What’s Happening: More than 60 miles of Open Streets—a pandemic-era program that converted New York streets into lively pedestrian plazas—have closed recently, calling its future into question. Like-minded programs in other cities are facing a similar fate.

The Download: During the early pandemic, New York City rolled out an initiative called Open Streets to encourage newly homebound workers to leave their cramped apartments and support local businesses in street markets closed off to traffic. Concrete barricades cordoned off once-gridlocked streets across the five boroughs, essentially converting them into lively public plazas free of cars. Locals caroused over takeout in shaded dining areas, gathered for yoga classes on the asphalt, and sipped to-go cocktails from street vendors. Local businesses viewed the program as a lifeline when indoor dining wasn’t allowed. Its popularity soared, and the city promised to make its 83 miles of Open Streets permanent.

Fast forward two years and the once-struggling New York is mostly back to business. Despite a few breakout successes, Open Streets are less frequent, appearing only on weekends, and have been scaled back significantly in scope. The New York Times estimates that more than 60 miles of them have closed in the past year, especially in car-centric and less wealthy areas. While some locals see the program as hailing a more pedestrian-friendly future, motorists view it as an impediment to everyday life. By eliminating access, they argue, the city is making it harder to drive, park, and get deliveries, while crowding neighboring roads and endangering pedestrians.

The waning enthusiasm is being echoed across the country—cities like Oakland and Chicago have scaled back similar programs or phased them out entirely as pre-pandemic normalcy resumes, citing similar complaints and replacing them with initiatives like expanded outdoor dining that are easier to enforce. Transportation Alternatives, a New York–based advocacy group, views these outdoor areas as crucial to addressing a major problem within the city: traffic fatalities. In an October report, the group noted 42 percent fewer traffic injuries on active pedestrianized zones compared to 2019. With former mayor Bill De Blasio’s ambitious Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic deaths underperforming, can Open Streets be a solution?

Scaling pedestrianized streets back to early-pandemic levels could be one piece of the puzzle, but New York lawmakers are currently engulfed in a decades-long push toward another traffic safety boon: congestion pricing. The program would charge inbound drivers from New Jersey a hefty sum of $23 to enter Manhattan during rush hour, which would fund the ailing subway system. (The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, facing low ridership as Midtown offices are still sitting 60 percent vacant, projects a $2.6 billion operating deficit in 2025.) If signed into law, congestion pricing may eliminate Manhattan-bound traffic by as much as 20 percent for personal vehicles and 80 percent for trucks.

Proponents insist that dense areas like Manhattan need fewer cars on the road, pointing toward congestion pricing success stories in London and Singapore. (One noted side effect of reduced traffic, however, is increased housing costs—perhaps not an ideal scenario given Manhattan’s record-high rents.) Others argue that tolls will strain outer-borough workers and everyday New Yorkers whose jobs require driving into the city.

In Their Own Words: “The Open Streets program is a successful model of the sort of quick-build mentality we should bring to transportation and infrastructure projects citywide,” says City Council member Carlina Rivera. “It proves that we can transform the way our city works for everyday New Yorkers as long as we have the imagination bold enough to realize it.”

Surface Says: Research shows that these street changes haven’t been the most equitably enforced, but it would be a shame if these spaces disappeared entirely given how locals seem to dig the sense of safety and community they’ve fostered throughout the pandemic.

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With the news of the Groucho Club’s $48 million sale to Iwan and Manuela Wirth of the blue-chip gallery Hauser & Wirth, we take a look back at Michaelis Boyd’s renovation from 2015.

Bill Clinton walked into a Soho bar one Christmas night shortly after leaving office. According to legend, within minutes of his arrival, U2’s frontman, Bono, commandeered the piano, and began crooning an improvised holiday jingle for the former POTUS before the awestruck patrons. Welcome to the Groucho Club.

Drunken folklore is on tap at Groucho, from a Moby and Mick Jagger duet Clash cover with backup vocals provided by Coldplay and New Order, to a night in 1995 when artist Damien Hirst, after being awarded the Turner Prize, reportedly handed over his £20,000 award and instructed the bartender to open a tab, and let him know when it ran out. (Hirst also relieved himself in the bar’s sink, but that’s a different story.)

Anyone who’s spent a few late nights at 45 Dean Street, a notoriously louche media hangout and den of iniquity, probably has a tale or two. The bar has a kind of Proustian effect, which is why it’s spoken of in hushed tones. Maybe because it was so difficult to join—its name derives from the old Groucho Marx quip, “I don’t want to belong to any club that accepts me as a member.” Or perhaps the reason is that it was seen as an antidote to London’s robust lineup of stuffy, hermetic society clubs. So the 2014 news that Groucho would shutter and undergo a metamorphosis was met with exasperation. Will Groucho 2.0 be crushed by the weight of the past?

“The Groucho has grown a great deal in its 30 years,” says Alex Michaelis of Michaelis Boyd, the local firm tasked with giving the institution a polish. “And like all good aging stars, sometimes a subtle facelift is the only answer.” He wanted to create a better flow while keeping the same atmosphere that made it such a memorable experience. “We took a room-by-room approach, revealing the character of each space.”

When: Until Jan. 8, 2023

Where: Fresno Art Museum

What: More than 100 experimental gowns, headpieces, and jewelry by such boundary-pushing fashion designers as Alexander McQueen and Iris Van Herpen explore symbols of womanhood and challenge conventional notions of beauty. Organized into seven personality archetypes from myths and fairy tales, the show unpacks our understanding of the visual symbolism of female identity.

On the Rhode Island coast, a secluded beach house named Rugosa has been a go-to getaway for generations of artists and scholars seeking a much-needed summer refuge. Teeming with breeze-filled living spaces configured for conversation, music, and quiet study, the retreat practically begs its occupants to spend long stretches either alone with their thoughts or immersed in discussion. That pleasant duality is exactly what motivated Michaele Simmering and Johann Pauwen, the husband-and-wife founders of L.A. furniture studio Kalon, to devise a collection of sustainable home furnishings that capture the spirit and sensibilities of its namesake house.

Consisting of a sofa, daybed, chair, coffee table, side table, and bookshelf, the Rugosa Collection features a sleek, clean-lined construction that makes subtle nods to Modernism. It’s also manufactured entirely in the U.S. and incorporates time-tested natural materials such as western sugar pine planks. “Rugosa’s universal forms and simple materials mean that it can reside comfortably in many living environments,” Simmering and Pauwen say of the chair, which features a plush down cushion upholstered in Belgian linens.

Ever since Qatar won the bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup back in 2010, the Middle Eastern country has been on a building tear. Home to nearly three million people, Qatar expects around 1.5 million visitors to head to the Persian Gulf to attend the quadrennial soccer event, which kicks off in November. For more than a decade, Qatar has been racing against the clock to realize zealous plans for new development that include eight state-of-the-art soccer stadiums designed by a roster of acclaimed architects, several high-profile cultural institutions, a 47-mile long rail system, dozens of hotels, and an expansion to Hamad International Airport, which usurped Singapore Changi Airport’s reign as the world’s best.

Qatar is delivering on those plans—proof of the diminutive country’s astronomical oil-driven wealth and aspirations to prove its cultural credentials on the world stage. Qatar’s cultural program is quickly establishing its capital, Doha, as a world-class arts destination. The organization Qatar Museums’ latest initiative is an expansive public art program that will bring sculptures and installations from blue-chip names to parks, shopping centers, train stations, Hamad International Airport, and stadiums.

Art & Objects is an art consulting firm and studio based in Toronto. Under the creative direction of Teresa Aversa, the firm designs, commissions, and procures artworks for interior design and hospitality clients globally. Years of experience and in-depth knowledge of fabrication methods, the art world, and project management lets the team produce dynamic art programs and create a variety of artworks and accessories to enhance any environment.

Surface Says: Art & Objects is quickly becoming one of the industry’s most respected art consultancies. Aversa’s worldly knowledge imbues everything the collective does, from instilling beauty in interiors with fastidiously procured works to the distinctiveness of its styling and custom fabrications.

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