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It's finally Friday in New York City, where the weather is actually kind of a bummer. Another day to stay inside and read your links:

  • If you've opened any social media app since last night, you probably saw former President Trump's mugshot somewhere in your feed. He even tweeted (X-ed?) it himself in his first post on the platform since he was banned in January 2021 for inciting a riot at the U.S. Capitol. (His ban was lifted in November 2022.)
  • New York City's housing crisis is on all of our minds right now, and new research just revealed another thing that could be fueling it: Apartment-to-house conversions, which have cost the city about 100,000 homes.
  • Speaking of the housing crisis, remember that Little Italy apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen from Monday's newsletter? Hell Gate decided to investigate a bit more and attended an open house. No, the microwave does not come with the apartment.
  • In May, Bushwick got its first historic district. But it was a long journey for the north Brooklyn neighborhood to finally get the designation. “Bushwick is still a majority Black and brown (neighborhood)” City Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez says. “And it doesn’t scream Upper West Side historic district in the way that LPC (the Landmarks Preservation Commission) traditionally had done things.”
  • A blue supermoon will be visible in New York City next week.
  • Remember in December 2021 when everyone got omicron? It felt like a virus could not possibly be more contagious than covid at that moment. But Covid just pulled another Covid on us! The latest variant could be substantially better at evading immunity than omicron. “This is a radical change of the virus like what happened with omicron, which caught a lot of people defenseless,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. It’s unclear if the new variant will cause (or is already causing) another surge in cases. A couple weeks ago, we talked to the NYC health commissioner about the spike in cases, and at that point he said there wasn’t evidence that a variant was driving the current spike. (Side note: When I was producing our Instagram slideshow on the NYC spike, I thought “I’ll be fine until the next booster,” but tested positive a couple days later. So it’s out there y’all, be careful!)
  • Keep up with NYC covid trends using the health and science team’s Covid tracker.
  • Probs the opposite of feeling covid-y is feeling flirty. So, if you are currently in the clear of the virus and trying to get out there, here are some tips from a Tribeca bartender on how to flirt effectively.
  • Wildwood, New Jersey is locked in a legal battle with the state over massive barriers the city installed to hold back the gradually encroaching ocean water. While the city’s mayor calls the action necessary to fix erosion problems, the state says the barriers are “unauthorized, misguided and destructive.”
  • That all for today! If you need me, I'll be doing this all weekend: