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New Yorkers Unsettled by Helicopter Accident in Midtown

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It’s Tuesday. So long, power lunches. The Four Seasons Restaurant on East 49th Street closes for good after lunch today.

Weather: Showers are likely early, then clouds yield to mostly clear skies. Brisk winds could turn gusty. The high should be in the upper 70s.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 4.

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Credit...Peter Foley for The New York Times

A helicopter took off from a heliport on the East River yesterday afternoon amid fog and rain. Just over 10 minutes later, it crashed onto the rooftop of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan.

Only the pilot was aboard the aircraft, officials said, and he was killed. An airport manager at the helicopter’s home base in Linden, N.J., identified the pilot as Tim McCormack.

Officials rushed to the scene, the AXA Equitable Center at Seventh Avenue and 51st Street, where the crash had shaken the building and the helicopter burst into flames. Then came a familiar yet unsettling routine: A skyscraper was evacuated. Emergency medical workers came from all directions and converged on the building. Smoke billowed from its roof.

News of the crash rattled New Yorkers, many of whom wondered if it had been an accident or something deliberate.

An explanation of what caused the crash was not immediately available, but officials quickly said it did not appear to be an act of terrorism. Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill raised the question of why the pilot was flying in poor weather.

[Read more about the helicopter crash in Midtown Manhattan.]

Helicopter crash sites can pose difficulties, especially when they are hundreds of feet above the ground. Firefighters took elevators to the building’s upper floors, according to Daniel A. Nigro, the city’s fire commissioner. Once there, they used special hoses and “special pumpers” to put water on the fire.

“If you’re a New Yorker, you have a level of PTSD, right, from 9/11,” Governor Cuomo said at the scene.

[The crash showed the perils of flying over the city’s skyline.]

It is rare to see the exact moment a top official learns of an emergency. The Times’s Ali Watkins was interviewing a police official when it happened.

Here’s her dispatch:

Forty-five minutes before a helicopter crashed in Manhattan, I stepped into the office of John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, at Police Headquarters. We had traded sporadic messages for weeks, trying to coordinate a meeting, and had finally nailed down a time.

Mr. Miller and I were wrapping up a wide-ranging discussion about terrorism. It was notable, we both remarked, that the city had gone some time without a major attack. The conversation was interrupted when a man stuck his head into Mr. Miller’s office.

There was a helicopter down in Manhattan, the man said. It was some kind of accident, possibly on a crowded Midtown street.

The words caused an instantaneous flurry at the headquarters. Mr. Miller sprang from his chair and said a polite goodbye, and then prodded anyone nearby for more details. I was a forgotten observer, standing awkwardly in the lobby as officers and other employees moved around me. “Helicopter?” “Crash landing?” “Midtown?” Words bounced around the reception area.

Less than a minute later, Mr. Miller was hustling toward an elevator, bound for the scene.

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The cabdriver Mohammad Hossain is featured in this week’s episode.Credit...“The Weekly”/FX/Hulu/Adam Beckman for The New York Times

Recently, we told you about a two-part Times investigation that showed how industry leaders got rich by providing reckless loans to drivers buying overpriced taxi medallions — and how government officials failed to stop it.

Many of those drivers are stuck deep in debt.

Soon after The Times published the articles, on May 19, city, state and federal officials announced investigations into the financial bubble in the market for medallions.

Now there’s a new way to experience the story.

The Times has a new weekly television show called, appropriately, “The Weekly.” It airs on Sundays at 10 p.m. on FX; streaming is available on Hulu beginning the next day. This week’s episode follows the Times reporters Brian M. Rosenthal and Emma G. Fitzsimmons as they uncover the truth behind the crisis in the yellow cab industry.

The episode also delves deeper into the story by introducing viewers to Mohammad Hossain, who drives his cab seven days a week and earns about $25,000 annually. He owes $750,000 on the loan he took out to buy his medallion.

When Mr. Rosenthal asked about his debt, Mr. Hossain’s voice quivered, and he spoke about suicides by other drivers.

Later in the episode, Mr. Rosenthal interviews Matthew W. Daus, who was the city’s taxi and limousine commissioner when medallion prices escalated. He said he was aware of the inflated prices, but was not responsible for stopping it.

Suzanne Hillinger, the producer and director of the episode, recalled Mr. Rosenthal’s interview with Mr. Daus. “There’s no music under that scene because we felt very strongly that the scene was tense and had its own mood to it just in real life,” she said.

“There’s something really powerful about visual storytelling and its ability to communicate emotion,” she added.

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Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

Stonewall apology: The story behind Commissioner James O’Neill’s decision to admit wrongdoing on behalf of the police.

President Trump’s competition for most unpopular politician in New York: Mayor de Blasio.

Has SoHo become one big wellness pop-up? Within a half-mile radius in downtown Manhattan, there are five matcha stores.

[Want more news from New York and around the region? Check out our full coverage.]

The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

Mary Max, wife of the pop artist Peter Max, was found dead, possibly by suicide, in her Upper West Side apartment. [Daily News]

The police are reviewing bystander video that appears to show officers in Inwood failing to break up a street fight. [New York Post]

In Brooklyn, an old church needs some strong volunteers to keep a tradition alive. [Wall Street Journal]

For the first time, an all-boys school in the Bronx will have a female principal. [Bronx Times]

“Radical Love,” an art exhibition celebrating “marginalized bodies,” opens at the art gallery of the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice in Manhattan. 6 p.m. [Free]

Dan Albert, n+1 magazine’s longtime car critic, discusses his new book, “Are We There Yet?: The American Automobile Past, Present, and Driverless” at the n+1 offices in Brooklyn. 7 p.m. [Free]

Ching-In Chen and Jasmine Dreame Wagner, finalists for the 2018-19 Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers, present staged readings of their works at the New Ohio Theater in Manhattan. 7 p.m. [$10]

— Vivian Ewing

Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.

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Credit...Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

Tucked into a corner on the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art are materials from the second century, when the Roman Empire was at its height.

Then there’s the nearly 25-foot steel Afro comb that stands outside the Africa Center. The sculpture has a handle shaped like a fist. It is “a uniting motif, worn as adornment, a political emblem, and signature of collective identity,” according to the center.

The distance between the institutions is only 1.4 miles. Squeezed between them are chunky slices of world history, social movements and artistic endeavors that challenge easy characterization.

To fully ingest it all would take a long time. Tonight, you’ll get three hours during the annual Museum Mile Festival, which organizers call the city’s largest block party.

The festival’s opening ceremony is at 5:45 p.m. at El Museo del Barrio. From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Fifth Avenue between 79th and 110th Streets will be closed to vehicles, and more than a half-dozen museums will be free to visit. On the streets will be outdoor exhibits, live music and art-making workshops.

The event will take place rain or shine.

It’s Tuesday — enjoy some art.

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Dear Diary:

A few years ago, I took my 95-year-old father to see the rejuvenation of Coney Island. While he enjoyed the scene from a bench, I walked to get us lunch: hot dogs and drinks, naturally.

When I returned, he told me how, as a youngster, he would walk from Sea Gate to the movie palace on Surf Avenue, but that he never had enough money to get a drink across the road at Nathan’s.

He took a sip of his orange drink.

“All my life I’ve been craving this,” he said. “And it’s terrible.”

— Mike Brenner

New York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.

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