Iconic and mildly ridiculous home goods store opens in Chelsea Market

We call ourselves serious and ridiculous in generally equal measure, which is why we have to tell you about Fishs Eddy, an iconic and ridiculous (in the best way) home goods store which just opened its latest location in Chelsea Market. You can read great write-ups of this quirky houseware shop in Chelsea Community News and Time Out. You can also watch neighborhood force Maryam Banikarim interview one of the founders, Julie Gaines, here.

This place is a true New York City institution and sells pieces with New York City soul; find your bowls with the city skyline, your Abraham Lincoln candles, and your diner-inspired dishware at the one and only Fishs Eddy (if you were wondering, the name comes from a little town upstate). We’re rather partial to this description from Chelsea Community News: “The store quickly became a brand by virtue of its eye-catching product designs, which continue to range from no-nonsense functional to quintessentially quirky.” Relatable.

Thanks for flagging this opening to us, Maryam and Eric Marcus, and looking forward to stopping in soon, Julie.

Renaissance man’s review of wedding at block arena: “It was a crazy night”

Those who have stuck with us throughout the summer know that we have done Pulitzer Prize-level reporting on the nuptials which took place a few weeks ago at the world’s most famous wedding venue, Madison Square Garden. Well the reviews are now in from the bridegroom, a true man of letters who our sources assure us read his own vows: “It was a crazy night, it was a full of a lot celebration, but it’s football baby.”

Thanks for that Travis. Let us know if you and the bride are ever on our block again and are willing to let us listen in on one of your conversations.

Outdoor dining is back baby, all year round

^The future of our block, probably.

We are yes in my backyard types around here, and given that we live in a concrete jungle, by “in my backyard” I of course mean “on my sidewalk.” That is why we’re excited to break the news along with our sister publication The New York Times that outdoor dining will resume year-round in NYC. What I mean specifically is that: (i) outdoor street dining is now permitted for the dead-of-winter months (December to March) along with April to November; and (ii) the city is going to be less ridiculous and punitive in fining so-called “noncompliant” outdoor structures. Upshot: city restaurants should be incentivized to set up shop again outside en masse.

The history here is that during COVID, in order to boost lagging business for restaurants, the city permitted outdoor dining on the streets (“street” cafes are distinguished from “sidewalk” cafes, with the former being like what you see in the picture shown here and the latter already being allowed all year-round and being like the patio at Sogno Toscano). In 2023, the city council and mayor enacted rules to, among other things, only allow outdoor street dining from December to March, in effect requiring restaurants to construct and deconstruct the outdoor cafes every year—and thus seriously disincentivizing them from bothering with it all at all. These new rules roll all of that back.

Of course there are the detractors, including our (other) sister publication The New York Post, which refers to outdoor street dining as a “roadway-hogging menace”: https://nypost.com/2026/08/13/us-news/nycs-roadway-hogging-menace-is-back-with-a-vengeance/. Won’t someone think of the roads! We’re happy to discuss the issue with The New York Post editorial board over drinks and maybe even appetizers, outside, any day of the year.

Chain Film Festival, showing short indie films, running from August 6-16

Neighbor Inge, who is one of those people whose taste you should just trust, writes in with a suggestion that we check out Chain Film Festival. This is a small, independent film festival focusing on “personal stories and original ideas set against New York City itself.” It runs from August 6 - 16, 2026, and most of the shows run from 10 - 30 minutes. You can see the film schedule here.

When it comes to films, first and foremost we love a New York City backdrop, and you can see for yourself just by watching trailers of a few pieces on your phone that this goes festival goes hard in that respect. Films, we think, are kind of fun to attend with a partner but really fun to go to alone. Drink all of your senses in better that way and in the silence right after the show, hit the stranger next to you with a “so what’d you think?” Take it from there, and take it from us.

Outdoor dance party on the High Line this Thursday (on 15th Street)!

Yes, dance party on the High Line this Thursday night, August 13, 2026, from 6 -9pm ET! To be clear this is a SALSA dance party called ¡Arriba! with Lulada Club, Nieves Latin Dance Studio, and DJ Mickey Pérez. The festivities start with a lesson from 6:15 - 6:45pm, which is great because you don’t really know what you’re doing now do you, before transitioning into a salsa music set by a DJ and then a live salsa performance by “Lulada Club.”

And yes, we hear and even share your internal monologue that it’s a little crazy to show up to a salsa dance party when you don’t quite know anyone and don’t really know how to salsa. But it’s less crazy to just agree to have a drink and wander by the festivities—and once that toe is dipped in, who knows what will happen? Thanks to Ethan Abbott, Director of Community Engagement at the High Line (and just immediately cool individual) for telling us about this and organizing events for our namesake, the beautiful High Line.

Update 8/14/26: Here’s the state senator for our neighborhood, Erik Bottcher, getting his basic step on: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcAUWbIKYZ8/?hl=en. And isn’t that you, dear scroller, in the background?

Vote on the new art piece overlooking 10th Avenue on 30th Street

The public comment period is currently open on what the High Line Plinth will be in 2029 and 2030, which is that massive art piece overlooking 10th Avenue on 30th Street. It is currently a buddha (previously it was a pigeon and predator drone), and next, it will one of the 62 proposals on this page (you can also scroll on IG through some but not all of the proposals here).

There is quite the selection on here, including what I’ll refer to as a gingerbread bear, a pregnant mother earth, a kind of terrifying Scream-like bust, a slouching lamp-post, and the divided face you see here. We would never try to sway anyone’s voting around here, but we will try to incept, and so we’ll say only that nothing is more beautiful and slightly terrifying than the city at night and the duality of man. And if we’re not going for beautiful and slightly terrifying, what are we really doing here?

Comment by clicking on one of the 62 proposals and leaving a note in the message box, along with your name and email. You can also just leave a comment below and we’ll make sure it gets to the right people at the High Line. This fall, the High Line will select, based in part on the public comments, a shortlist. Then the shortlisted artists will present “maquettes” (little versions) in a public exhibition. We’ll of course tell you when that public exhibition is happening!

Massive rooftop garden on top of the Post Office building

People will surprise you in the best way, and sometimes buildings will too, evidently. At the top of the Post Office building, covering an entire city block between 9th and 10th Avenues from 29th to 30th Streets, is a massive two-acre garden which spans the entire roof of the building. You can see a wide shot of it here (hold your phone landscape rather than portrait) and walk-through style videos of it here and here.

The building is called Morgan North, and the USPS continues to use the bottom four floors for post office things. It’s not clear to us who currently occupies the upper floors; once upon a time it was a Japanese advertising firm called Dentsu, but it looks like Dentsu may have never moved in and then tried to sublease their space post-Covid. It may be nobody on the top floors, which is why sources tell us that they rarely if ever see anyone wandering the garden.

We are going to reach out to some individuals to see if we can take a walk up here. It reminds us of none other High Line, our namesake, in which an old train line was converted into the best walk in the city (thanks, Ethan Hawke).

It’s not a dress; it’s a different sky

Our eyes caught on this vibrant mural on 18th Street and 10th Avenue, which debuted a few weeks ago and is perched right above a High Line staircase. Called “Time for a New Sky II,” this isn’t quite what you thought at first glance, if what you thought is that it shows a human in a yellow bellowing dress set up against a vibrant summer sky.

Rather it shows an individual trying, in vain or not, to pull an artificial almost dusk-toned sky over the natural one behind him. From the High Line’s description:

In Time for a New Sky II, a solitary figure stands atop a painted scenic sky backdrop, attempting to pull this artificial scene over the actual sky above him, as if ushering in the dusk. Reflecting Mitchell’s ongoing interest in bodily suspension and one’s relationship to the sky, this dreamlike work captures a tension between the natural and the constructed, mirroring the High Line’s own identity as an invented landscape suspended above the city. With the monumental New York skyline visible behind it, Time for a New Sky II is, ultimately, a work about self-possession and possibility: the whole sky gathered in one figure’s hands.

The artist is Brooklyn resident Tyler Mitchell. It will be in our neighborhood through this September (summer always goes so fast…).

Summer rooftop series: Miru right above City Winery is breezy

You really should wander up to Miru, the dreamy rooftop sushi place right above City Winery in Chelsea Piers. Here’s the review in Time Out, and we can confirm that it is perhaps the most spacious, airy inside rooftop in the city. As a major bonus, it is surrounded by Pier 57 rooftop park, which offers a bird’s eye view of Little Island and panoramic views of the west side.

Miru is a little funny to get to, but you can do it. Walk in the doors right near City Winery, past the first set of restaurants in Pier 57 market, and then up the elevator on the right (you’ll see a “Miru” sign). The chord it strikes is minimalist, clean, and industrial (which we like as Chelsea residents), with the smooth concrete floor below, exposed pipes above, and origami-style wooden fish hanging from the ceiling. This place is perfect for a drink in the middle of a walk on the Hudson, dinner parties, family gatherings (and really also craft workshops, Twister game nights, yoga classes, relay races, home gyms—when I say open and spacious, I really do mean it…). And while the dreamy city view is like the A-list face that grabs your attention, the sushi is the personality that keeps you around. Try the kani roll, which is a snow crab, “crab paste,” and chives combination; or the can’t-ever-miss toro roll, made with tuna and scallions. The block-approved move is to go for drinks (trust us on the green tea-infused Matcha Muse) until you’re relaxed enough to pay attention only to the summer breeze off the Hudson and the glimmering nightscape of downtown Manhattan.

Recommend.

Mamdani tax thing hits our neighborhood

A couple neighbors have written in about that Mamdani tax thing, in which NYC published a list of approximately 960k properties containing “at least one unit [which] may be subject” to a new tax on expensive pied-à-terres, a fancy French word for secondary homes, in the city. The purpose of the list is to “tax the rich,” and if you look at a bar chart of the properties on the list, you might notice that our neighborhood (“Chelsea / W. Village” on the graph) is rather…represented.

In conjunction with the list, Mamdani also sent out about 17k notifications in the mail to property owners essentially stating that NYC has reason to believe that their property exceeds $1m in value and is a pied-à-terre—and asking the owner to submit proof to the contrary so that they are not subject to the tax.

This is a tricky issue, but we say we are serious and ridiculous in roughly equal measure and there’s been a lot of ridiculousness lately, and so let’s gather a few serious thoughts for the block:

1. Mamdani is the city’s democratically elected chief executive who ran on a platform of wealth redistribution. Good on him for carrying out the will of the people and actually doing what he said he was going to do when running for office.

2. We’ve got a rather inescapable wealth inequality problem in this country, city, and even neighborhood—and while this lowly block association doesn’t even pretend to have the answers to that problem, a tax system that (i) taxes your paycheck quite a bit, but (ii) taxes property like houses and stock not so much (even as they seriously appreciate in value) turns out to be rather regressive.

3. Mamdani kind of botched the roll-out here. The list of 960k properties is just a list of all the units in NYC where the owners pay a property tax for the unit (which is true for essentially every unit that is owned and not rented out long-term). In other words, the list excludes renter-occupied apartments (which is why apartments in 507 West Chelsea, Ava High Line, Abington House won’t be on the list)—but virtually every other unit in NYC will be on the list. So the list itself does not by any stretch contain only the lavish pied-à-terres, and publishing it with a message that it contains properties which “may be subject” to the new tax is rather confusing by Mamdani.

4. We understand that some neighbors have received notices wrongly indicating that their home is a pied-à-terre. I’m sure that is a bit unnerving and as far as I can tell, the city hasn’t been a model of clarity in disclosing how it identified the 17k alleged pied-à-terres that received notices (which is less than 2% of the total 960k property tax roll). It seems to be a function (among other things) of the value of the property and whether you’ve declared the property your “primary residence” (so that you can get a primary residence abatement) on property tax forms.

5. T‍he list itself is an absolute mess if you know anything about property values in New York. The city appears to be using some seriously antiquated methodology in appraising the “fair market value”—which forms the basis for the new tax—of the properties on this list. Suffice to say that penthouse apartments in some of the swankiest buildings in our neighborhood are worth far, far more than low 7 digit-dollar values, and this list suggests otherwise over and over again. Odd. ‍

Feel free of course to write in with a perspective.

Brick loft building across from Ava High Line (on 28th St) repossessed by JPMorgan

Across from Ava High Line on 28th Street between 10th & 11th is a commercial loft building that predates the towers most of you are probably living in right now. The address is 548 West 28th Street, and our sister publication Bloomberg reported in December 2025 that its owner, Mariner’s Gate LLC, was late on approximately $50 million in debt and had entered into bankruptcy to halt foreclosure by its lender, JPMorgan. Based on the bankruptcy case docket, in May 2026, the owner ended up selling the property back to JPMorgan for $38 million. So: John Piermont Morgan is in a sense your neighbor now.

Probably not for long. The next step here is for JPMorgan to try to sell the property to the highest bidder, and it looks like that process has been under way for a few months now. We are going to contact Mariner’s Gate and the sales agent to see if we can figure out more about who the potential buyers are—and will keep the block updated.

Update 8/7/28—we were able to find comment from the owner of Mariner’s Gate (named Jim Pastreich) from this Crain’s article:

The cumulative effects of Covid-19 on the commercial real estate market have been awful. Unfortunately this included us too,” Pastreich said. “I personally have been with this building for over 27 years and have seen this wonderful NYC Landmark go from taxi garages, industrial and storage spaces to galleries and a range of eclectically creative tenants. It is a great building that it has been my pleasure to work with and a really sad day for me, my associates and our wonderful staff.

Jim, thanks for being a longtime member of our block.

The Mallory opening at Terminal Warehouse (on 11th Avenue) this fall

If you know, you know; and if you know, you know we are big fans of Terminal Warehouse, the historic brick building covering a full city block from 27th to 28th Streets, between 11th and 12th Avenues. As first reported by our sister publication the NY Post, the second of two tenants in the redeveloped warehouse is Equinox, which we have covered rather extensively, and the first is Convene Hospitality Group, which designs event and office spaces. This fall, Convene is bringing to the warehouse an events space called “The Mallory,” which will host events like galas, award ceremonies, and Eyes Wide Shut-style parties. (Ed note: Don’t believe literally everything you read on the internet). Anyway, we like this development.

And we like it for a couple different reasons. First, the history and bones of this building are extremely cool. In a world not that long ago where trains ran up and down 10th and 11th Avenues and killed so many people that the two avenues were collectively called “Death Avenue,” Terminal Warehouse was a train stopping place (otherwise known as a “terminal”) that stored all sorts of goods dropped off by the trains (otherwise known as a “warehouse”), including perishable goods that had to be kept cold (which is why it says “COLD STORAGE” in large old-school black capital letters on the front). Second, Convene has put some serious respect on the name of the architect who designed the building in the 1890s, George Mallory. Third, and most importantly, we are ‘Yes In My Backyard’ types around here and love to see development not just in Hudson Yards, the Midtown of sorts of the west side, but in the residential spaces and ‘suburbs’ if you will around Hudson Yards. That is especially true when the developers, and here, even the tenants, make an effort to check and embrace boxes one and two.

We’ve reached out to the President and CEO of Convene for comment here, including on the estimated timeline and the events that might be thrown in the new space. Will update here if we get a response.

Update 8/7/2026 - we got a response from the President and CEO—along with some renderings of the space which we’ve added above!

The Mallory at Terminal Warehouse is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to serve the experiential events industry in New York -- and do it better than anyone else in the market. It's an honor to be given the space to breathe new life into a historic site. We can’t wait to be part of its future.

Ryan Simonetti, President and CEO of Convene Hospitality Group (CHG)