Brooklyn bodega cats featured in new book
A popular Instagram account dedicated to documenting bodega cats will feature felines from Bay Ridge and Sunset Park in a new book. Bodega Cats of New York was created by Dan Rimada. His first book will be released Nov. 3. Six cats from South Brooklyn made it to the book. Photo: Gulce Kilkis
Happy Wednesday in New York City, where, slowly but surely, progress is being made in the War on Rats.
According to 311 data, New York City is on track to record the fewest rat sightings since 2020, a year marked by widespread restaurant closures and a citywide quarantine. Reported sightings are down 22% through the first seven months of 2026 as compared with the same period last year, marking five straight years of steady decline.
Officials credit the dropoff to improved trash containerization, a major initiative of the Eric Adams administration. In November 2025, Adams required that all residential buildings with one to nine residential units dispose of their waste in sealed bins. He also spearheaded the rollout of the Empire Bins — large, stationary, European-style trash containers that sit in the road and are designed to replace individual sidewalk cans.
Between the Empire Bins and stricter requirements for businesses and low-density residential buildings, 70% of the city’s trash is now containerized. Mayor Mamdani promised to continue Adams’ offensive, with a goal of reaching 100% trash containerization by 2031.
Unfortunately, the decline in sightings doesn’t mean all those rats are packing their bags and leaving the city. They’ve apparently just decided to migrate to the bins outside my apartment building.
A parade dedicated to celebrating the Jamaican community will march through Brooklyn this weekend.
On Fridays throughout August, BPL will give away free books and icees at community pools.
Five professional cleaners donned hero costumes before climbing down from Maimonides Medical Center’s roof to the sixth-floor pediatric unit for a surprise visit.
The Parks Dept. has been piling up trash bags at Sunset Park’s northern entrance since the start of the summer – and the heap is now starting to smell and attract pests.
NYU Langone Health continues to rank top across several medical specialties, with rankings extending to NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn and NYU’s other campuses.
NYC Health+Hospitals named in US News & World Report’s Best Hospitals list.
Following the death of a 17-year-old riding an illegal e-bike on the Brooklyn Bridge, Mayor Mamdani announced his administration is taking legal action against the online retailers who sell illegal motorized vehicles.
Deadline extended for pied-a-terre tax appeals after confusion.
Police are now circulating security camera images from a violent robbery at a Brownsville gas station last month.
Police are searching for an unknown man who tried to strangle a woman in Midwood last month.
Police are trying to piece together what happened in a traffic accident that sent a man and a teenager to the hospital on Monday.
Advertisement
The best HR advice comes from those in the trenches. That’s what this is: real-world HR insights delivered in a newsletter from Hebba Youssef, a Chief People Officer who’s been there. Practical, real strategies with a dash of humor. Because HR shouldn’t be thankless—and you shouldn’t be alone in it.
Our World In Photos
Photo: Petros Giannakouris/AP
GREECE — Safe and sound: A dog rescued from recent wildfires looks on at a temporary shelter inside a stadium in Megara, Wednesday.
For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.
Steep real estate: How a few steps can cost tens of thousands on Montague Street
Lassen & Hennigs street-level bakery on Montague Street, January 2022 Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
Montague Street’s storefronts may run up and down the same block, but they do not share the same price.
On Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, rent isn’t just about location; it’s about geometry. A storefront’s price largely depends on how many stairs stand between it and the sidewalk and how much square footage sits on the other side of them.
Street-level shops can run $35,000 a month, but spaces that require stairs to access often go for a third of that, and size can close the gap either way.
Because the district is landmarked, the street’s rowhouse architecture never got flattened into uniform storefronts the way many retail areas did. Buildings originally built as private houses weren’t torn down and rebuilt as single-level retail boxes. Instead, shopkeepers took on pre-existing space, whether it be a raised parlor floor behind a stoop, a garden level below it, or upper floors originally intended as bedrooms and offices.
Landlords have been pricing accordingly ever since.
The PREMIUM tag indicates articles that come with extra photographs or special coverage. Thinking of a subscription? Try us out with a day pass for just 99 cents. No long-term commitment for a subscription.
Cartoon Sketchbook
By Christopher Weyant
For the Road
Happy Birthday “The Brady Bunch” star Maureen McCormick!
On this day in 1954, the Eagle reported, “TEHRAN (U.P.) — Iran and the West today announced officially a 25-year agreement putting Iranian oil back on the world market for the first time in three years. The agreement ended a struggle that had cost more than 1,000 lives and for many uncertain months threatened to swing Iran into the Soviet Union. It also restored to Iran her major source of revenue.
The French translation for "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," coined by French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in 1849.
Got a tip? Send it in to [email protected].