WNYC News

To grow your own garden in the city, all you need is a small patch of land, a windowsill or just a sunny spot. Amelia Tarpey is the Program and Publicity Manger for GrowNYC Greenmarkets. She said you can find herb and vegetable starts or seedlings at the market to get going, from basil and mint, to peppers and tomatoes. Right now at market, seedlings are going for about $2 to $8. You can also use your SNAP benefits to purchase them. 

Street vendors are an iconic part of New York City whether they're selling roasted nuts at Times Square, Halal food in Washington Square, mangoes on Coney Island or purses on Canal Street. But many vendors work along a complicated thicket of rules and regulations, and can be especially vulnerable to both crime and law enforcement crackdowns.  

Mayor Mamdani has established the city's first Office of Street Vendor Services -- as a division of the Department of Small Business Services -- with a goal to help vendors navigate the city's bureaucracy and operate within the laws.

Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, the office's first executive director, joined WNYC host Michael Hill.  

Thirteen people died in traffic on New York City streets in April. But it was also a month which saw some major traffic safety improvements, including to Linden Boulevard, where two people died in March.  WNYC transportation reporter Stephen Nessen spoke with Morning Edition host Michael Hill. 

Sometimes, a bouncy house shows up in the middle of the block. Sometimes, people are picking up trash and planting tulips in the tree pits outside a building. Other times, groups of neighbors come together to make their voices heard about planned developments nearby.  

These are all functions of block associations, those smallest of civic organizations that help neighbors get to know each other and work together on the things that matter where they live.  

Steve Anderson is president of the Upper West Side Coalition of Block Associations & Community Groups. He joined WNYC's Michael Hill to discuss how they function. 

Poetry Month has now come to a close. Here on Morning Edition, we have been celebrating with your poems on the air and across our social platforms. As always, we received hundreds of poems and while we weren't able to air them all, we are grateful to everyone who sent one in.  

KC Trommer is the founder of QUEENSBOUND, a collaborative poetry project by, for, and about Queens. She led a workshop at the Greene Space with the Morning Edition team on writing poetry together. But first, hosts David Furst and Michael Hill tried their hands at collaborative poetry. 

Manhattan's Council District 3 was up for grabs in a special election this Tuesday. Only one of the four candidates was openly gay, in a seat that's always been held by a gay person since the district borders were drawn more than 30 years ago.

The outcome of a closely watched City Council race leads this week's Politics Brief roundup. 

Chris Madigan remembers his feet were so cold they hurt. He had no shoes on — only socks — when NYPD officers stopped him for sleeping on the subway in the 86th Street station on Feb. 22. He said police escorted him onto Broadway in handcuffs on a cold night, just hours before a blizzard dropped nearly 2 feet of snow on New York City.

The 44-year-old Bronx native said he’s spent the last several years sleeping on benches and friends’ couches. Police body camera footage viewed by Gothamist shows him sprawled across a row of subway seats on the night he was arrested. Two officers tried to wake him up — calmly at first, then pulling him by his jacket off the train.

“I remember waking up, and I remember being dragged,” he said.

Madigan is one of a growing number of New Yorkers who ended up in court after police caught them occupying more than one seat in public transit or lying on the floor of a station in recent months, according to a Gothamist data analysis.

State court data show there were 591 cases last year in which lying down or taking up more than one seat in public transit was the most serious charge. That’s up more than 3,000% compared to the year prior, when there were just 19 of these cases. Court cases for the first three months of 2026 have already exceeded the number during the same period in 2025.

It’s getting warmer out there and that means more people are going outside, especially to our city parks. 

And for a lot of New Yorkers, city parks are the closest thing we have to a backyard.

But, do you know what the official rules are of how to behave in parks?

All Things Considered producer Elizabeth Shwe wrote about the official New York City park rules AND the unwritten rules of shared public spaces in this week's Looped In NYC guest column. She joins WNYC's Sean Carlson to talk more about what she's heard from park goers about what they think is acceptable behavior in NYC parks.

A new film series dedicated to the work of playwright and actor Wallace Shawn is coming to Manhattan's Metrograph theater. It features seven of his films, including "Clueless," "A Master Builder" and movies adapted from his plays.

Wallace Shawn: The Master Builder kicks off next month at Metrograph. 

He also has two plays, "What We Did Before Our Moth Days" and "The Fever," running through May 24 at Greenwich House Theater. So May is basically Wallace Shawn Month in New York City.

Wallace Shawn joins Weekend Edition host David Furst to talk about all of the activity.