and 4 to 6.5% for two-year leases beginning in October. A final vote on June 17 will determine the exact percentage for rent increases.

The vacant seats were assigned to the two tenant representatives on the board, Adán Soltren and Genesis Aquino, who walked off in protest given the seemingly inevitable rent hike despite mounting evidence of financial hardship that rent stabilized tenants already faced. They abstained from the preliminary vote, which went 5-2 in favor of the agreed upon increase; the two nays came from the owner representatives who argued the rent hike range was not high enough.

The move from the board affects nearly one million households protected by the Rent Stabilization Law, which set a legal limit to how much property owners can charge for qualifying apartments, typically those in pre-1974 buildings with six or more units. The board determines the exact limit. 

The NYC RGB’s formation came as the actual Rent Stabilization Law passed in 1969, giving the sitting mayor authority to appoint nine members—five from the general public, two representing tenants, and two representing property owners—to the board. The members are tasked with convening between March to June to review housing affordability standards for both renters and expenses for landlords, culminating in a preliminary vote with a final vote to follow. 

But the ultimate rent increase the NYC RGB agrees upon is almost guaranteed to stem from the initial range in the first vote, according to Soltren, who spoke to the Amsterdam News on the morning of the vote. In fact, Soltren said, there was a dispute among the board about whether they could even legally deviate outside the preliminary vote’s scope. 

“You’re not voting on a specific number necessarily as to what the upward or downward adjustment would be,” he said. “You’re saying what the range would be so that for the number in the final vote with land somewhere in [that] range…certainly tonight’s vote is going to set the goalposts as to what the final vote will yield.”
To be clear, the NYC RGB does not specifically vote on how much to raise rents, but whether the city should increase them at all. It can even decide on a rent rollback to reduce costs. Yet Soltren, who also works as a supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society, pointed out the two could be conflated given the board’s recurring decision to raise rents despite data—which informs the vote—pointing to historical financial strains on tenants. 

The rent guideline board’s reports found median rents last year for rent-stabilized households made up around 28.8% of its income, and broadly reported a significant increase in non-payments and residential evictions. Homelessness within city shelters also increased, even when the newly-arrived asylum seekers were not accounted for. And under 1% of rent stabilized units, which make up 41% of rentals in 2023, remained empty.

Last year, protesters led by several progressive city council members, including Brooklyn’s Chi Ossé, took over the preliminary vote stage at Cooper Union to vocally advocate against rent increases. But a 2 to 5% increase for one-year rentals and a 4 to 7% increase for two-year rentals were agreed upon anyway. A 3% increase for one-year rentals was ultimately agreed upon. 

This time around, the board proceedings were similarly drowned out by protesters, whose boos and “shame” chants paired with orange thunderstix rivaled those of the Knicks playoff game across the East River. They only paused to cheer on Soltren and Aquino during their remarks and subsequent vote of “no confidence” in the board and the Adams administration. 

“Rent stabilization has always served more people of color than market rate apartments,” Soltren said in his remarks. “In 2023 alone, 71% of the rent-stabilized households are headed by people of color. Despite the massive displacement of Black New Yorkers in the last two decades due to gentrification and unaffordability, Black New Yorkers still comprise 23% of the rent stabilized housing stock. 

“What message are you sending to Black and brown New Yorkers when this administration and this board are calling for a third increase in three years that would likely total about 10% or more?” 

After the preliminary vote, Soltren said he cited data from the most recent New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. He will still need to sit on several upcoming public board meetings before the final vote, he said. After his walk-off, he is unsure how those convenings will shake out. 

Civil rights attorney Robert Desir, who works at Legal Aid Society with Soltren, pointed to rent-stabilized housing as key to keeping longtime residents in majority Black and brown communities. He says fair market housing, which is not stabilized, is often out of reach for such renters, preventing them from remaining in the neighborhood if a rent increase leads to eviction over non-payment. Median rent for a rent stabilized unit was $1,500 a month last year, according to the NYCHVS. Comparatively, the median fair market rental asked for $2,000.

“Part of the rent stabilization system serves a good purpose preventing these runaway rents that result in displacement,” Desir said. “And where that’s not guarded, people fall behind, unable to afford the rent and are evicted, [meaning] those folks don’t stand a good chance to be able to stay in that neighborhood, particularly in Harlem. We’ve seen how that area has undergone significant change in the last couple of decades, and [it is] still happening.”

One protester, Ann Marie Grant, says she attended to support her fellow renters despite living in NYCHA rather than a rent stabilized unit because she fears New York City will be only for the ultrawealthy if middle-class and low-income families can’t afford rent. She says she’s seeing segregation play out in real time in her neighborhood of East Harlem due to cost of living increases and gentrification.

“I see more of my neighbors leaving and new faces taking over,” Grant said. “Gentrification is there and it’s not right. As I said, everybody should be allowed to live together, it’s not about Black versus white.”

But real estate developer Joshua Brown says “mom-and-pop” Black property owners with rent-stabilized units like himself are feeling the squeeze that come from high repair costs. While he says those issues need to be addressed by tweaking legislation, the Brookynite says a higher rent increase would help him recoup the roughly $70,000 needed to fix up his building in Bed-Stuy. Brown adds that without those costs, he would not need to raise rent lockstep with the NYC RGB’s increase cap. 

“There is an incentive to keep someone who has been there a long time paying your rent on time to not raise their price just so you could possibly get a new one who could flake out within one year or two years,” he said. “However, there are root causes, there’s no incentive to do it now…what this does sadly is incentivize owners [and] developers to just keep the building vacant so that they can fully renovate the building and now you turn all these rent stabilized units into market rate units [through] something that’s called a substantial rehab…so essentially, it’s taking rent stabilized units off the market.”

The Rent Stabilization Law itself recently weathered several legal challenges, including in a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. In March, Mayor Eric Adams signed an extension into law, maintaining rent stabilization in the city until at least April 27. One of those organizations challenging the law, the Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), also objected to the preliminary vote for not raising the range high enough.

“It should not solely be the responsibility of the RGB to keep these buildings solvent,” said CHIP Executive Director Jay Martin in a statement. “Elected officials need to find ways to reduce the costs of operating housing and provide more financial assistance to vulnerable tenants. But until that happens, the RGB is faced with the Herculean task of protecting this housing stock and must step up to make the unpopular decision to increase rents.”

Mayor Adams also responded to the vote, fearing the range’s two-year cap could seriously hurt renters, but advocated for a middle ground. 

“Tenants are feeling the squeeze of a decades-long affordability crisis, which has been accelerated by restrictive zoning laws and inadequate tools that have made it harder and harder to build housing,” he said in an emailed statement. “Our team is taking a close look at the preliminary ranges voted on by the Rent Guidelines Board this evening and while the Board has the challenging task of striking a balance between protecting tenants from infeasible rent increases and ensuring property owners can maintain their buildings as costs continue to rise, I must be clear that a 6.5 percent increase goes far beyond what is reasonable to ask tenants to take on at this time.” 

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

The post Tenant reps walk out of Rent Guidelines Board vote as stage is set for raising rents on stabilized units again appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Two empty chairs sat stage left by the time New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board (NYC RGB) issued a preliminary vote allowing landlords to raise rents on rent-stabilized residential units this past Tuesday. The initial hikes were initially locked to a range of 2 to 4.5% for one-year leases and 4 to 6.5% for two-year leases beginning in October. A final vote on June 17 will determine the exact percentage for rent increases.

The vacant seats were assigned to the two tenant representatives on the board, Adán Soltren and Genesis Aquino, who walked off in protest given the seemingly inevitable rent hike despite mounting evidence of financial hardship that rent stabilized tenants already faced. They abstained from the preliminary vote, which went 5-2 in favor of the agreed upon increase; the two nays came from the owner representatives who argued the rent hike range was not high enough.

The move from the board affects nearly one million households protected by the Rent Stabilization Law, which set a legal limit to how much property owners can charge for qualifying apartments, typically those in pre-1974 buildings with six or more units. The board determines the exact limit. 

The NYC RGB’s formation came as the actual Rent Stabilization Law passed in 1969, giving the sitting mayor authority to appoint nine members—five from the general public, two representing tenants, and two representing property owners—to the board. The members are tasked with convening between March to June to review housing affordability standards for both renters and expenses for landlords, culminating in a preliminary vote with a final vote to follow. 

But the ultimate rent increase the NYC RGB agrees upon is almost guaranteed to stem from the initial range in the first vote, according to Soltren, who spoke to the Amsterdam News on the morning of the vote. In fact, Soltren said, there was a dispute among the board about whether they could even legally deviate outside the preliminary vote’s scope. 

“You’re not voting on a specific number necessarily as to what the upward or downward adjustment would be,” he said. “You’re saying what the range would be so that for the number in the final vote with land somewhere in [that] range…certainly tonight’s vote is going to set the goalposts as to what the final vote will yield.”
To be clear, the NYC RGB does not specifically vote on how much to raise rents, but whether the city should increase them at all. It can even decide on a rent rollback to reduce costs. Yet Soltren, who also works as a supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society, pointed out the two could be conflated given the board’s recurring decision to raise rents despite data—which informs the vote—pointing to historical financial strains on tenants. 

The rent guideline board’s reports found median rents last year for rent-stabilized households made up around 28.8% of its income, and broadly reported a significant increase in non-payments and residential evictions. Homelessness within city shelters also increased, even when the newly-arrived asylum seekers were not accounted for. And under 1% of rent stabilized units, which make up 41% of rentals in 2023, remained empty.

Last year, protesters led by several progressive city council members, including Brooklyn’s Chi Ossé, took over the preliminary vote stage at Cooper Union to vocally advocate against rent increases. But a 2 to 5% increase for one-year rentals and a 4 to 7% increase for two-year rentals were agreed upon anyway. A 3% increase for one-year rentals was ultimately agreed upon. 

This time around, the board proceedings were similarly drowned out by protesters, whose boos and “shame” chants paired with orange thunderstix rivaled those of the Knicks playoff game across the East River. They only paused to cheer on Soltren and Aquino during their remarks and subsequent vote of “no confidence” in the board and the Adams administration. 

“Rent stabilization has always served more people of color than market rate apartments,” Soltren said in his remarks. “In 2023 alone, 71% of the rent-stabilized households are headed by people of color. Despite the massive displacement of Black New Yorkers in the last two decades due to gentrification and unaffordability, Black New Yorkers still comprise 23% of the rent stabilized housing stock. 

“What message are you sending to Black and brown New Yorkers when this administration and this board are calling for a third increase in three years that would likely total about 10% or more?” 

After the preliminary vote, Soltren said he cited data from the most recent New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. He will still need to sit on several upcoming public board meetings before the final vote, he said. After his walk-off, he is unsure how those convenings will shake out. 

Civil rights attorney Robert Desir, who works at Legal Aid Society with Soltren, pointed to rent-stabilized housing as key to keeping longtime residents in majority Black and brown communities. He says fair market housing, which is not stabilized, is often out of reach for such renters, preventing them from remaining in the neighborhood if a rent increase leads to eviction over non-payment. Median rent for a rent stabilized unit was $1,500 a month last year, according to the NYCHVS. Comparatively, the median fair market rental asked for $2,000.

“Part of the rent stabilization system serves a good purpose preventing these runaway rents that result in displacement,” Desir said. “And where that’s not guarded, people fall behind, unable to afford the rent and are evicted, [meaning] those folks don’t stand a good chance to be able to stay in that neighborhood, particularly in Harlem. We’ve seen how that area has undergone significant change in the last couple of decades, and [it is] still happening.”

One protester, Ann Marie Grant, says she attended to support her fellow renters despite living in NYCHA rather than a rent stabilized unit because she fears New York City will be only for the ultrawealthy if middle-class and low-income families can’t afford rent. She says she’s seeing segregation play out in real time in her neighborhood of East Harlem due to cost of living increases and gentrification.

“I see more of my neighbors leaving and new faces taking over,” Grant said. “Gentrification is there and it’s not right. As I said, everybody should be allowed to live together, it’s not about Black versus white.”

But real estate developer Joshua Brown says “mom-and-pop” Black property owners with rent-stabilized units like himself are feeling the squeeze that come from high repair costs. While he says those issues need to be addressed by tweaking legislation, the Brookynite says a higher rent increase would help him recoup the roughly $70,000 needed to fix up his building in Bed-Stuy. Brown adds that without those costs, he would not need to raise rent lockstep with the NYC RGB’s increase cap. 

“There is an incentive to keep someone who has been there a long time paying your rent on time to not raise their price just so you could possibly get a new one who could flake out within one year or two years,” he said. “However, there are root causes, there’s no incentive to do it now…what this does sadly is incentivize owners [and] developers to just keep the building vacant so that they can fully renovate the building and now you turn all these rent stabilized units into market rate units [through] something that’s called a substantial rehab…so essentially, it’s taking rent stabilized units off the market.”

The Rent Stabilization Law itself recently weathered several legal challenges, including in a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. In March, Mayor Eric Adams signed an extension into law, maintaining rent stabilization in the city until at least April 27. One of those organizations challenging the law, the Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), also objected to the preliminary vote for not raising the range high enough.

“It should not solely be the responsibility of the RGB to keep these buildings solvent,” said CHIP Executive Director Jay Martin in a statement. “Elected officials need to find ways to reduce the costs of operating housing and provide more financial assistance to vulnerable tenants. But until that happens, the RGB is faced with the Herculean task of protecting this housing stock and must step up to make the unpopular decision to increase rents.”

Mayor Adams also responded to the vote, fearing the range’s two-year cap could seriously hurt renters, but advocated for a middle ground. 

“Tenants are feeling the squeeze of a decades-long affordability crisis, which has been accelerated by restrictive zoning laws and inadequate tools that have made it harder and harder to build housing,” he said in an emailed statement. “Our team is taking a close look at the preliminary ranges voted on by the Rent Guidelines Board this evening and while the Board has the challenging task of striking a balance between protecting tenants from infeasible rent increases and ensuring property owners can maintain their buildings as costs continue to rise, I must be clear that a 6.5 percent increase goes far beyond what is reasonable to ask tenants to take on at this time.” 

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

The post Stage is set for another increase to rent stabilized units  appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Are these otherworldly sculptures emerging from the depths of the earth or returning to the underworld? That’s the question Huma Bhabha hopes visitors will ponder as they explore her monumental new bronze artworks in Brooklyn. 

Titled “Before the End,” the installation of four, eight-foot tall bronze sculptures topped with animal skull fragments is now on view through March 9, 2025. Find it at the Pier 3 Greenway Terrace in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

RECOMMENDED: Go fly a kite—literally—at this beautiful Brooklyn festival in May

Bhabha is known for reimagining the figure in her sculptures and drawings. In this case, she did that by casting carved cork and skull fragments in a piece that interrogates the intersections of art, science fiction, horror, and mythology. The artist collected the skull fragments while working as an artisan in a taxidermist’s studio. She also used a horseshoe crab exoskeleton in the artwork.

The mysterious figures recall ancient effigies cut into tombstones. Each of the four figures has a different name. There’s Feel the Hammer, Member, Mr. Stone, and Nothing Falls. Bhabha drew upon classic cult horror films like Destroy All Monsters, H.R. Giger’s designs for the Alien franchise, and the work of artists including Giacometti, Marisol, and Basquiat.

Situated at Brooklyn Bridge Park, the pieces are surrounded by other formidable landmarks, like bridges, waterways, and even the Statue of Liberty and One World Trade. That makes for a powerful juxtaposition, especially given the long history of the park itself in New York City. Once a deteriorated stretch of waterfront, the park now offers lush lawns, waterfront promenades, and expansive skyline views.  

After growing up in Pakistan, Bhabha moved to the United States for college, and she now lives in Poughkeepsie. 

“Huma Bhabha’s eccentric characters captivate through contradiction, seemingly forged in geological time yet animated with a visceral sense of immediacy,” Public Art Fund Executive & Artistic Director Nicholas Baume said in a press release. “Before The End is set amidst the expansive landscape of Brooklyn Bridge Park, a site where natural and man-made elements converge, allowing the works to take on a profound sense of connection to the earth.”

Huma Bhabha: Before The End is presented by Public Art Fund. It’s the latest outdoor artwork to appear in NYC, joining an eclectic collection of pieces to see this spring, including a hot dog in Times Square, a massive tire labyrinth in the Garment District, and a subway serpent in the Rockaways.

* This article was originally published here