WNYC News

With summer comes a seasonal variety of fruits and vegetables that are at peak freshness and priced at a better value than what you can find at your local supermarket.  

Local farmers say there over 100 varieties of melons this season that can run you as little as $1 a pound for smaller varieties, and upwards of $15 each for big melons.  

Amelia Tarpey is a program and publicity manger for GrowNYC Greenmarkets. She shares some tips for what types to try, and what to do with them. 

The iconic first notes of the song "Born to Run" were unveiled to the world for the first time on Aug. 25, 1975. Bruce Springsteen's third studio album — also called Born to Run — hit record store shelves that day. Almost immediately, Springsteen went from being a local favorite in Asbury Park, New Jersey, to an international superstar.  

But why does Bruce resonate so much with Garden Staters? Why is "Born to Run" is such an important album in the context of his career?  

Eileen Chapman is the director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University. She's also an Asbury Park city councilmember and a longtime resident of the city. 

Chapman joined WNYC's Michael Hill to put the Boss's career in context. 

It's late summer in New York. That means it's time once again for Queens and the U. S. Open tournament to stand at the center of the tennis universe. With the first day of competition in the men's and women's singles tournaments getting underway Sunday, Aug. 24, sports reporter Priya Desai joins Weekend Edition host David Furst for a preview.

Every summer, KoKo NYC — the program that runs the race — organizes workshops where kids design and build their vehicles, applying the nonprofit’s “trash is treasure” mission of teaching kids to use their creativity and reclaimed materials to build anything possible.

Child care is becoming increasingly unaffordable for families. That’s why more parents in New Jersey and New York are relying on subsidized vouchers to help pay for it. But while both states have boosted funding for the popular vouchers, it’s still falling short of demand and now hundreds of families can't get the low-cost care they need. WNYC reporter Karen Yi discusses her reporting. 

For Zein Rimawi, a 71-year-old Palestinian New Yorker and Arab American community leader in Brooklyn, mornings are the hardest. That’s when he says he has time to scroll through social media on his computer and see the latest images and reports from the Gaza Strip.

The spectacular specs on the tunnel boring machine that will be used to build the Second Avenue subway extension lead this week's On The Way roundup of New York City transit news. 

WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk regularly teams up with the nonprofit Street Lab to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. Here's some of what we heard at our recent visit to East 115th Street in Manhattan's East Harlem neighborhood.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Taleah Smith: "I'm 40 years old. I am in East Harlem, New York, and I am a community service learning facilitator for Another Choice Youth and Family Outreach. We're out here every Friday. Right now we have the summer youth program that's working with us, and this week is event three, which is focused on finance, intellectual and occupational wellness, and anything else that they might need. 

We have fresh produce that we hand out. Also, we do the pantries and everything with our summer youth. I have 20 years in healthcare experience, so just using that to focus more on my community. This is my passion. I love working with the community, but more so our youth is basically our future, so we have to have them stay together."

Rev. Khalil G. James: "I've been doing ministry work for over 20 years. The church should be a platform for individuals who are looking to fly, to dream. So our church is a hub for artistic expression, community engagement, and social change. We allow people to be who they are. We try to help them by validating what's in our young people and in our community.

So many stories that we have of people who are looking for a community, looking for love. And we think one of the antidotes to shame and stigma is love and belonging. Me, myself, I have a story. I was just as lost to some of these young people in the streets, and that's why I do what I do. What was done for me, I do for others.

So we create that safe space. We have homeless youth that stop by the church weekly just to charge their phone, to get some water, use the bathroom, sit in the air conditioning, or the heat in the winter. We don't have all the answers, but we do know proximity is key. And we sit with people and we are present, just being human."

Isaac Scott: "I am proudly from Harlem born and raised, and I am 43 years old. I want other community members to know that we have the power as people to solve a lot of our problems. We don't have infinite resources, but we can strategically partner, we can share resources, we can share tasks to get things done.

So I really want to see community come together more and solve our own issues because we literally are all we got. You know what I mean? Like just looking at our federal government, we know that no one is gonna come save us. So we are all we got and I really wanna see us do better."

The political fallout of the Legionnaires' outbreak leads this week's Politics Brief roundup.