A truck driver built a model of NYC with over 800,000 structures for fun. Now it’s a museum exhibit
In this image taken with a smartphone, truck driver Joe Macken poses in front of his scale model of New York City, Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, in New York. Photo: Philip Marcelo/AP
For more than two decades, truck driver Joe Macken spent his free time building a massive scale model of his native New York City out of balsa wood and foam board. Encompassing over 800,000 structures, now Macken’s model is on display at the Museum of the City of New York, which reached out to him after seeing his TikTok videos of the model gain more than 10 million views in one week. “He Built This City,” as the exhibit is called, opened in February along Manhattan’s museum row near Central Park. It runs through Oct. 12.
Happy Monday in New York City, and happy Yom Kippur for all who celebrate.
This week is the U.N. General Assembly Week, which means thousands of foreign representatives converging on the city, and thousands of protesters surging to meet them. “We’re expecting multiple protests every day,” said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “As always, the NYPD will facilitate First Amendment activity. At the same time, there will be no tolerance for violence or destruction of property.” Expect substantial road closures and disruptions in Midtown Manhattan.
Many of those protests will undoubtedly be directed at Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Thursday. After previously promising to arrest Netanyahu if he ever set foot in New York, before eventually admitting he did not have the legal authority to do so, Mayor Mamdani is now calling on New Yorkers to protest the Prime Minister.
Speaking of the mayor, Mamdani is putting on his host hat yet again this week. He took a group of 50 foreign mayors on a bus tour of the city, and met with socialist president of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this morning. But maybe the most surprising person that Zohran Mamdani is meeting with today is the president of his own country, Donald Trump.
Mamdani and Trump will meet today at the mayor’s residence in Gracie Mansion at 4:00 p.m. The president is in town this week to address the General Assembly on Tuesday.
“[T]he meeting will focus on issues affecting New York City and New Yorkers,” a Mamdani spokesperson said in a statement. This is the third time the president and New York City mayor have met face-to-face.
Rt. Rev. Adam Shoemaker was ordained and consecrated on Saturday as the ninth bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, which includes Brooklyn and Queens.
The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce will be hosting an economic development breakfast on AI and the future of NYC business.
The Brooklyn Women’s Bar Association and the Brooklyn Bar Association are jointly hosting a Hispanic Heritage celebration to honor District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
A Flatlands woman was arrested on Friday and charged with the attempted kidnapping of a young boy.
Police are looking for a man who removed and vandalized a light fixture from the entranceway of a church on Summit Street last month.
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Our World In Photos
Photo: Dita Alangkara/AP
JAPAN — A very stretchy uniform: Daiki Hashimoto of Japan competes on the pommel horse during the men's artistic gymnastics qualification at the Asian Games in Nagoya, Japan, Monday, Sept. 21, 2026.
For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.
The Sounding Board:
Your robotic vacuum is a witness: What home robots mean for evidence, privacy and the law
A robot leaves the room behind first lady Melania Trump, left, and Morocco's Princess Lalla Hasnaa, during a "Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit," with other first spouses, at the White House, Wednesday, March 25, 2026, in Washington. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
A husband in Taiwan suspected his wife of having an affair. In September 2023, he found a used toothbrush at their holiday home, and garage video showed an unfamiliar man driving his wife there. Three months later, he opened their robot vacuum’s app to speak with her and saw an intimate encounter through its live camera.
He recorded the feed and used it to win about $16,000 from his wife and her lover for infringing on his marital rights. Then the Taoyuan District Court sentenced him to five months in jail and fined him roughly $4,700 for recording private activity without consent.
Both rulings are defensible. Together, they expose a troubling gap: Devices in homes now generate evidence continuously and often invisibly, while the governing law remains a patchwork. As faculty members in a school of interdisciplinary forensics, we see such cases where forensic practice meets law that has not kept pace.
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The Mini
Cartoon Sketchbook
By Harley Schwadron
For the Road
Happy Birthday actor Bill Murray!
On this day in 1903, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Yesterday was the first day of the fall season, and that fact was clearly noticeable without consulting an almanac. It was decidedly chilly at Coney Island, but even at that there was a good-sized crowd there. The most remarkable feature of the day was the fact that not an arrest was made during the twenty-four hours ending at 8 o’clock this morning. It was something entirely new to the doorman who takes charge of things on a Monday morning at the Coney Island station house.”
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